Why are people opposed to HS2? (And other HS2 discussion)

[matacaster]

But that capacity is very cheap - rolling stock, SDO and the odd extended platform. For instance, XC could have a nice new fleet of 7 or 8-car Class 80x for a fraction of the cost of HS2.

Similarly, for Northern, get those 2-car 195s extended to 3 and the 3s to 4.

They should of course do both.

I agree entirely, but they haven't done it have they. I don't think there has
ever been sufficient capacity since class 47 +7or 8 coaches. If it was London, they'd have done it years ago. The new northern fleet of 195s does not address capacity as far as I can see. That decision-making is London centric is unarguable. Mps of all colours may suffer some congestion getting from their local flats, but those out in the sticks tend to travel directly to London and likely don't travel much of the rest of the network. This means they don't put much pressure on to fix things. It's not clear to me why the traditional northern approach of supplying short trains and leaving some people on the platforms doesn't apply to Milton Keynes.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Because it doesn't facilitate through running of cross-country services from the south and south-west to the East Midlands, Yorkshire and north east.

You wouldn't get those services anyway, even if Birmingham was built as a through station - it may have escaped your attention, but the line from Birmingham to the SouthWest is not electrified beyond Bromsgrove, and there are currently no plans to electrify it. So, short of building a separate micro-fleet of bi-mode HS2 trains, through services wouldn't be possible.

 

[Esker-pades]

In post #4173, you quoted my previous comment 'We should be working out what the most urgent problems on the network are, and addressing those'.

And added your own comment: 'That's what HS2 is'.

I, and anyone else who has to put up with travelling round the north regularly, would disagree very strongly with your suggestion that HS2 addresses the most urgent capacity problems in the country.

The 'most' is the operative word here.

There are few places where the line can be argued to be at 100% capacity (IE: where no more trains can be run, and trains are already at maximum length). The Southern WCML at peak times is one of them, and has been for the longest time. Thus, I would classify it as the "most urgent".

 

[matacaster]

Of course they are. Which is the point. No modern construction project would be allowed to encircle wildlife so it is unable to escape. Before the main construction starts the site would be fenced off and any wildlife which hasn't already moved on would be trapped and released elsewhere.

So any animals in small parcels of land would be relocated and unable to get back in, and for lager areas of land the argument to have permanent wildlife access/egress points is much greater anyway.



This is an important point for the posters who don't understand why the high design speed is an issue. The straighter you draw the line the less ability you have to avoid adverse impacts on communities (and the environment). If you can't avoid severance or obliteration because the design speed won't allow it, you have to be prepared to justify the need for speed.

When people were told route 'X' was better than route 'Y' because it would save 6 minutes between Euston and Curzon Street their confusion is understandable now they are being told it isn't really about speed but is all about a capacity problem (remote from where they have chosen to live).

HS2's problem is in the understanding of objectives and conveying those clearly and precisely to a sceptical public.

Huntsman

Agreed. I think it all started with the EU's TEN-T network, which was intended to ensure that people in the whole of England and Scotland hadfast access to Paris and Berlin. The first bit was HS1, but this went to Waterloo initially. Even with journey time improvements, Manchester and Leeds trains were canned (they were a sop to make it look like the North would benefit from HS1. Later terminal moved to St Pancras, but still no direct link or service from North.
Next they said HS1 was about speed, which only makes real sense if (as with TEN-T if Scotland is included in plan or trains running directly to continent) the distance is sufficient. So then it was changed to capacity, when this could be largely solved by an underground / commuter line to Milton Keynes+ some other capacity enhancements.

 

[jfowkes]

So why does its PR continually claim that it is for the benefit of the north of England, rather than being a way of keeping services to the north of England running whilst billions are spent to give more seats for commuters to Herts / Bucks / Northants ?

Because they're trying to counter the narrative that it's "only for the benefit of London" or "just saves X minutes to Birmingham".

 

[B&I]

That sounds quite similar to "cut HS2 back to phase 1, plus revised plans for the north" to me. Which is something I can certainly get behind.

Again, that sounds broadly similar to the HS2 phase 1 plan: you'll end up with a new-build railway between London and Birmingham, plus the option to run through trains from London to "The North" as well.

As for the differences in price from a change of route or redesigning for lower maximum speeds (and the delay in returning to the design board), I don't have the figures and estimates to debate that issue competently.


(P.S. Did you mean building a new 4-track route from London-Rugby, in addition to the existing WCML? That's be a lot of additional capacity, but I'm not sure what the cost of the third and fourth tracks would be.)

Yes, that's an accurate summary of what I'd suggest. Despite living in the north, and making a majority of my journeys around it, I see a stronger argument for phase 1 than the western leg of phase 2 taken as a whole (though I still think some elements of the western leg, combined with 'NPR', should be prioritised as well). I do think that the eastern leg of phase 2 could be HS2's most useful part if a better arrangement was made at the Birmingham end, particularly if it spurred on improvements on the Birmingham-Exeter and Birmingham-Southampton lines.

I suggest 4 tracks for phase 1, up to wherever the routes to Brum and the Trent Valley section of the WCML split, to future-proof capacity, given that this will be the main trunk from London to about half the country. I suspect that the additional cost of 4 tracking would not be as great as the cost of building for 400 km/h compared to some.more sensible speed.

 

[B&I]

Because they're trying to counter the narrative that it's "only for the benefit of London" or "just saves X minutes to Birmingham".

The problem is that those narratives are substantially true with the current plan.

 

[B&I]

For people in the north, connectivity to London is presently, I suggest, little to no problem at all - (circa 2 hours, 200 miles Leeds to London). The journey times are very reasonable, the stock is decent with plenty of facilities. Any minor overcrowding is essentially just early morning and to a lesser extent evening return.

Contrast that with
Leeds- Sheffield (1 hour, 40 miles)
Leeds to Birmingham (1hr 46mins, 100 miles)
Leeds to Bristol (3hrs 45 mins, approx 160miles)
Leeds to Liverpool (1hr 35mins, 76 Miles)
Leeds to Glasgow (4hrs 11 mins, 179 miles)

all above figures from internet searches and note that times given are from Leeds a major hub, people who do not live near Leeds will have a harder time.

Cross Country trains are about half the length they need to be and TPE will be very near the capacity of the new trains by the time they eventually get fully introduced. There is more need for extra capacity on cross country than on trains to London.

All this is correct. And that's before we get to the capacity problems around almost all the cities you mention, which stop them having local railway systems of the quality that cities of similar size in other countries would take for granted.

 

[MarkyT]

What has HS2 got to do with higher non-tilt speeds on TPE services, which won't use any HS2 trackage?

It doesn't, but demonstrates that reviewing the EPS speeds and sectional times north of Wigan makes sense for other services as well as HS2 trains, thus improving the business case for that work and spreading the benefits. I'd argue it is worth doing even without HS2, as it's likely that any wholesale replacement of the Pendolino fleet would be unlikely to have tilt, and especially not the heavyweight ATP style tilt. This is already the case with Avanti's small new subfleet order to replace their Voyagers.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Nothing in that thread explained the odd and arbitrary distinction either. Unsurprisngly, as it devolved into the usual mixture of '10 Reasons Why Liverpool Should Be Grateful With A Thrice Weekly Horse And Cart Service' and thunderingly unsubtle attempts to get the thread closed.

As the only link from Liverpool to HS2, even after phase 2, will remain via the Winsford bottleneck, which other posters have said prevents a Liverpool-Brum HS2 service, how do you plan for Brum-bound trains to reach HS2 from Liverpool ? A really long run-up and an Eddie Kidd ramp somewhere near Acton Bridge ?

Now you're back in the realms of 'HS2 isn't absolutely perfect in every regard so lets not build it'. Bottom line is, you can't build a line to *everywhere* in one go. Manchester is a significantly more important destination than Liverpool when viewed in terms of passenger numbers. It has a bigger combined population of city+surrounding-towns-in-catchment-area. It also has a much more important airport. So it makes sense to build a line there first. Personally, I very much hope that Liverpool will eventually get a high-speed link to HS2 (which could well happen as part of NPR), but the fact that it's not there from the start isn't a reason not to build HS2.

Imagine if people had decided not to build the original Liverpool and Manchester railway that kicked off the whole passenger railway revolution, just because it didn't serve - say - Leeds or Bradford or Birmingham... That's the logic of your argument.

 

[B&I]

And this is relevant how?


HS2 will allow trains to do the Leeds to Birmingham journey, and the journey time advantage will be so huge that a transfer to an XC train south would be easily worth while.


Leeds-Birmingham will be ~49 minutes apparently.
The Leeds-Sheffield journey time might not improve much, largely due to the hubris of the City Council, that demanded a dead end terminus rather than a through station at a massive transport hub, but there we go.



Good job that HS2 will bleed off almost all the XC traffic on the core section with Birmingham-North East via HS2 trains then isn't it?
And via London will eat most of the North to South East XC traffic.

Translation: HS2 will address only a handful of the desperately.poor connections between our cities, and will in many cases shorten journey times only if passengers are prepared to put up with travelling via London. And apparently wanting a station anywhere near the centre of your city is 'hubris', yet we have to spend billions on a tunnel from OOC to Euston.

Another super-convincing argument in favour of HS2 there, which will no doubt win over its legions of critics in the English provinces

 

[B&I]

These could be drastically improved by building a High Speed Line between Leeds and Birmingham (you will, at least initially, have to change at Birmingham for Bristol).

And from that line, you can fairly cheaply build a chord connecting it to the WCML-reliving High Speed Line and run London trains creating a similar effect on the ECML to that on the WCML. :P

Your other journeys (Liverpool, Glasgow, etc) can be improved by expanding the 21st century rail network - NPR, further HS2 phases and what not. But for them to happen, HS2 needs to happen.

So why not enable services from the eastern leg to run on from Brum now ?

And why does HS2 need to happen for other cities to receive proper rail connectivity ? What physically prevents a high speed line being built all the way to Liverpool or Glasgow ? The only thing preventing it is that some.places have more political clout than others, and the way HS2 has been planned reflects this.

 

[MarkyT]

The problem is that those narratives are substantially true with the current plan.

You know very well this is not true. From day one, journey times to various places in the NW and Scotland will be improved. Reliability should also be improved with dedicated tracks and much simpler infrastructure south of Birmingham. A fatality at Milton Keynes, a tree down at Tring or a points failure at Hanslope cannot affect HS2 expresses on the new line.

 

[B&I]

Castlefield needs doing, but I'm not convinced it is as important as the south WCML because it can be solved by reducing frequencies and lengthening trains.

You could always reduce frequencies on the southern WCML. Why is it that only in the north of England is 'improvement' based on reducing services, rather than just building some blooming infrastructure ?

 

[B&I]

But that capacity is very cheap - rolling stock, SDO and the odd extended platform. For instance, XC could have a nice new fleet of 7 or 8-car Class 80x for a fraction of the cost of HS2.

Similarly, for Northern, get those 2-car 195s extended to 3 and the 3s to 4.

They should of course do both.

Maybe fewer people would oppose HS2 if these easy gains were actually being funded, rather than all available money for railway improvements seeming to be poured into HS2 and a small number of other projects

 

[miami]

Translation: HS2 will address only a handful of the desperately.poor connections between our cities

I would expect the following routes to be faster post HS2, yet still avoid London:

Birmingham to Chester, St Asaph, Bangor, Liverpool, Manchester, Salford, Preston, Lancaster, Carlilse, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stirling, Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness, Sheffield, Wakefield, Leeds, Bradford, Hull, York, Ripon, Durham, Sunderland, Newcastle

So Birmingham to 26 of the 56 cities in the UK.

 

[HSTEd]

Translation: HS2 will address only a handful of the desperately.poor connections between our cities, and will in many cases shorten journey times only if passengers are prepared to put up with travelling via London.

Why is travelling by London a hardship?
Why are you demanding we spend billions of taxpayers money or axe valuable infrastructure so that Northerners can avoid being "contaminated" by contact with Londoners?

And apparently wanting a station anywhere near the centre of your city is 'hubris', yet we have to spend billions on a tunnel from OOC to Euston.

We aren't building a station at Euston because its in the centre of London.
We are building a station there because it's on top of the largest interchange station complex in London.

St Pancras, Thameslink, King's Cross, Euston and all their associated connections in one place.
I can't think of anywhere else in London that has that many connections in one place.

Meadowhall has little disadvantage compared to the Sheffield City station on that score.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I'll name you another: Ordsall Chord.

I think you may have missed the bit of my reply in which I said ' an inappropriate choice of route/location given the financial etc. constraints'. To me, it seems clear to me that what is really needed in Manchester is something like that long discussed Piccadilly-Victoria rail tunnel (or maybe a Piccadilly-Salford tunnel), but the (regrettably in my view) Government weren't offering the money to do that, and besides, even if they were it would take many more years to build it and adapt all the rail infrastructure around Manchester to enable a full service through such a tunnel to a variety of destinations. In that context, the Ordsall chord appeared to be cheap-ish way of improving things at least at little bit - which was subsequently screwed by the Government's change of heart on Piccadilly platforms 14/15. I'm not sure you can attribute that to bad route planning by the planners who worked on the project.

So, to save some money, no doubt spent on permitting 400 km/h running somewhere else, we end up with a dramatically less useful layout at Brum

More correctly, to save an absolutely huge amount of money. Far, far more than you'd save by slightly dropping the speeds on the open-countryside bits of HS2. And you end up with something somewhat less useful - not dramatically less useful - at Birmingham (since as noted in other posts, through services to the SouthWest wouldn't be possible anyway). That's how big projects work: You don't design the unaffordable ideal, you design for the best compromise between what you'd ideally like and what is practical (economically and physically) to build

 

[B&I]

Crossrail2 is not being proposed ONLY to absorb HS2 passengers at Euston. As I understand it, it's being proposed mainly in order to relieve capacity and provide some more badly needed paths on the SouthWest main line from Waterloo and to similarly relieve capacity on the vastly overcrowded Northern and Victoria lines. In the process, it will also provide much faster and more convenient access from large parts of SouthWest and NorthEast London right into the centre of London, provide a new direct connection from those parts of London to long distance trains at both Kings Cross and Euston, and relieve capacity at Euston itself. And that last point obviously has huge relevance to HS2. But claiming that CR2 is devoted to HS2 (and inferring that its cost should be viewed in that light) isn't at all correct.

I was following our logic. Crossrail 1 apparently won't be able to absorb extra passengers if HS2 ends at OOC. Yet according to your way of thinking Crossrail 2 will be able to cope with passengers pouring out of Euston despite all the other roles it will, as you point out, be required to fulfil

 

[jfowkes]

The problem is that those narratives are substantially true with the current plan.

There are significant journey time reductions and capacity releases north of Birmingham too, I think the trouble is that it's harder to point to one place on the map and say "here's what the North gets" like you can with London. The benefits are more disparate, doesn't mean they're not there.

Maybe fewer people would oppose HS2 if these easy gains were actually being funded, rather than all available money for railway improvements seeming to be poured into HS2 and a small number of other projects

To me knowledge, HS2 has not taken any money from the Network Rail budget? We could and should be spending loads more on the classic network but that has little to do with HS2, which is AIUI is funded from borrowing not from departmental budgets.

 

[B&I]

HS2b times will mean
Leeds-Sheffield 27m
Leeds-Birmingham 49m
Leeds-Bristol: 3h

I do think phase 3 should include BM interchange via Worcestershie Parkway to Bristol Parkway and connect to GWML (or even a branch to Newport down the west of the Severn)

Fortunatly even just phase 2b will take add at least 5 paths an hour on the ECML

'Phase 3', when there's no guarantee phase 2 is even going to be built

 

[MarkyT]

So why not enable services from the eastern leg to run on from Brum now ?

This doesn't need a through station though. With some additional link lines that might be added later, portions could split off and reverse to South West and South Coast destinations from the Curzon Street terminus. THey might even be loco-hauled over non-electrified lines in the shorter term until further electrification is completed. That's no reason not to build the initial network ASAP.

And why does HS2 need to happen for other cities to receive proper rail connectivity ? What physically prevents a high speed line being built all the way to Liverpool or Glasgow ? The only thing preventing it is that some.places have more political clout than others, and the way HS2 has been planned reflects this.

Again nothing prevents these in the future, but you have to start somewhere. As with the motorway network, you tend to start where the most demand is. HS2 does that. Traffic can still run through beyond via existing lines where capacity isn't such a problem.

 

[Esker-pades]

I was following our logic. Crossrail 1 apparently won't be able to absorb extra passengers if HS2 ends at OOC. Yet according to your way of thinking Crossrail 2 will be able to cope with passengers pouring out of Euston despite all the other roles it will, as you point out, be required to fulfil

Not everyone who gets to Euston will use XR2. Euston has far better connections (and more of them) to places than Old Oak Common.

You could always reduce frequencies on the southern WCML. Why is it that only in the north of England is 'improvement' based on reducing services, rather than just building some blooming infrastructure ?

As I understand, the reductions in services across Castlefield are short - term until permanent solutions (P15/16 at Piccadilly, etc.) are found.

 

[B&I]

Yes, but such a thing is not within the capability of existing technology since no high speed bi-mode exists in the world. Best available is a Spanish trainset that can only manage 250km/h which is far too slow.

And an upgrade to Bristol/Penzance would cost billions which would inevitably be added onto HS2's budget to attack the core scheme.

Here's a thought. Why not electrify from Bristol to Exeter (or as far south west as we feasibly can) ?

Your thinking is so trapped within the HS2 bunker that you are literally incapable of engaging what other steps could be taken, even in conjunction with HS2, to.improve the overall network.

 

[B&I]

You wouldn't get those services anyway, even if Birmingham was built as a through station - it may have escaped your attention, but the line from Birmingham to the SouthWest is not electrified beyond Bromsgrove, and there are currently no plans to electrify it. So, short of building a separate micro-fleet of bi-mode HS2 trains, through services wouldn't be possible.

Another one who seems to think that an electrified line between the south west and Brum is the stuff of a mad man's dream.

 

[B&I]

The 'most' is the operative word here.

There are few places where the line can be argued to be at 100% capacity (IE: where no more trains can be run, and trains are already at maximum length). The Southern WCML at peak times is one of them, and has been for the longest time. Thus, I would classify it as the "most urgent".

Take a holiday in Manchester. Get back to me on this subject.

 

[TrafficEng]

...A fatality at Milton Keynes, a tree down at Tring or a points failure at Hanslope cannot affect HS2 expresses on the new line.

But if long distance services on WCLM, MML and ECML have been diverted onto HS2 - as some people suggest - then a fatality, OHLE failure or derailment somewhere in the Chilterns has the potential to create travel disruption on a scale we don't currently have.

Clearly the design of HS2 aims to minimise the risk of such events happening, but it cannot rule them out.

 

[B&I]

It doesn't, but demonstrates that reviewing the EPS speeds and sectional times north of Wigan makes sense for other services as well as HS2 trains, thus improving the business case for that work and spreading the benefits. I'd argue it is worth doing even without HS2, as it's likely that any wholesale replacement of the Pendolino fleet would be unlikely to have tilt, and especially not the heavyweight ATP style tilt. This is already the case with Avanti's small new subfleet order to replace their Voyagers.

So if tilt is unnecessary to improve journey times to Scotland, why has so much time and effort being spent on track and trains which facilitate it ? Are you saying that the people who plan the railways might have got something wrong ?

 

[B&I]

I would expect the following routes to be faster post HS2, yet still avoid London:

Birmingham to Chester, St Asaph, Bangor, Liverpool, Manchester, Salford, Preston, Lancaster, Carlilse, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stirling, Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness, Sheffield, Wakefield, Leeds, Bradford, Hull, York, Ripon, Durham, Sunderland, Newcastle

So Birmingham to 26 of the 56 cities in the UK.

St Asaph ? Which closed in Septemberr 1955 ?

 

[HSTEd]

Here's a thought. Why not electrify from Bristol to Exeter (or as far south west as we feasibly can) ?

Because people who want to prevent HS2 from happening will then cheerfully add that project's budget to the HS2 total and scream about how the price has gone up another five billion or ten billion or whatever.
But will carefully avoid mentioning that the price has gone up because we are buying more.