Again, HS2's proponents might want to bear this in mind. Maybe encouraging the government to actually spend some money on rail across most of the country would be a start.
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Why are people opposed to HS2? (And other HS2 discussion)
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Again, HS2's proponents might want to bear this in mind. Maybe encouraging the government to actually spend some money on rail across most of the country would be a start.
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Well I stand corrected, except for one small problem. I specifically said from May 2018 onwards, which your data omits.
Also, curiously, you haven't included Virgin. If there was some urgent infrastructure deficit on the WCML explaining these problems, I assume that it would affect Virgin too.
What is the particular capacity pinch point, equivalent to the series of them around central Manchester, which explains LNR's admittedly awful performance ?
jfowkes
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TrafficEng
Member
True. But if you've just travelled to London from Birmingham (or beyond) then there will be a limit to how far back up the ECML/MML/WCML you are likely to want to travel before the time/cost factors mean it makes more sense to avoid London and take a more direct route.
So there is an element of double counting including both ECML/MML/WCML and Thameslink/Watford DCs.
And at Stratford there is the potential for physical connection with HS1 (possibly even same/cross platform interchange?) whereas Euston will involve a walk/taxi/??? to connect from HS2 to HS1.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
I'm not arguing against a Southern extension. I'm very confident that we'll need one. It I'm also fairly sure if you include it now or even an underground station to facilitate it now, the initial cost will go up so much that you risk losing HS2 altogether. Build HS2 as planned and I'd be very surprised if within 10 years of its opening the Government isn't planning for an extension because it's seen how successful the first phase was.
Esker-pades
Established Member
And this is where it becomes pointless. We've gone down such a cul-de-sac of debate that you've ended up arguing that because the Castlefield Corridor performed worse than LNWR did in an 18 month period (except for all the bits that it didn't), HS2 is... what? Not needed? The re-hashing of the "well, it doesn't address this problem, so it's pointless" argument? I don't know anymore.
I'll make final points in answer to your questions in your most recent posts, then I'll ignore.
I've not been able to find information for some of the things that you requested. However, you appear to be able to use the internet, so you may have more success than me. I don't have access to any information that is not in the public domain on this matter. Use a tax-paying search engine of your choice.
I'd point to a number of capacity pinch points:
- London Euston and the approach (Camden Junctions etc.)
- Ledburn Junctions, and other moves from Fast to Slow lines
- Coventry station
- Birmingham New Street station and all approaches to it
- Rugby to Birmingham
- Birmingham to Wolverhampton
- The fact that the moment anything is late on the WCML, it's virtually impossible to find it a new path without it making other services late
- Etc.
- Etc.
PS:
- Manchester to Preston via Bolton electrification
- Edinburgh to Glasgow, and Edinburgh/Glasgow to Dunblane and Alloa
- New rolling stock for Northern, TransPennine Express, ScotRail, West Midlands Trains, East Midlands Trains, Transport for Wales, etc.
- Etc.
- Etc.
No one's arguing against it, just perhaps accepting that everyone won't get everything they want immediately. There is simply no mechanism availble in this democracy where you can fully decide on a complete national 40-year, long-distance rail strategy that you can guarantee will be supported and funded by all administrations over that period. You have to do things incrementally as you can and be adaptable to emerging circumstances.
TrafficEng
Member
You've just whizzed down HS2 to London. Are you going to take a bus or Boris bike to the West End or the City, or get off at OOC and take a train directly to where you want to be?
*But already connected together by a [convenient] rail service [with spare capacity], unlike Euston/St Pancras.
So no need to demolish the shopping centre.
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EM2
Established Member
Victoria Line?
So what you are saying is that they clear a the land, trapping it between two transport corridors, and it becomes a new habitat (we'll ignore that it was one before).
To quote someone whose opinion you consider highly (yourself) "how did [the animals] get in?" Clearly they don't if they've been cleared out. The HS2 designers saw this first hand and rejected the HS1 approach (in part - added cost and journey time didn't help) due to this sort of isolated islands of inaccessibility. And you agree these are bad - it's why you brought up line speed.
Influential is not the same as informed! And if they influence it this way, nearly a decade after the horse has bolted, any cost savings will be more than cancelled out by the money spent cancelling current construction contracts, redesigning the route, consulting on it, amending/redoing the legislation, and paying for the 5 years+ of construction inflation while we wait.
Lowering the minimum line design speed (to increase capacity) was an argument that was thoroughly debunked in this thread yesterday. You resurrected it to deal with a narrow point wrt following motorways more closely (and so not create places surrounded by transport infrastructure) to minimise impact, which is irrelevant with the current route, which deliberately doesn't follow existing infrastructure in a way to create such islands.
I note you once more show selective reading, and seemingly ignore where I rehash why it is guff - just alluding to influential people who view the question (which is different to the answer of actually reducing minimum design speed) as important. This time you don't have the excuse that there's embarrassing news on that front today. If you don't think it's guff, engage with the argument saying it is, rather than fallaciously appeal to an undefined authority with unspecified expertise.
Esker-pades
Established Member
Such connections are possible at Euston, and there are more of them.
One can also walk in a reasonable time from Euston to the other Central London destinations. That's not true of Old Oak Common.
TrafficEng
Member
+Northern.
Apologies. The tube is so inconvenient and crowded I never think to use it for that connection. Post amended.
Enough with your sarcasm. Threading a railway, including a major new multi-track throat out of the west end of the new station would go right under the very heart of the city and have to thread around or between both existing major rail routes. The levels look really difficult to me. There are large towers in the way no doubt with deep foundations etc. A terminus can work very well with reversals, especially where it coincides with train splitting and joining activity as a crew change would be required as part of station work anyway. I'm less fond of an in and out terminal for NPR at Manchester Piccadilly however, but even that could work if excavating a multilevel station with deep level through platfroms for transpennine services proves too difficult or expensive. As part of Phase 2 there's still time to revise detail designs in Manchester however while any substantial changes for Birmingham is far less practical now, without huge additional cost and delay.
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Yep. HS2 only needs to be the first phase of a national High Speed Network. The French and Japanese systems weren’t built overnight, and indeed both are still developing.
Utter, utter, madness. We’ve spent years trying to fix bendy Victorian railways with tiny loading gauges, because they were only building for the now and not the future. Why not build something that has the potential to reach 400kph, even if the first set of new trains are only capable of 320kph? Its not going to significantly add to the cost. Building a new railway cost a lot whether it’s straight or curved. Even BR built the Selby by-pass for 160mph despite there being no rolling stock in the country that could anywhere close to that. In another 150 years we don’t know what the technological capabilities will be, but given where the Victorians were and where we are now I doubt we can even dream of it.
Have a look back through this thread at the number of people arguing against other improvements to the rail network because HS2 must have priority.
The government is casting around looking for reasons to scale back on what is already supposed to be its settled policy. Again, I struggle to share your optimism
The plans should clearly have included huge underground through stations in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.
They could then be axed following the inevitable backlash against 'gold-plating' and we could get on with building the thing having 'saved' 10s of billions of pounds.
They could then be axed following the inevitable backlash against 'gold-plating' and we could get on with building the thing having 'saved' 10s of billions of pounds.
Please give a specific example (not including what you would do to the Chiltern/WCML instead of HS2, which are by definition alternatives and make no sense to do as well as HS2). Nobody is saying (for example) Swansea electrifiation shouldn't happen to alliw HS2 to happen
You're king of the partial data. What fraction of the total cost of Crossrail does the total cost of all those improvements (many of which, by the way, wre necessary to.reace worn out assets) comprise ?
Again, if you bothered reading my posts instead of endlessly regurgitating your own prejudices, you would have seen that I was not saying that the basic principle of new lines following the same corridors phase 1 of HS2, or the eastern arm.of phase 2, was not needed. You are another HS2 proponent who cannot see the difference between partial disagreement with the current plan and total opposition to HS2 in any form. It's wearying.
You really think 10`s of billions would be saved with underground station ???
How about the argument that there should not be electrification from Brum to the south west, because HS2's opponents would try to argue that the cost of this should be considered part of the HS2 budget ? Or that there should be no connection at Brum for services from the south and south west, and that everyone should change between New St and Curzon St or travel via London ? Or the suggestion that no aspect of 'NPR' can go ahead unless HS2 is built first, or that Castlefield should be addressed by reducing services rather than building new infrastructure ? Or that Liverpool doesn't justify a high speed line ? Take your pick
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Depends on where you are going. If it's the BT tower or UCL or British Museum, then the Liz won't take you to it, and it's easier to travel on the surface than take the tube the short distance to such places. Camden is accessible from OOC, but it's going to be quicker and easier to go to Euston (where you can take the tube or get a bus).
And it's not like there's not 2 tube lines (squishing the SSLs to one line) heading to each of the West End and The City from Euston - and giving more destinations with that one change (Green Park, Leicester Square, Victoria, Charing Cross, Waterloo, Bank, London Bridge, etc would be accessed via Euston) in those parts than OOC can.
What does Stratford improve access to over OOC? East London suburbs, sure. You speed that up, but northern leisure/business travellers aren't that interested in that (and the other way around matters a bit less - people are happier doing changes in familiar places, so the penalty is less). Direct trains to Holborn, Chancery Lane, St Pauls and Bank, as well as Westminster, Waterloo and London Bridge - but they'd be quicker with a change from the Elizabeth line than out to Stratford and double back. The only place, other than Stratford itself (which has direct service from OOC anyway), that would be more useful to have Stratford than Euston that people from the North might go to in reasonable numbers is Greenwich.
There's three rail services (again smushing together the SSLs into one) between Euston and St Pancras.
But they, despite being all at least every 3 minutes through the day (unlike the every 10 minutes DLR), typically take longer than walking and add to the cost if not doing the St Pancras-destination leg under PAYG.
But let's include it then - that's an additional tube line to the West End (and out the other way), Thameslink providing a third route to the City (as well as a massive area of the SE), HS1 to Kent and Europe. I'll ignore the mainlines heading north out of London, but they will mean it's quicker via London for some journeys. I think we've surpassed Stratford, no?
Sounds good, but it is the HS2 fan club on here who are arguing tooth and nail against any expansion of the scope of the project to serve more places, or even against higher capacity on the line planned.
Except we are building for services faster than anywhere in the world's, and speeds which (many on here accept) HS2 services will never reach, and increasing cost, and reducing capacity, in the process
TrafficEng
Member
As you've gone for the ad hom approach and have misrepresented my points I think it best to draw a line here.
If you are interested in further reading about it then in my view a National Infrastructure Commissioner (for example) is someone whose views are 'influential' and based on some measurable level of expertise. To dismiss such opinions as 'guff' seems unwise at a time where the future of the project is uncertain.
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/pressure-mounts-for-hs2-to-reduce-speed-22-02-2019/
What few other projects? Remember that ~£30bn in the last 10 years that mostly didn't include Crossrail (it did include bits between Paddington and Reading) and definitely didn't include HS2.
I assume that you're not a fan of the boomerang tunnel proposed to permit 'NPR' services from west of Manchester to enter the centre from the east, bend round and head east again, all thanks to the way HS2 has been planned ? That tunnel, after all, will have to go under central Manchester, with it's big buildings and underground rivers.
You're inventing problems in Brum for the sake of it. Curzon St is on the south eastern edge of the city centre. A tunnel leaving it could curve round the south of the city centre under mostly light industrial areas, assuming there's any actual substance to what you say about any difficulties going directly under the city centre. There's a big open site for a station box to be excavated.
Simple questions. What's the total cost of the other projects listed by Felix ? And what will be the total cost of Crossrail ? (Ok, maybe that second question is not so simple.)
How is there not ? HS2 has taken 10 years already and it looks as if it will be another 15+ before the current plan is completed. That's the life span of at least 5 parliaments in normal times (as it is we've had 5 since HS2 was announced).
The thread of this title might suggest that someone was interested in working out why people oppose HS2, and maybe even addressing that. Putting HS2 into context as part of a wider project of network development might win more support for the project. However, HS2's proponents on here don't actually seem to be interested in increasing public support. The thread should be renamed 'Why are some people opposed to HS2 ? And here's why every single one of them is wrong and thick'
I’m fairly sure they were suggesting that underground stations would cost £10s of billions more. So you start off your proposal including them, then when you cut that bit and go back to normal stations you can claim to have saved all that money. Even though you never really intended to have underground stations to start with.
Given that you've deliberately and wilfully misrepresented points of mine (when you didn't actively ignore them) and happily admitted it, that's a bit pot calling the kettle black! Let's end it - we both want to tilt at windmills and it's a waste of everyone's time.
As for the information commissioner - he said it was a mistake, not that we should redraw the route now it's started to be built. He argued for it when it wasn't guff to argue it - a decade ago, but was overruled and still feel he was right. Which is fine, however now discussions of line speed (and alignment) are just hot air - because the horse has bolted, the water has gone under the bridge.
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