How *should* HS2 have been built?

[The Planner]

Having mapped such a route out many times in Google Earth (I know) I think that it's just about possible to build some sort of alignment over the M6, but it would require the demolition of Bescot Stadium and a fair few residential properties to reduce tunnelling. Although it would allow a connection to NR tracks near Walsall to allow high-speed trains to reach Wolverhampton.

Over the M6? Its elevated through there on viaducts until the Pleck to Darlaston chord.

 

[Bald Rick]

For Birmingham a through HS2 station nearer to New Street / Moor Street

Curzon St really couldnt be any closer to Moor St. It is literally next door.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 18 Nov 2023 ==

Having mapped such a route out many times in Google Earth (I know) I think that it's just about possible to build some sort of alignment over the M6, but it would require the demolition of Bescot Stadium and a fair few residential properties to reduce tunnelling.

“Just about possible” raeely is. besdies if you are going to demloish a football ground in that vicinity, theres a much better option just by J1 of the M5.

Considering Curzon street is approached largely through a Viaduct not a tunnel, I think there would be more.

Lots more. Not least if you wanted a station in central Birmingham…

 

[JKF]

The average length of trains running east of Leeds is probably around 3 carriages. There is lots of capacity for passenger growth simply by running longer trains.

It’s constrained by there being no cheap advance or local fares from Leeds to York, unless that’s changed since I’ve been there. You could get to Birmingham for less which was preposterous. Different topic I guess.

Is there any protection for a HS station in Leeds or have they given up on the idea completely? Crown Point retail park was looking tired ten years ago, must be a dump now, so reinstating a route through there (and possible station site) would be viable.

 

[RobShipway]

Curzon St really couldnt be any closer to Moor St. It is literally next door.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 18 Nov 2023 ==



“Just about possible” raeely is. besdies if you are going to demloish a football ground in that vicinity, theres a much better option just by J1 of the M5.




Lots more. Not least if you wanted a station in central Birmingham…

I personally, would go via J1 of the M5, lot less questions such as why are you knocking down our football stadium to save 10 minutes of travelling time?

The other point I would make the idea for HS2, is not to be making travelling time quicker anyway. That is just a bonus. The idea of HS2, is more to do with taking traffic away from the WCML, to allow other services to operate. Now, if HS2 was built to Wolverhampton station rather than Lichfield Trent Valley, how much more traffic would that take away from WCML? I believe the answer is none more so than going to Lichfield Trent valley, so it would just be a waste of money that had been spent when that money could be helping people to be getting groceries etc... without the need to go regularly to food banks.

 

[Peter Sarf]

I personally, would go via J1 of the M5, lot less questions such as why are you knocking down our football stadium to save 10 minutes of travelling time?

The other point I would make the idea for HS2, is not to be making travelling time quicker anyway. That is just a bonus. The idea of HS2, is more to do with taking traffic away from the WCML, to allow other services to operate. Now, if HS2 was built to Wolverhampton station rather than Lichfield Trent Valley, how much more traffic would that take away from WCML? I believe the answer is none more so than going to Lichfield Trent valley, so it would just be a waste of money that had been spent when that money could be helping people to be getting groceries etc... without the need to go regularly to food banks.

Either way need to get nearer to Stafford to relieve that bit of the WCML.

 

[quantinghome]

I had a feeling this was the case. How does it work in Germany? When I was in Berlin last year I found it quite pleasing to see a tall, corporate skyscraper with “DB” proudly adorning the top. It must be a bigger operation internally than NR. Imagine seeing a similar building with the BR logo towering over a British city!

DB must employee civil engineering contractors to actually do the work. They do have an engineering & consulting division which does project management and construction supervision. NR has a bit of this but tends to go out to the engineering consultants for most project work.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Nov 2023 ==

Where practicable, HS2 stations are essentially expansions of NR stations.

Old Oak Common?, Curzon Street? (The French Managed with Gare du Nord and Gare de Lyon)

WAO

WHERE PRACTICABLE. i.e. Euston, Leeds, Manchester, Crewe

Where not practicable, then:

1. As close to the existing station as you can get - Curzon Street, Birmingham Interchange, or
2. As close to existing rail infrastructure as you can and build an interchange - OOC, Toton.

The only planned station with no close link to existing rail was going to be Manchester Airport.

 

[snowball]

From New Civil Engineer, an article praising the way HS2 was developed.

The development of HS2 was exemplary | New Civil Engineer

On a rural or freight railway, it’s the permanent way engineer, as you cover up each other’s mistakes. On a suburban railway, it’s the signal engineer who

www.newcivilengineer.com

The development of HS2 was exemplary

01 Mar, 2024 By William Barter

As a one-time railway operator, I’ve sometimes pondered on which sort of engineer is the operator’s best friend. Probably it depends on what sort of railway you are operating.

On a rural or freight railway, it’s the permanent way engineer, as you cover up each other’s mistakes. On a suburban railway, it’s the signal engineer who provides capacity, keeping trains moving when all is well, not just stopping them when it isn’t. On an InterCity railway, it’s the rolling stock engineer, who puts into service each morning trains that will earn hundreds of thousands of pounds during the day.

How about a high-speed railway like High Speed 2 (HS2)? You all matter! It’s a system, and every part is critical to delivering the whole.

Even sorts of engineer I’d never heard of matter – who would think that the tunnel ventilation engineer is critical to keeping headway down and thus capacity up through the tunnels approaching Old Oak Common? But dissipating waste heat from trains braking matters just as much keeping speed up over turnouts or maintaining a flow of trains through the platforms.

So, development of a major rail project, especially high speed, is a constant process of iteration and compromise, not just with the engineering disciplines, but also with the economists building the business case and forecasting demand impacts of each compromise.

Now that HS2 has become everyone’s whipping boy, perhaps I can set down that development of HS2 was exemplary in the iteration between the train service specification, the timetable planning and the engineering.

In fact, it is the best I have ever known in a 50-year career.

The operational plan – essentially the timetable – links the engineering and the demand, but considering how many specialists are employed on those, it is ironic that for several years the emerging timetable for HS2 train services was in the hands of one man and a dog (I am not joking – every time I hit a problem I took Quintus for a walk and the answer would hit me half way round).

Back in 2012, a train service specification was very clearly set out for the 10 trains per hour of Phase 1.

Parts of it look odd now, such as a combined Liverpool and Birmingham train splitting at Birmingham Interchange. Timetabling quickly showed that having one Birmingham train out of three doing something so off-pattern would be highly disruptive to platforming at the termini (our current rail minister Huw Merriman might ponder this when dreaming of Liverpool and Manchester portions splitting at Crewe) and the idea vanished very quickly.

There were odd gaps in the specification, such as absence of calls at Lancaster, Carlisle and Stoke-on-Trent.

The first of these was solved when timetabling showed that Phase 2A journey times would allow what Phase 1 would not, namely extension of the proposed Preston terminating train to Lancaster, whilst a ministerial decision dealt with the latter two issues in the context of Phase 2A.

For Carlisle, work by Network Rail showed that there was capacity to run the Phase 2B Glasgow and Edinburgh portions separately from Carlisle instead of being forced to run combined to Carstairs, implying a stop at Carlisle that was then reverse engineered into the Phase 2A specification.

For Stoke, a service to Euston from Macclesfield, serving Stoke and Stafford before joining the high-speed line was built into the Phase 2A specification, using a path freed by running a Liverpool and Lancaster train combined to Crewe.

Ironically, the big winner from this was Liverpool, whose two trains per hour could then both run direct via Phase 2A, instead of one having to run via Stafford and thus present an uneven service interval at one end or the other.

As to the relationship with engineering, an effective track layout for Euston was developed simply by two people talking to each other. The lack of options, sifts and appraisals might horrify some, but it worked.

At Old Oak Common, similar common sense saw the layout specified to keep the highest possible speed for trains into those platforms most likely to be used for Euston trains, thus keeping down the headway peaks that arose from trains slowing for the stop. This, amongst other reasons, is why Old Oak does not work well for the terminating trains that it was not intended for. Resilience was built in, to the extent that any one turnout could fail either Normal or Reverse and a normal train service still be operated.

A similar approach to turnout speeds and configuration at Manchester Airport even led to the operationally ideal solution being the cheapest, which is almost unheard of, whilst the delightfully flexible layout for Curzon Street was developed only a little more formally.

Sometimes, though, it seemed as if the more formal the process, the worse the outcome!

An early fixation on connecting HS2 into the slow lines at Crewe stemmed from an appraisal process seemingly designed to get the wrong answer for the right reasons, combined with an over-literal interpretation of requirements that were simply intended to ensure that HS2 trains could access a station platform.

But as a system, the combination of Phase 1 and Phase 2A would have worked very well as a railway, for instance with turnround times that would have been adequate without being excessive, thus using the fleet economically, and ‘parallel moves’ falling at critical junctions such as Crewe North.

Phase 1 by itself (in other words what we have now reverted to) really didn’t work well. This is why we invented Phase 2A, and the Public Accounts Committee quite rightly says that the government has no idea how the truncated system will work operationally (they probably didn’t even realise it was an issue).

And of course, if you spend a decade developing a scheme then change it overnight, the change is not likely to be for the better. All the weaknesses I see in the HS2 system were introduced during the petitioning process.

Green tunnels, assumed to form a single block section so as to respect a ‘one train at a time’ rule, extend headways, but maybe some equivalent to Southern Region tunnel controls might be considered, giving a second train a movement authority into the tunnel so long as the first has a movement authority to leave it.

Extending the Chilterns tunnel in response to petitions introduced new headway peaks due to an extended ‘one train’ section combined with a long steep gradient; it would probably have been better to go a little further so as to reduce the gradient and to justify another proper ventilation shaft.

The worst outcomes of all though can be expected if you let think-tanks, Special Advisers and property developers specify and design your railway. But that is inconceivable – isn’t it?

William Barter is an independent rail consultant who consulted with HS2 Ltd on timetabling, capacity and operations costing

 

[Peter Sarf]

Very good. All we have to do is get politicians take notice and realise they might not know best. Except the politicians now just want to stop spending regardless of the consequences, it is no longer a project they support or want to be seen to support - at the moment......

 

[eldomtom2]

From New Civil Engineer, an article praising the way HS2 was developed.

The development of HS2 was exemplary | New Civil Engineer

On a rural or freight railway, it’s the permanent way engineer, as you cover up each other’s mistakes. On a suburban railway, it’s the signal engineer who

www.newcivilengineer.com

Parts of it may have been well done, but the whole thing can hardly be called "exemplary" when it's the most expensive per km HSR project ever in Europe, at twice the cost the French and Italians are paying to tunnel through the Alps with the longest rail tunnel in the world...

 

[Nottingham59]

Parts of it may have been well done, but the whole thing can hardly be called "exemplary" when it's the most expensive per km HSR project ever in Europe, at twice the cost the French and Italians are paying to tunnel through the Alps with the longest rail tunnel in the world...

Completely agree. What he is saying is that HS2 was designed in a vacuum and optimised against its own narrow criteria, regardless of the cost.

 

[stevieinselby]

Parts of it may have been well done, but the whole thing can hardly be called "exemplary" when it's the most expensive per km HSR project ever in Europe, at twice the cost the French and Italians are paying to tunnel through the Alps with the longest rail tunnel in the world...

A large part of that is the accounting framework. When France builds an LGV, the cost quoted generally only covers the laying of tracks between cities. The route into the main cities is often accommodated on existing tracks because their network wasn't so rigorously rationalised pared to the bone in the 1960s like ours was ... or if a new city centre station is needed, that is counted as a separate project. Whereas we have bundled everything all into one, the tracks, the trains, the city centre approaches, the whole lot ... so no wonder it looks more expensive than comparable projects abroad.

We also have a more vocal nimby contingent and we pay more heed to them than in most European and Asian countries, where the public is more often supportive of the projects and the official attitude is to JFDI - and so we waste an inordinate amount of time and money going round in circles and putting in ever more expensive mitigations to placate the naysayers, and in doing so giving fuel to their complaints that the project is too costly.

 

[eldomtom2]

A large part of that is the accounting framework. When France builds an LGV, the cost quoted generally only covers the laying of tracks between cities. The route into the main cities is often accommodated on existing tracks because their network wasn't so rigorously rationalised pared to the bone in the 1960s like ours was ... or if a new city centre station is needed, that is counted as a separate project. Whereas we have bundled everything all into one, the tracks, the trains, the city centre approaches, the whole lot ... so no wonder it looks more expensive than comparable projects abroad.

Maybe, but Japan's almost certainly counting new stations in the build cost (all the stations are new and exclusively for Shinkansen use) and even with the entire line being in tunnels or on viaducts the latest Shinkansen extension still comes in at half the cost per km of HS2...

We also have a more vocal nimby contingent and we pay more heed to them than in most European and Asian countries, where the public is more often supportive of the projects and the official attitude is to JFDI - and so we waste an inordinate amount of time and money going round in circles and putting in ever more expensive mitigations to placate the naysayers, and in doing so giving fuel to their complaints that the project is too costly.

NIMBYism can stall and delay projects in other countries too - look at the Chuo Shinkansen...

 

[Trainbike46]

A large part of that is the accounting framework. When France builds an LGV, the cost quoted generally only covers the laying of tracks between cities. The route into the main cities is often accommodated on existing tracks because their network wasn't so rigorously rationalised pared to the bone in the 1960s like ours was ... or if a new city centre station is needed, that is counted as a separate project. Whereas we have bundled everything all into one, the tracks, the trains, the city centre approaches, the whole lot ... so no wonder it looks more expensive than comparable projects abroad.

Especially that the trains are included in the headline infrastructure budget is weird - trains aren't infrastructure, and it is stupid to conflate spending on infrastructure with spending on trains

Maybe, but Japan's almost certainly counting new stations in the build cost (all the stations are new and exclusively for Shinkansen use) and even with the entire line being in tunnels or on viaducts the latest Shinkansen extension still comes in at half the cost per km of HS2...

It is important to compare like-with-like, especially if the goal is to figure out how to reduce costs on future projects - I believe a comparison happened at some point

On top of that, there is certainly some level of romantisation of the situation in other countries happening, simply because the issues there don't get reported in the press here

 

[Krokodil]

Especially that the trains are included in the headline infrastructure budget is weird - trains aren't infrastructure, and it is stupid to conflate spending on infrastructure with spending on trains

And the Pendos would need replacement anyway.

 

[eldomtom2]

On top of that, there is certainly some level of romantisation of the situation in other countries happening, simply because the issues there don't get reported in the press here

Romanticism of cost figures? Really?

 

[Trainbike46]

Romanticism of cost figures? Really?

Romanticism of how railway and other large public projects turn out in other countries is certainly a thing. And part of that is costs, though clearly not limited to that!

For example, the new-ish high speed line in the Netherlands (opened 2009) has many temporary speed restrictions related to issues caused by the construction of the bridges, so spending slightly more but preventing massive repair costs in 10-20 year's time is likely good value for money

I'm not saying construction here will be better, but that it is important to compare in detail considering issues, costs, what is and isn't in scope. A simple per-mile number does none of that, so is really of rather limited value

 

[GJMarshy]

All in all I think the original "Y" shaped HS2 network worked perfectly. The point-point model was the right call in my view, as it prevented passenger churn making for a more comfortable experience and allowing it to serve the right areas with the right capacity and frequency. The only change I'd have made would have been to have kept the original Meadowhall choice for Sheffield, thereby decongesting the local lines and better serving the residential population.

A link to HS1? Maybe. But that'd be contingent on being in Schengen, which obviously as of now we are not, so not linking the two perhaps made some sense.

 

[zwk500]

Maybe, but Japan's almost certainly counting new stations in the build cost (all the stations are new and exclusively for Shinkansen use) and even with the entire line being in tunnels or on viaducts the latest Shinkansen extension still comes in at half the cost per km of HS2...

Out of interest what are Japan's land prices like. Land value was certainly a massive factor in HS2's costs ballooning very quickly.

Romanticism of cost figures? Really?

Yes, the british press doesn't really report on problems abroad that aren't seen to affect british people. Look at british conceptions of German efficiency in train operations...

 

[The Ham]

Something which is hard to put a value to is the uplift in local services which HS2 could have allowed.

Manchester gains new platforms for long distance services (ultimately including TPE and XC services with NPR, but well exclude them for now).

You remove 2tph from the existing platforms with a turn around time of 30 minutes, you could have 6tph each with 6 coaches as local services only need a 20 minute turn around.

However (again to keep things simple) those services were previously 3 coach trains elsewhere within the station, so even keeping things very simple (i.e. lengthening existing services by 3 coaches, rather than lengthening some by one, others by two and yet others by three) that's meant that 12tph have now been lengthened from 3 coaches to 6 coaches.

Obviously it's more complex than that, in that some services will be truncated and retained to provide local-ish links which would otherwise be lost or slowed down considerably. However, XC and TPE services would over time likely also be able to use the new platforms, balancing that out.

As such, whist the cost per mile of HS2 infrastructure is high, the benefits it creates goes much further than just intercity travel.

Part of the train that it's hard to put a value to this, is that until it was built the services which could benefit the most from it could change. For example, it could well be that a significant passenger flow gets added to the tram network, which means that in 2009 it may have been an ideal service to see extra capacity, however by (say) 2040 that capacity is being dealt with by trams and so other services would be more suitable to have the extra capacity.

 

[eldomtom2]

As such, whist the cost per mile of HS2 infrastructure is high, the benefits it creates goes much further than just intercity travel.

But that's irrelevant as a response to "HS2 costs too much".

 

[The Ham]

But that's irrelevant as a response to "HS2 costs too much".

It depends, if you have a choice between a pub meal that comes with a drink at £12 and one that doesn't at £11, unless you're not thirsty most people would opt for the one with the drink.

The problem with comparing costs with many European countries HS rail vs UK costs is that a lot would have dealt with the local rail already so the need to cater for other services isn't need.

Taking Manchester as an example, HS2 had designed 6 platforms, which was far more than the 3tph for London and 2tph for Birmingham, even the revised 4 platforms would likely have 1 spare platform all the time. Why, because it needed to cater for NPR.

However, even then, it would create a large uplift in local train capacity. Something which tends not to be needed in Europe as they appear have upgraded their local trains - often to create the space for the intercity trains to use the existing platform.

The point I was making was that by cancelling HS2 (and Network North didn't even come close to getting anything like the sort of upgrades that HS2 could have delivered locally for the likes of Manchester and Leeds) the potential for improvements to the local services are likely to be close to zero compared with what was going to be provided.

Add to that, that it's likely that a lot of the Network North projects will likely be dropped, descoped, values "adjusted" so as to claim that the money was spent (for example taking the value at 2023 but when they spend the money in 2035 inflation would have meant that it goes less far but the total would equal the value from 2023). As such the country would have a much poorer local rail network in 2040 than it would have done if HS2 was built.

If it's going to cost a significant amount of the up to £19bn (cost of phase 2b to Manchester) to build enough platform capacity for NPR and/or for 12tph to be lengthened from 3 coaches to 6 coaches, and/or to provide the track for NPR, then it appears very short sighted to have cancelled HS2 2b into Manchester, which then would have also allowed Manchester to stay to get closer to Exeter in terms of seats per hour per 100,000 of population from London.

As Exeter has a population of 130,000 with at least 15 coaches of trains an hour with a direct service to London, I'm a post HS2 world Manchester would have had 48 coaches, so about 3 times the capacity compared to current numbers, however it has a population of way more than 4 times the population of Exeter (if it had X4 the population then it would still need 60 coaches of capacity!!!).

 

[stuu]

Out of interest what are Japan's land prices like. Land value was certainly a massive factor in HS2's costs ballooning very quickly.

Land for Phase 1 came in at about £5bn, versus a 2013 estimate of £2.8bn. That's clearly a lot as a percentage increase, but doesn't go very far explaining the rest of the £20bn+ cost increases

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 4 Mar 2024 ==

AWe also have a more vocal nimby contingent and we pay more heed to them than in most European and Asian countries, where the public is more often supportive of the projects and the official attitude is to JFDI - and so we waste an inordinate amount of time and money going round in circles and putting in ever more expensive mitigations to placate the naysayers, and in doing so giving fuel to their complaints that the project is too costly.

We do not. The Lyon-Turin line in Italy has seen sites and workers physically attacked, police and the military have been involved. Pretty much every project in Germany gets bombarded with lawsuits - Frankfurt-Mannheim was declared a vital need in 1997. They still haven't applied for permission to build it

 

[Austriantrain]

Al in all I think the original "Y" shaped HS2 network worked perfectly. The point-point model was the right call in my view, as it prevented passenger churn making for an ore comfortable experience and allowing it to serve the right areas with the right capacity and frequency. The only change I'd have made would have been to have kept the original Meadowhall choice for Sheffield, thereby decongesting the local lines and better serving the residential population.

I do agree that the original Y network was perfect and the Meadowhall routing should have been kept. I strongly disagree though that the point-to-point model was the right one, except for stage 1, where that choice was obvious. Having the two northern branches as largely stand alone has failed to generate visible benefits that go further than "we will be in London faster", which was not very likely to generate popular support in the north (and benefits for commuter journeys are largely abstract, especially if they consist in "Piccadilly trains will be 6 cars instead of 3 because we have more space in the patforms). Birmingham - Manchester shuttles for instance do not profit many people besides those living in the center of one of the two and needing to go to the center of the other. Through running through Birmingham (either by a connection to New Street or with a chord from Curzon Street tp the Camp Hill and the Perry Barr lines) would have spread benefits far and wide and enabled a convincing story to be told (which is essential to garner public support). Also, a Leeds - York chord, which BTW would have alleviated pressure on Leeds' Eastern approach. Unfortunately, the whole project (at least until NPR came along) was sold as something for the North, but designed as something for London. And voters do realize such things.

 

[HSTEd]

Al in all I think the original "Y" shaped HS2 network worked perfectly. The point-point model was the right call in my view, as it prevented passenger churn making for an ore comfortable experience and allowing it to serve the right areas with the right capacity and frequency.

I view the HS2 "point to point we only go to major cities" model as a major problem.
It might work well in isolation, but it now leads to a position where the classic network will lose a huge portion of its most lucrative traffic, but still has to run half-empty trains all over the place to serve places bypassed by HS2.

And "passenger churn" is just a key part of how railways operate - the most operationally and socio-economically successful railways in the UK are pretty much all metros that tolerate huge passenger churn.

Despite claims HS2 Phase 1 is "two more fast lines on the WCML" it doesn't go anywhere that the WCML does save for Birmingham.
It is far closer to "two more fast lines on the Chiltern Main Line", it actively avoids all major traffic generators en route.

It maximises capacity, fine, but we've ended up with a situation where HS2 will be at a fraction of its capacity and the classic railways it "relieves" will haemmorhage even more money than they did before.
My own view is we should have gone hard for the Shinkansen model and built a London-Wolverhampton line that would largely replace the WCML (leaving only rump freight and very local services). It would likely still have piles of capacity left to continue further north, but most importantly it would actually improve the railway's overall financial position, rather than tethering them to an even bigger classic railway black hole.

But I realise I am very much in the minority view on this.

 

[eldomtom2]

What does "passenger churn" mean in this context? Large numbers of people getting on and off at intermediate stops?

 

[SynthD]

My own view is we should have gone hard for the Shinkansen model and built a London-Wolverhampton line that would largely replace the WCML

You’d mix semi fast/fast with the non stoppers? That is inefficient. It sounds like you and NR have different measures of how many people want to go to HS2 destinations.

 

[eldomtom2]

You’d mix semi fast/fast with the non stoppers? That is inefficient. It sounds like you and NR have different measures of how many people want to go to HS2 destinations.

Are you calling the Shinkansen inefficient?

 

[HSTEd]

You’d mix semi fast/fast with the non stoppers? That is inefficient. It sounds like you and NR have different measures of how many people want to go to HS2 destinations.

How relevant is "efficiency" when we have an unrestricted loading gauge and 400m trains at our disposal?

The capacity of HS2 is so overwhelming compared to the classic railway that it renders inefficiency somewhat irrelevant in the near and medium term.
The Tokaido Shinkansen still manages 12 trains per hour even with at least three stopping patterns.

Capacity is no use if you have no way to use it, which is the situation HS2 finds itself in now.
As for non-stoppers, how many would there rationally be if the train goes through Birmingham?

 

[GJMarshy]

What does "passenger churn" mean in this context? Large numbers of people getting on and off at intermediate stops?

Essentially what happens on a CrossCountry service. Every time it stops passengers get on/off with luggage moving in and out of seats taking up valuable dwell-time.

On intercity services you want the lowest passenger-churn possible. E.g. a service from Manchester to London via Birmingham New Street would be incredibly difficult to manage as you can't rely on the train being filled at Piccadilly, and 50% of passengers departing at NS to be replaced by NS-Euston passengers.

Wth intercity, you want to ensure all seats are filled to maximise revenue and capacity.

Churn is fine on a commuter/metro-style service where generally people don't have luggage, and are happy to stand. As seen in Germany and on CrossCountry, churn is terrible for intercity travel.

 

[HSTEd]

Essentially what happens on a CrossCountry service. Every time it stops passengers get on/off with luggage moving in and out of seats taking up valuable dwell-time.

On intercity services you want the lowest passenger-churn possible. E.g. a service from Manchester to London via Birmingham New Street would be incredibly difficult to manage as you can't rely on the train being filled at Piccadilly, and 50% of passengers departing at NS to be replaced by NS-Euston passengers.

Wth intercity, you want to ensure all seats are filled to maximise revenue and capacity.

But there will not be enough traffic to fill enough trains to provide reasonable frequency with only point-to-point journeys.
Especially as you can't randomly cut trains from the timetable because they aren't filled that day.

The choice is not between two perfectly filled trains and two chaotic trains, the choice is between two half full trains and one full-ish train.

There will be no traffic to fill three Manchester to London trains per hour and two Manchester-Birmingham trains per hour, all to 400m. And if the trains aren't 400m long you've just squandered capacity that could be raising revenue.

Churn is fine on a commuter/metro-style service where generally people don't have luggage, and are happy to stand. As seen in Germany and on CrossCountry, churn is terrible for intercity travel.

But the vast majority of people on a UK high speed rail service are not going to have lots of luggage.
The journey times will not permit it, even on a comparatively slow Shinkansen "stopping" service the journeys aren't going to be long enough for that.

Even with HS2's point to point model the vast majority of journeys will be well under 2 hours. Leeds and Manchester would be Norwich and Brighton. Birmingham would be Rochester!

EDIT:
Birmingham-London is about ~160-170km or so, which barely gets you from Berlin to Leipzig. It drops you short of Wolfsburg to the west. The distances on Continental Railways and the UK are fundamentally different.
Paris-Lyon is comparable to London-Newcastle. I'd argue an "intercity" styling focus is totally unsuitable to this environment.