I am not convinced by the argument that a national railway line should benefit so few people, directly, so for such money. It's always come across as a rich man's project, putting the rich onto a fast line and reducing the rest of us to the slow ones.
Imagine spending £55bn on the regions? So much more opportunity, and unless Boris does the right thing, wasted.
The predicted number of HS2 user flows is 300,000/day. Depending on how you factor that up (by using any number between 300 & 365) you get to 90-110 million a year. That's like saying we should close Waterloo as it benefits only a few people.
That's before you consider any other side benefits, such as being able to use the existing paths for other services.
Although rail travel tends to be something which is generally undertaken by those with higher incomes, if suggest that a lot of that is down to the sort of people who can afford the few thousand pounds a year for a season ticket to commute into central London from over 30 minutes away (which is done in very big numbers, so potentially skews the figures).
However HS2 will have massive economys of scale (see my previous post regards the maintenance costs of the line). As well as lower (per 100 miles) lease costs and staff costs. However on some services these will be lower overall.
As an example London/Manchester, current round trip journey time 5 hours, so to run a 3tph service with 9 coaches per train requires 135 coaches. Compare this to HS2 which would have a 3 hour round trip time with 16 coaches which is 144 coaches.
Ah yes, but 135 is less than 144, so HS2 must have higher costs. Although that is correct you've missed that I've used 9 coach sets, of the 15 units needed to run the service you would 5 to be 11 coaches long before the existing services required more coaches.
This is where the "make the existing trains 12 coaches long" argument falls down. In that to run the Manchester services as 12 coaches would require 180 coaches, so would be more expensive to run than HS2. Over a 35 years life span it could be £125 million more (assuming £100,000/ coach in lease costs, which is probably a bit out of date but used to be a fairly good accurate ballpark for the cost of an EMU coach). That's before you consider that tilting trains are more expensive that non tilting trains.
That's before you consider staff costs. Assuming £50,000/year for drivers (BTW this would need to cover all staff costs, including ongoing training, uniform, pension, employer's NI contributions, etc. as such is probably a little low) being able to reduce the numbers from 15 to 9 is £300,000 in savings straight away, even if you kept the numbers of spares for cover the same. Guards could also be reduced, although with such a long train on quite a short journey there's an argument that you may want to double up. However to do so would mean 18 compared with 15, so the extra costs wouldn't be much and there's a need for less spares as a train could still run with one of the two rostered gaurds which would probably make it a zero cost overall.
Catering staff could be removed, as the number of people needing food/drinks on an hour long journey is likely to be fairly small. However assuming they were retained then there would be no need to increase their numbers like we've done with the gaurds. This would mean a reduction in their staff costs, again from 15 to 9.
Each of these costs each year isn't a lot compared to £56bn, however combine them and consider it over a 60 year period (with staff costs being subject to inflation so they're only going to increase as you go forward) and factor up to every service and the savings still aren't large but do start to be more noticeable.
There's already, in the last 9 years, been £25bn spent on enhancements (not maintenance, new trains or HS2, it also doesn't include much for Crossrail) to the existing network. Although there are improvements, overall the capacity of the network hasn't changed by very much not when compared to what would be achieved by HS2.
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Let's assume that smart timetabling works and gives us what? 20% increase in capacity? Well Virgin say 3% growth in the last year for which there's data, that's (at best) just 6 years of extra capacity before you need to do something else.
Why do I say at best 6 years? That's because passenger growth is much higher than predicted under the HS2 business case. Which means that 3% is on a much higher than predicted base.
Look at it this way, if we take 2009 as the base year with a base flow of 100 then at the opening of Phase 1 growth should have reached 152. Phase 2a would be 156. For 2017/18 it had reached 170 (rather than the expected 125). However you apply it 3% is higher on 170 (5.1) than 156 (4.68) or 125 (3.75).
Now with a base of 100 those numbers don't appear to make much of a difference. However on the London/North West flow the base in 2009 was over 6.5 million let's do that again:
2009 - 6.5 million
2018 (actual) - 11.21 million 3% is 336,000
Phase 2a opening - 10.25 million 3% is 308,000
2018 (predicted) - 8.22 million 3% is 247,000
That's nearly 90,000 extra passengers in growth in 2018 over the predicted, or 149 extra train loads of people in extra growth to cater for. That's on top of the near 3 million (2.99 million) compared to the prediction for 2028 and near 1 million (0.96 million) of growth to date over that predicted for the opening of Phase 2a. For the latter of which it's about 1,600 extra full train loads over that predicted.
At 170 it's not quite the 181 (compared to the baseline of 100 for 2009) predicted for the opening of Phase 2b. However assuming that the 3% is fairly evenly distributed that 170 will become 175 for the 2018/19 figures and we may not be far away from passing those predictions too.
In fact another single year of 3.4% growth or two years of 1.7% growth would do it. As such it's not a fantasy to say that we could see that happen in the 2020/21 passenger numbers and we'll be above predictions a decade before HS2 phase 2b is due to open (even if I'm one year out and it's 2021/22).
That's before you consider that the opening of Phase 1 will add even more growth to the network, meaning that the current predictions are going to be smashed and it could even be that other works are needed to keep the existing network running in a form which is usable by passengers.
Unless those who are opposed to HS2 can discredit the passenger growth then Borris' review is going to be fairly one sided. It may suggest that costs are better managed, it may delay the Eastern Arm (where growth hasn't been quite so large) to bring forwards the line to Manchester (where growth has been fairly high), it could even suggest that a new line to Liverpool be added to the mix ahead of the opening of the Eastern Arm to improve service frequency to Liverpool (although this is likely to be from Birmingham or on the existing tracks South of Crewe rather than from London). What is unlikely to say is that there's not the passenger numbers to justify doing something and without a viable alternative on the table (and people's suggestions aren't going to cut it if they can't prove them and provide costs for then) I would very much doubt that HS2 would be at any great risk of total canceling, or even being cancelled to Manchester, or much more than a delay to the full extent being built.
Even if it were then it would be back on the table within an election or two (depending on how long this and the next parliament last for). Those who are fighting The War Against Trains I fear have already lost and it's just a matter of time before this is becomes obvious to everyone. Especially given the groundswell in matters environmental in the last 2 years.