Yossarian22
Member
Fully agree with that. Japan has much of its population in a long thin strip along the south coast of Honshu, the main island. That was the focus of the Tokaido Shinkansen developments in the 1960s and there is simply nothing quite like that in terms of sheer population served over such a distance in UK or Europe. JR Central are now planning a new inland bypass, mostly in tunnel, cutting corners through the mountains to connect some of the largest settlements along this corridor. Like HS2, this will deliberately avoid highly populated areas in between, and will thus have very few intermediate station. Unlike HS2 however, the Chūō Shinkansen is planned to utilise superconducting maglev technology. Japan even has its own smaller profile 'classic compatible' trains in the form of the JR East 'Mini Shinkansen' routes over gauge changed former narrow gauge track once clear of the new build trunk lines, and sharing the track with local services, either also converted to standard gauge, or in some places sharing mixed gauge track. It is thus no longer true that the modern Shinkansen network is entirely segregated from other rail services. Mixed gauge track also takes Shinkensen services undersea through the Seikan Tunnel between the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido, shared with narrow gauge freight traffic.
So while I fully understand and get the argument that points out that by moving WCML express services onto HS2 allows more limited express services and commuter trains on the classic WCML rout my worry is what happens in 50 or 100 years time when we have this capacity argument again. Yes at them moment the UK isn’t quite comparable to Japan in population density but the WCML is running out of capacity, why not try and add as much capacity as possible by lowering HS2 speeds, giving it more stops and trying to get as many if not all intercity services off the WCML for good. Yes there will be fewer direct London to Birmingham services on HS2 overall but the capacity increase will be larger and the WCML can become a commuter/freight line. We have an opportunity to massively future proof capacity, and to counter the point about Japans population density, if you look at pictures of many Shinkansen stations in the 1960s (Yokohama for example) the population in the area is almost shockingly sparse, much of the density came later as the population grew over 50 years of operation, in this way I very much see HS2 as a billion pound stop gap.
Last edited: