Remember if the government wants a return they only need to exceed the cost of servicing the debt (plus on going maintenance and operational costs)over the life of the asset, since inflation will eventually reduce the capital cost to a fraction of what it cost. In fact if the differential between inflation (wage inflation particularly in this case) and the cost of debt is high enough, they don't really need to be able to meet the cost of debt initially, just in the long term. Also as a government doesn't need to chase excess returns to repay equity investors, their effective hurdle rate should be ridiculously low for direct returns. The government can basically rely on positive externalities in a way that no other "investor" can.
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Why are people opposed to HS2? (And other HS2 discussion)
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Grumpy Git
On Moderation
At the risk of being chastised for going off topic, does anyone think Concorde would have been more successful had it been invented (and therefore immediately accepted) by the USA?
They did do their best to stop it in its tracks commercially in the early years.
They did do their best to stop it in its tracks commercially in the early years.
TrafficEng
Member
Sorry, I should have made that clearer. I meant capacity and efficiency of the industry, not necessarily individual aircraft. The Concorde concept imagined everyone would want to travel around as fast as possible point to point. The reality turned out to be that volumes of passengers and routes required lots of aircraft (some big, some small) and people would prioritise cost (efficiency) over speed.
The A380 flopped because it has 4 engines when twinjets are in vogue, and it is just too big to be filled up other than on a small proportion of routes.
Agreed. In one of the posts by someone earlier it was suggested HS2 will achieve mode shift from car to train. But it won't directly as few people drive from the centre of Birmingham to the centre of London. HS2's mode shift capability is indirect - with no evidence the additional infrastructure required to deliver it will ever be in place.
Agreed again. Hence me raising the point yesterday about not routeing via Heathrow. The decisions is understandable from a technical point of view, but it means in effect that the ability of HS2 to achieve air->rail mode shift is going to be severely limited.
Grumpy Git
On Moderation
I agree, a station at Heathrow on the main line like Frankfurt would make a massive difference.
It would mean I could get a direct flight (from LHR) instead of using the (awful) Manchester airport to fly two leg trips via Frankfurt/Munich/Amsterdam.
It would mean I could get a direct flight (from LHR) instead of using the (awful) Manchester airport to fly two leg trips via Frankfurt/Munich/Amsterdam.
TrafficEng
Member
I don't think it is off topic. It is a model that ought to help understanding of the issue in the thread title.
The Americans didn't like Concorde and effectively killed it for use on what could have been some of its most lucrative routes. But that happened in part because the public weren't behind it (some were opposed). High-speed flight was being sold to a sceptical public. They didn't want to buy.
If the American people had seen the idea of super-fast travel as beneficial then the US Government would have had to change their approach. (obviously including the production of a home-grown alternative).
Grumpy Git
On Moderation
I remember watching its maiden flight, narrated by the great Raymond Baxter if I'm not mistaken?
This USA "special relationship" is a load of baloney. If it doesnt benefit the US, it doesn't happen!
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
Seems unlikely to me for a very practical reason: One of the problems of Concorde was that the sonic boom meant it could only realistically accelerate to full speed over the ocean. I believe that's why the only routes it ended up being used on headed West from the UK/France over the Atlantic. But the huge domestic market within the USA almost entirely involves flying over land - so I would imagine Concorde would've been almost useless for that. So, even Concorde had been developed by the US, it would've probably have been confined to similar routes to the ones it was actually used on. Maybe also San Francisco/Los Angeles to Tokyo.
Aictos
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I refer you to this:
If it was true then the police would be investigating a potential charge of corruption unless they’re not then it is libel whether you like it or not.
TrafficEng
Member
I'm not going to respond to everything in your post, but there are a few points I think worth picking up.
They haven't had an overarching plan. HS2 has been drawn on the map as the best solution to a particular set of parameters. But it isn't part of a plan.
And it should be noted that not all "rail experts" are in favour of HS2 as currently planned.
Five years ago was the 2015 General Election. Up to 2010 HS2 was a Labour scheme. 2010-2015 it was a coalition scheme.
From 2015 it became owned by the Conservative Government. If it was going to be scrapped that was when politically it could done. Five years later on it is too late.
Bolded, because that is key.
By starting with a plan.
The principles behind HS2 include there only being one north-south route. Which means the scheme has become a jack of all trades. The design speed and route is constrained by the need to make it attractive to people being diverted off MML and ECML, which means it cannot go via Heathrow.
But if you are correct in your assertion about needing another north-south line on top of HS2 then that should presumably be closer to the ECML corridor. If that happens the design constraints applied to HS2 now (to do the ECML capacity job) will become redundant.
And the kicker in this is once you've built HS2 it isn't so easy to reroute it if you later decide that going via Heathrow might be a good idea after all.
So, without that plan, without knowing that ECML capacity will be addressed by the future new line, we are stuck with a HS2 scheme that tries to do everything for an eye-watering cost.
We need a plan. And not rush into £100bn decisions until we have one.
They haven't had an overarching plan. HS2 has been drawn on the map as the best solution to a particular set of parameters. But it isn't part of a plan.
And it should be noted that not all "rail experts" are in favour of HS2 as currently planned.
Five years ago was the 2015 General Election. Up to 2010 HS2 was a Labour scheme. 2010-2015 it was a coalition scheme.
From 2015 it became owned by the Conservative Government. If it was going to be scrapped that was when politically it could done. Five years later on it is too late.
Bolded, because that is key.
By starting with a plan.
The principles behind HS2 include there only being one north-south route. Which means the scheme has become a jack of all trades. The design speed and route is constrained by the need to make it attractive to people being diverted off MML and ECML, which means it cannot go via Heathrow.
But if you are correct in your assertion about needing another north-south line on top of HS2 then that should presumably be closer to the ECML corridor. If that happens the design constraints applied to HS2 now (to do the ECML capacity job) will become redundant.
And the kicker in this is once you've built HS2 it isn't so easy to reroute it if you later decide that going via Heathrow might be a good idea after all.
So, without that plan, without knowing that ECML capacity will be addressed by the future new line, we are stuck with a HS2 scheme that tries to do everything for an eye-watering cost.
We need a plan. And not rush into £100bn decisions until we have one.
TrafficEng
Member
I think you've misunderstood the question.
TrafficEng
Member
Not really. The link is to a study on different options on how HS2 released capacity might be utilised. To quote their own words -
I'm not sure London City Airport has anything to do with HS2. I used those stats to show that only two of the top 10 routes were ones where rail provided any kind of alternative. And those two aren't really impacted until HS2/3/4/5 arrives in Edinburgh and Glasgow themselves.
They will continue to use City Airport anyway. HS2 as currently planned won't make enough of a difference to switch these predominantly business travellers from air to rail.
There is? What assumptions is it based on?
This bit is interesting (my comments in red) -
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
I'm not sure the dependency on MML and ECML in your argument works. Even if (hypothetically) there was to be another North-South route, then HS2 would still be the main route to get from London to Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, and the NorthWest. That's still an awful lot of people whose journeys would be slowed down by a Heathrow route, hence going via Heathrow would still do more harm than good (it would help a relatively small number of people at the expense of longer journeys for the vast majority). I'm pretty sure the chosen 'best' route would therefore still not go via Heathrow.
TrafficEng
Member
Can anyone actually quantify the additional journey time involved in going via Heathrow compared to the current planned route? Let's assume Heathrow becomes the alternative hub, not in addition to OOC.
How would the HS2 journey time Birmingham->Heathrow->Euston compare to the existing Birmingham->Euston via WCML?
And isn't this the issue where how we value people's time becomes a relevant factor?
Grumpy Git
On Moderation
It's the hassle of having to change and whether connections will be made.
Zurich, Brussels, Frankfurt and Amsterdam know how to organise a rail - air interchange.
London Birmingham travel is an interesting one, remember I keep harping on about 2.5% a year growth, well that's not always the case in the model.
Due to the belief that London Birmingham is a mature market growth was assumed to be 1% per year, however even that has been shown to be too low compared with what has happened.
Arguably less spawling airports than Heathrow is.
hooverboy
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schiphol is bloody huge!
How can ‘firm plans or commitments’ be made when the government is not yet committed to the project? The entire project could still be cancelled.
HS2 reduces journey times from Glasgow and Edinburgh to London by 50 minutes to around 3hrs 40 and Birmingham Interchange (comparable with Airport/International) by around 1hr 10min to around 3hrs 05. Curzon Street about 3hr 10. These times are all under the 4 hour mark. Add 10min to the time for a Heathrow loop, you’re closer to the 4hr mark for trains between London and the central belt so on a macro level passengers shift back to the plane.
Incidentally, how can you possibly state ‘those two aren’t directly impacted until HS2/3/4/5 arrives in Edinburgh and Glasgow themselves’ if you've done any research about the project at all? It is directly and significantly reducing journey times between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and London and Birmingham.
What evidence do you have for that?
de Rus, G. 2012. Economic analysis of High Speed Rail in Europe.
Page 71 onwards. And that was in a two minute google search. I’m not really sure why I need to prove the point-the mode of travel people use is dependent on a number of factors. One of these is speed (journey time). It’s really not rocket science.
I apologise I’m doing this on a phone so can’t format this nicely to respond to your points but here they are:
‘Nope too expensive’. So London Euston, Birmingham Curzon Street, Manchester Piccadilly and the proposed Leeds Station aren’t in their city centres? That’s a new one on me!
Reducing top speeds due to not decarbonising. But the national grid is decarbonising rapidly.
Freight trains? Darn, we've already bagged the spare capacity for passenger trains. Earlier in the thread you asked to ‘see a copy of the plans for how the new services will operate?’ Presumably because you haven’t seen any. So how can you then make this statement?
The proposals I linked to which you have dismissed outline various options for running more freight. If you have evidence HS2 have ‘bagged the spare capacity for passengers’ please share. But in the meantime I’ll choose to believe the experts and professionals over your opinion.
EDIT
I agree Heathrow would become the hub rather than OOC. But it would need to be a longer route which would probably be more expensive, and involve slowing down from high speed sooner on entry to London. So there’s your time penalty. You’d also probably need to improve connections from Heathrow to the west. All of that is additional cost. You haven’t been able to show or illustrate any benefits of this additional cost and time penalty in this thread so far. Other than vague statements saying that if HS2 is about reducing air travel it should go via Heathrow.
Why are you comparing travel time just to Birmingham via the WCML? What about the car or coach? What about all the other passengers from all the other stations served by HS2? How will it impact their journey times compared to all the existing modes of transport?
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Grumpy Git
On Moderation
Yes, but is has been developed to a plan with everyone ending up at the same point of entry/exit, unlike the dogs breakfast that is Heathrow.
Airside and total footprint, yes. But the terminals are all one cluster with the station in the middle.
Heathrow's problem is that it's two terminal areas (I'm ignoring T4) each some way away from each other.
Old Oak will be ~10 minutes via HEx from T2/Central (HEx takes 15 minutes from Paddington, OOC is ~5 minutes from Paddington). It's going to be very difficult to find somewhere that's significantly closer to T2 for a Heathrow HS2 stop. T5 flips from being about ~17 minutes to being about ~3 minutes if somehow a Heathrow station is added to the scheme.
This is an extremely worthwhile explanation of why a scheme like this operates from different rules than the sort of expenditure most people are familiar with.
And with a long-term asset like a railway capital cost will eventually seem trivial. When the directors of the North British Railway saw the cost of the Forth Bridge they probably choked on their sherry; after a century of use its cost seems trifling.
The issue is the journey time for passengers on the route as a whole, and costs of the putative ‘via Hetahrow’ Route, ie:
Euston - OOC - Birmingham / NW / NE / Scotland destinations as HS2 will provide, versus
Euston - LHR - Birmingham / NW / NE / Scotland destinations on a putative alternative route via LHR instead of OOC (which isn’t going to happen).
The questions are, therefore:
Would the OOC route generate more or less traffic than via LHR?
What is the additional journey time for going via LHR vs OOC?
How many passengers are affected by this journey time increase?
How many passengers would have been expected to use OOC will have extended journey times as a result of a station at LHR instead?
What are the journey time savings for passengers who wish to access LHR from HS2, and how many passengers make that saving?
How much extra does it cost to go via LHR than OOC?
I don’t have access to the detailed modelling, but as I understand it:
OOC generates far more traffic for HS2 than an LHR station would, because of the connections with the GWML, Crossrail, London Overground and traffic from the local area (with significant development about to happen).
The additional journey time is in the region of 2-3 minutes, which would be experienced by all Passengers from central London to the Midlands and North via HS2
A significant number of ‘OOC’ passengers would have signiifcantly extended journey times if LHR is used instead of OOC (in many cases, sufficiently extended to be a disincentive to travel)
The journey time saving for LHR passengers vs going to OOC and changing is about 30 minutes, but that varies depending on which airport terminal the LHR station is built under. Given that there are, and will continue to be, 3 terminal complexes, HS2 passengers for two of the terminal complexes would have to change, and the saving would thus be reduced to around 15 minutes (and effectively more given the frequency of inter- terminal transport)
Complete guess, but it would be in the region of an extra £5bn cost; need to build a tunnelled 4 platform station under the Heathrow complex, with appropriate interchange links to the terminals - that would be £4bn on its own. And it would be around 6 miles longer, all in tunnel, which would be another £1bn at least.
To summarise then; significantly lower benefit, both in financial and sociology-economic terms; net worse for passengers; significantly higher cost.
Hence it is not being done.
Whisky, surely.
Which terminal?
OOC has very frequent trains to terminal 2/3, 4 and 5.It also has frequent trains to the Thames coridor, Oxford, Swindon, and the South West. I suspect Manchester-Exeter will be faster via OOC than via cross country and Bristol, reducing crowding on on the Manchester-Birmingham-Bristol cross country trains. Certainly will be faster to Reading.
HS2 would only serve one of them (say 2/3), so if you're going to 4+5 you'd still have to change.
What would make more sense is for airlines (especially BA) to interline with HS2, with a single protected ticket from your local station to Johannesburg, if there's a delay on the train on the way in you get protections as you would if there's a delay on a flight from Manchester, if there's a delay on the way back you get to take the next train (which requires a walk-up fare otherwise)
Let's look at a notional journey from somewhere in Greater Manchester to Heathrow today and in the [future]:
Getting to Picadilly and waiting for next train, say 1hr [1hr], Pendolino to Euston passing Willesden W London Junction Jn (closest point to OOC) 1hr 58m [53m], interchange walk and wait at OOC 0 [10m], a further 6m to Euston [0], Interchange walk and wait from Euston to Euston Square, possibly in the rain, crossing two major roads, breathing traffic fumes (say)15m [0], Circle/H&C to Paddington 11m [0], interchange walk and wait at Paddington (admittedly much nicer now with hardly any diesels under the roof) 10m [0], Hex Padd to OOC 5m [0], Hex OOC to T5 16m [16], walk to check-in, 10m [10m].
Adding up the figures:
1hr + 1hr 58m + 0m + 6m + 15m + 11m + 10m + 5m + 16m + 10m. = 4hr 11m today
[1hr] + [53m] + [10m] + [0] + [0] + [0] + [0] + [0] + [16] + [10m] = [2hr 29m] future
1hr 42m saved, under two and a half hours 'door to door'... Now tell me HS2 won't be a viable and attractive way of getting to Heathrow Airport from The North!
Getting to Picadilly and waiting for next train, say 1hr [1hr], Pendolino to Euston passing Willesden W London Junction Jn (closest point to OOC) 1hr 58m [53m], interchange walk and wait at OOC 0 [10m], a further 6m to Euston [0], Interchange walk and wait from Euston to Euston Square, possibly in the rain, crossing two major roads, breathing traffic fumes (say)15m [0], Circle/H&C to Paddington 11m [0], interchange walk and wait at Paddington (admittedly much nicer now with hardly any diesels under the roof) 10m [0], Hex Padd to OOC 5m [0], Hex OOC to T5 16m [16], walk to check-in, 10m [10m].
Adding up the figures:
1hr + 1hr 58m + 0m + 6m + 15m + 11m + 10m + 5m + 16m + 10m. = 4hr 11m today
[1hr] + [53m] + [10m] + [0] + [0] + [0] + [0] + [0] + [16] + [10m] = [2hr 29m] future
1hr 42m saved, under two and a half hours 'door to door'... Now tell me HS2 won't be a viable and attractive way of getting to Heathrow Airport from The North!
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One of Concordes basic problems was a lack of range. The Atlantic was pretty much maximum, it couldn’t cross the Pacific without refuelling. LHR to Sydney required to stops for gas iirc.
thejuggler
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Apologies if it has been posted already, but this explains the £100bn cost.
https://twitter.com/RAIL/status/1222812020896141314
In simple terms if you buy a car and agree to pay for maintenance it will be cheaper than buying a car and the manufacturer picks up maintenance costs for 10-15 years.
The £100bn cost is because the current procurement method shifts maintenance costs to the contractor for 25 years. Change this and costs fall dramatically and that's where Govt have played a blinder. Leak a huge figure, change the procurement, announce a much lower figure and they look like miracle workers.
https://twitter.com/RAIL/status/1222812020896141314
In simple terms if you buy a car and agree to pay for maintenance it will be cheaper than buying a car and the manufacturer picks up maintenance costs for 10-15 years.
The £100bn cost is because the current procurement method shifts maintenance costs to the contractor for 25 years. Change this and costs fall dramatically and that's where Govt have played a blinder. Leak a huge figure, change the procurement, announce a much lower figure and they look like miracle workers.
thejuggler
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Not being able to fly over land due to the sonic boom was also a slight hinderance.
HSTEd
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Well this just makes me wonder who the hell in government thought that that was a good idea.
A government that wants to sell the line off in future? Reducing the potential liabilities would make it a lot more attractive to investors.
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