Or more simply:
Section 6.11:
https://assets.publishing.service.g...velopment_of_the_HS2_Proposed_Scheme_v1.6.pdf
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Why are people opposed to HS2? (And other HS2 discussion)
- Thread starter ABB125
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Or more simply:
Section 6.11:
https://assets.publishing.service.g...velopment_of_the_HS2_Proposed_Scheme_v1.6.pdf
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R
RailUK Forums
I'd guess the same person who thought that not having electrification and having bimodal trains instead. Whilst the latter is a good idea, not at the expense of extra electrification.
TrafficEng
Member
That isn't quite what the link is saying.
According to the link, the contractor isn't paying the maintenance costs, they are expected to take the design risk for the infrastructure. That is a standard approach when letting design and build (D&B) contracts.
The design is expected to provide a minimum lifetime for certain aspects. Again, this is a standard part of construction. E.g. A retaining wall design should not allow ground movement of more than Xmm over a period of say 100 years.
In a traditional contract a designer would design a wall to that specification and a contractor would then price the construction to that design. The client has two routes of claim if the wall fails after (say) 5 years - either the designer for producing a bad design, or the contractor for faulty construction. With a D&B contract the client has a single relationship and one claim route if the wall fails.
Whatever happens the infrastructure components need to be designed and constructed to meet the required performance specification over the design life.
The only real way of saving money would be for the Government to take on the risk element by reducing the design specification - say only requiring a 50 year life for a tunnel lining rather than say 200 years. Something like that should ring alarm bells, because it would mean a greater probability of regular closures of the line in future in order to allow replacement work to be carried out.
The car analogy would be like asking the manufacturer for a 10 year corrosion warranty rather than a 5 year one (wear and tear excluded). Its not the same as asking for a full annual service plus replacement of all parts and consumables whether due to wear and tear or not.
Whether the link is an accurate representation of the contract arrangements I can't comment on.
PartyOperator
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Maybe the same person who thought giving the French and Chinese governments a 9% return on their investment was worth forcing consumers to pay twice as much as necessary for the electricity from a new nuclear power station just so they could pretend it was some kind of private enterprise.
Never mind that the government can borrow at 1% or that the biggest financial risks are due to the government itself (either political or regulatory issues). But the debt stays off the books so it’s all OK.
HSTEd
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Except you can't really meaningfully design a tunnel lining that will last 200 years.
For one thing most of the materials we use haven't really been around for that long.
So people just have to take out indemnity policies, which make some financiers huge sums of money.
It’s not maintenance costs.
It’s a 25 year post completion defect liability period, which is, frankly, extraordinary. I have heard about the requirement for zero settlement of embankments, which is ludicrous. To my knowledge it has never been achieved, anywhere in the world. Naturally the contractors have priced in considerable risk for potential rectification. But that is not maintenance costs.
Well quite. But I wasn’t trying to explain that in layman’s terms!
Purple Orange
On Moderation
Whether it is maintenance costs or not is irrelevant. The contract could be to ensure that the contractors stick balloons up every day for 25 years, but if that element of the contract comes out, the price comes down and that is all that matters when it comes to the media narrative.
keithboddey
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Someone travelling from Wolverhampton to Euston.
Compare journey time/experience now...and in 10 years time when we have spent £150 Billion on HS2.
Compare journey time/experience now...and in 10 years time when we have spent £150 Billion on HS2.
HSTEd
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£150 billion?
Are we just randomly generating numbers now?
EDIT:
Currently it normally takes ~1h49 for the direct Virgin service.
Assuming for some reason you don't want to walk New Street to Curzon Street.
We can take a leaf out of one of the other options currently and double back to Stafford.
Currently stafford takes on order of 78 minutes.
It will take 53 after HS2, so giving Network Rail's own connection time recommendations, we are looking at 25 minutes better than the current time.
Which takes us to about 1hr20.
Both significantly faster.
And thats without any attempt to rejig services to favour connections at Moor Street etc.
We could run trains to Wolverhampton from Moor Street via Bescot Stadium.
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Esker-pades
Established Member
HS2 is primarily about extra capacity, not journey time (that's just a bonus).
Copy, paste, repeat.
Glenn1969
Established Member
I admit I wish they would start building at both ends at once so that Manchester , Leeds et al get their capacity issues sorted without me having to wait until I'm 65 for them
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
Probably about 5-10 mins slower if that person wants to use the hourly direct train - which is likely to stop at a few more places en route. Or - depending on connections and that person's walking speed - about 10-15 minutes faster than today if that person changes to HS2 at Birmingham.
Can I ask what the purpose of your question was? And possibly anticipate your answer by pointing out that HS2 will totally transform millions of journeys for the better. But any change of timetable almost inevitably causes a few journeys to lose out. And you appear to have picked out one of the small number of journey combinations that is geographically near HS2, but which won't be particularly helped by HS2. (There are lots of other destinations for which people starting at Wolverhampton stand to benefit significantly from HS2, but you didn't ask about those
).
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I wish there was a like or thumbs up option for acknowledging someone’s post on this board. I guess this is it Bald Rick!
TrafficEng
Member
Isn't that led in part by the 400kph design speed and decision to go with slab track? With conventional track adjustments can be made to deal with any settlement or hogging. Slab would presumably be less tolerant of movement below, and would provide less scope for adjustment of the track to maintain line and level if the embankment starts moving.
Yes, it is getting tedious now, having to constantly repeat that HS2 is not about speed !
Listening to "Any questions" on Radio Four on Friday evening there were still politicians blabbing on about its a scandalous amount of money to save 20 mins to Brum and of course the gullible public swallow it all.
Some one really has to kill these facile arguments. Even if we were to spend every penny of 100 billion patching up the existing network (which would probably achieve remarkably little) when these extra trains got to New St, Picalliy, Euston where would they go ? There`s no platform space. How much to add a few platforms at New St with extra lines in at both ends ? Untold billions
20 minutes is based on the assumption that everyone would be inconvenienced by having to get back to New Street from Curzon Street and so the journey time improver is "cut" from 37 minutes to 20 minutes.
However for some the point that they are getting to within Birmingham would be closer at Curzon Street, especially those wishing to use services out of Moor Street.
There's also going to be some places which are slightly closer to New Street than would be the case for Curzon Street, however the walk time savings could be measured as less than a few minutes as they are (say) up to 500m closer.
Whilst there will be places which do take longer to get to from Curzon Street they are unlikely to be where the vast majority of people are going to.
However even if it was to be the case then that's still 20 minutes faster for London travel, 30 minutes (45 minutes less time on the train) faster for Manchester travel and 45
minutes (60 minutes less time on the train) faster for Leeds travel.
Anyway, I come back to the same point. What does the alternative look like? It's something which would need to double the number of existing 390 run services to provide a similar number of seats.
As a 9 coach and an 11 coach 390 have a combined total number of seats of 1,048 which is broadly comparable to the expected 1,100 seats on a HS2 train. Therefore lengthening everything to, say, a 12 coach 444 type train wouldn't be enough, as that would be about 800 seats. That would mean in addition you'd need to find an extra path for a fourth Manchester train as well as for the Birmingham services to provide the same intercity capacity. Good luck with that along the Castlefield corridor.
The problem is that still doesn't provide any extra capacity for local travel, which HS2 does. If anything the local travel is likely to suffer to provide that extra capacity, unless you look at providing a more metro style seating arrangement on the intercity trains.
It's the above which is why the chancellor has said that there's no viable alternative and supports HS2.
With rail growth out performing the predictions used to justify HS2 then clearly there's a need for something.
If we take 2009 as the baseline and we set that with passenger numbers of 100.
HS2 predictions (2.5% growth per year) were:
152 for the opening of Phase 1
200 for the opening of Phase 2
By 2018 (which to be on target should have been 125) it was:
170 for phase 1 routes
149 for all routes
We've still got 8 years of growth before phase 1 opens, we could (with growth of just 2.1% per year) see passenger numbers reach phase 2 opening levels by 2026 on the phase 1 services.
Even if we assume that loadings were an average of 40% in 2009 (typical for long distance services) then by 2018 that would be 68% and by 2026 80%. However that's average so there's likely to be many services which are busier than this.
Even on those 12 coach 444 route trains with their 800 seats that's 47% full.
However if rail growth continues at 3% (which is still lower than current rail growth rates) then that rises to 52% full in 2026.
Using the trail growth rate for the growth seen between 2009 and 2018 that would be 64% full.
That's not that far off the 75% full when rail travel starts to cause things to be uncomfortable (hard to find seats), however again that an average so some services would be rammed whilst others would be still fairly quiet.
If we lengthened the time period to 15 years from now (the sort of timeframe to develop and build an alternative scheme from scratch, those 800 seater trains could be, with 4% growth (so again more growth than HS2 assumes but still less than the average), 72% full as an average.
As such rail growth is indicating that something is needed, and something more than just a few extra coaches and a few extra trains.
keithboddey
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Are you really suggesting that the latest budget estimate will be achieved ten years hence?
Also ask 100 people if by not using the direct service..and instead walk with luggage and catch another train ,they could save 20 minutes.
98 of them would take the direct train.
You are all making the case that rail passenger growth will need to be catered for.
You could make the same case for 6 lane motorways....the demand is there....think of the time saving.
In a decade's time, when phase 1 will be open, Wolverhampton trains would stop at either Rugby or Watford as well as MK, Coventry, International, New Street and Sandwell & Dudley and so slightly slower. However there'd be two of them each hour (according to every official body proposal for post-HS2 service pattern on the WCML: from Midlands Connect, Network Rail, the DfT and TfWM), and the ability to change at New Street or International onto HS2 at Curzon Street or Interchange and save some time would be there (ditto heading north to Stafford and then south - which would be the fastest way, but slightly counter-intuitive and less frequent).
As an added bonus, you will have fewer Brummies on your train
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
Yep. And of course the additional stops will be far better for anyone who actually wants to go to places like Rugby or Watford, or to connect to other services at those places. Being able to use HS2 will also make journeys from Wolverhampton massively faster for people who want to go from Wolverhampton to West London or Heathrow - anywhere that can be reached easily from OOC. And as you allude to, trains between Wolverhampton and Birmingham will be far less crowded since most people heading North from Birmingham will have swapped to HS2 (I bet far, far, more people at Wolverhampton travel every day to Birmingham than travel to London). All very significant benefits that Wolverhampton will feel from HS2. Yet for some reason @keithboddey didn't mention those - he talked only about the one destination that won't see such significant benefit from HS2 from Wolverhampton.
Didn't realise all the plans involved 2tph London-Wolverhampton btw. That's interesting.
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DynamicSpirit
Established Member
It would be harder to make that case for motorways because motorway mileage only increased by 10.9% in the ten years to 2018 (link) - a lot less than rail traffic increased. Also, as I'm sure you're aware, motorways carry a far, far, bigger environmental footprint (take far more land and generate far more pollution) per passenger mile than would HS2. And of course there's the long recognised need to get people to transfer from cars to trains, which would be helped by HS2, whereas motorway capacity investment has the opposite effect. Plus investing in motorways carries the huge cost of generating more traffic in towns (because that traffic has to go somewhere when it leaves the motorway). HS2 will have a similar impact of generating more local journeys - a large proportion by rail - to the HS2 stations, but that's a problem that can be dealt with with far less environmental impact.
May be something in that. But the Germans didn’t specify it for their lines on slab.
WCML south of Rugby cannot operate any more trains so if passenger growth continues many people won't be able to board the trains.
It's capacity......
Faster options for the typical day traveller with a small bag
More seats for the typical leisure traveller with large bags/families
Less delay on the Wolverhampton-Coventry stretch
More trains each hour (so reducing the walkup time)
More seats per hour
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
Why would HS2 lead to fewer delays on that stretch?
The timetable will be structured better between Birmingham and Coventry.
Currently it has to fit West Coast services on a 20 minute pattern, LNWR services around that with a ‘best fit’ stopping pattern and then hourly XC and TfW services where they can.
In future, I guess (and it is a guess), that the WC services will go half hourly, XC will also go half hourly, and the LNWR services will fit better.
Perhaps they mean more frequent limited stop service so average wait time reduced hence effective journey time reduced.
London Trains
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Avanti would run services every 30m instead of currently every 20m which messes with the cycle of LNWR and XC timetables. This would enable the route to be run with a clock face timetable consisting of 2tph Avanti, 2tph XC (Current via Solihull service will go via Coventry) and presumably 4tph LNWR with standard stopping patterns compared to todays irregular ones. So roughly every 15m there would be an intercity train followed by a local train instead of the mess of having 3tph Avanti services with equal 20m spaces, and then fitting 1tph XC and 4tph LNWR around them.
Slotting 4 stopping services in on the route with roughly 15m gaps would be even more difficult than with the 20m gaps in the current timetable.
London Trains
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Not really, because currently in those 20m gaps currently one of them has an XC service and another a TfW service anyway, so 2 of those gaps are already much smaller than 20m anyway.
Also it will create a much better clockface timetable to stations between Coventry and Birmingham instead of the randomness of current services.
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