Greengauge 21: Beyond HS2

[HSTEd]

I looked at EDI - LON (all) next Tuesday, and that's 45 flights, albeit spread around LHR, LGW, LCY, STN and LTN.

If you were to combine the HSR with a higher APD for routes that had an HSR alternative, then the modal shift could be quite high. Ideally, the only reason to fly to London would be to hub out somewhere else (and even that could've been dealt with an HS2 spur to LHR). (https://www.skyscanner.net/transpor...lse&inboundaltsenabled=false&ref=home#results)

There seem to be multiple flights leaving the same airport for the same destination at the same time in that list, so I think some of them are codeshares.

Fair, but this one is on broader grounds than BCR alone. When will WCML north of Carlisle be full?

Well improvements to the Northern ECML or a HS extension to Newcastle will allow ECML capacity to be used too.

Ah, tyvm. So in the KGX - Cambs - Peterborough - ECML destinations where does the HSR stop? Peterborough?
All the best.

Well first phase could end at Peterborough but I would expect the route to extend all thew ay to HS2E eventually.

 

[NotATrainspott]

London-Toton would have to be a single big project on the same scale as HS2 Phase 1. You'd need to build the whole thing to get any real benefit from it. The most expensive section would be Zone 1 to end-of-NIMBY-land but without the link from end-of-NIMBY-land to the Phase 2 East line, you're not going to have any Toton/Sheffield/Leeds/York trains using it.

The thing about Lancashire to Scotland is that it can be built much more piecemeal, and indeed it almost certainly would be. There's not a huge amount of point in building a huge great Phase 3 from Wigan to the Border if trains will still be stuck behind ScotRail EMUs as they approach Glasgow or Edinburgh. Building the line southwards from Edinburgh and Glasgow would do a lot more good a lot more quickly than northwards from Wigan.

 

[HSTEd]

Problem is the northern half of such a route is even more lightly loaded than the southern half.
At least the southern half has traffic from Preston and the like.

Perhaps you would have to build to Toton in the first phase, but there are certainly opportunities for second phases such as an alignment from Cambridge to Ipswich or similar if required.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Problem is the northern half of such a route is even more lightly loaded than the southern half.
At least the southern half has traffic from Preston and the like.

Perhaps you would have to build to Toton in the first phase, but there are certainly opportunities for second phases such as an alignment from Cambridge to Ipswich or similar if required.

I don't think the current loadings are that important here.

The current plan is for Preston to be served by trains which have come off the 400km/h mainline just south of Wigan. The run along the WCML from Wigan to Preston isn't slow, and there's a strong likelihood that it'll be re-quadrupled to enable more speed and capacity. For loadings from Preston any journey time saving from more dedicated track north of Wigan would be fairly irrelevant, as everyone who could have ever switched to rail has already likely done so. The only extra passengers would come from that great body of people who will only make a journey at all if they can get to London in 1 hour rather than 1 hour 10 minutes.

For Anglo-Scottish passengers it doesn't actually matter where the section of new track is, so long as it delivers the journey time benefit. The same end-to-end journey time saving could be delivered by extending the 400km/h section up to Lune Gorge or by building a new line inside Scotland. The only people who would notice a difference between the options are the small number of people heading to or from Carlisle and the Borders region. Therefore the real metric is journey time saving (and wider network benefit) per amount of money spent. It is very likely that the best bang-for-buck comes from building in and around Glasgow and Edinburgh, as you can not only speed up journey times but also significantly increase reliability and allow extra high speed and local services to run. A tunnel and new line from Waverley to Midcalder Junction would be very short compared to new line sections south of Carstairs but would lead to dramatic improvements for the Scottish rail network.

 

[HSTEd]

I don't think the current loadings are that important here.

The current plan is for Preston to be served by trains which have come off the 400km/h mainline just south of Wigan. The run along the WCML from Wigan to Preston isn't slow, and there's a strong likelihood that it'll be re-quadrupled to enable more speed and capacity. For loadings from Preston any journey time saving from more dedicated track north of Wigan would be fairly irrelevant, as everyone who could have ever switched to rail has already likely done so. The only extra passengers would come from that great body of people who will only make a journey at all if they can get to London in 1 hour rather than 1 hour 10 minutes.

But saving time for already existing passengers is still a substantial benefit.
And the line south of Preston is where the passenger flows currently are.

For Anglo-Scottish passengers it doesn't actually matter where the section of new track is, so long as it delivers the journey time benefit. The same end-to-end journey time saving could be delivered by extending the 400km/h section up to Lune Gorge or by building a new line inside Scotland. The only people who would notice a difference between the options are the small number of people heading to or from Carlisle and the Borders region. Therefore the real metric is journey time saving (and wider network benefit) per amount of money spent. It is very likely that the best bang-for-buck comes from building in and around Glasgow and Edinburgh, as you can not only speed up journey times but also significantly increase reliability and allow extra high speed and local services to run. A tunnel and new line from Waverley to Midcalder Junction would be very short compared to new line sections south of Carstairs but would lead to dramatic improvements for the Scottish rail network.

Leaving aside that building hgih speed track in Scotland is politically much more difficult because it will have to involve the devolved government, which will lead to all sorts of issues, I still think that whilst the benefits to Scottish passengers per km of track built are lower if the line is built in England, there are still considerably more passengers there than there are north of Carlisle so I think the total benefits will be larger.

And whilst the line north of Wigan isn't 'slow' in ordinary railway terms, it is a crawl compared to HS2, and given that it is largely full anyway I am not sure quadroupling and a new line further north is going to beat out just bypassing the entire section - which saves the cost of quadroupling - and the less done to the conventional line the better for budgetary control.

 

[edwin_m]

London-Toton would have to be a single big project on the same scale as HS2 Phase 1. You'd need to build the whole thing to get any real benefit from it. The most expensive section would be Zone 1 to end-of-NIMBY-land but without the link from end-of-NIMBY-land to the Phase 2 East line, you're not going to have any Toton/Sheffield/Leeds/York trains using it.

A phased approach could start with Stansted or Cambridge to Peterborough to provide a better route between the north and East Anglia via the ECML. Extension into London would be an alternative to WAML four-tracking and would allow high speed regional services as per HS1 to serve Kings Lynn and Norwich. At that point a link to the ECML near Peterborough would provide quicker journeys to the north-east than via Birmingham Interchange, thus achieving capacity relief on that route. The section from Peterborough to Toton might then never be needed but if it was it would shorten the London to North East journey significantly.

For Anglo-Scottish passengers it doesn't actually matter where the section of new track is, so long as it delivers the journey time benefit. The same end-to-end journey time saving could be delivered by extending the 400km/h section up to Lune Gorge or by building a new line inside Scotland. The only people who would notice a difference between the options are the small number of people heading to or from Carlisle and the Borders region. Therefore the real metric is journey time saving (and wider network benefit) per amount of money spent. It is very likely that the best bang-for-buck comes from building in and around Glasgow and Edinburgh, as you can not only speed up journey times but also significantly increase reliability and allow extra high speed and local services to run. A tunnel and new line from Waverley to Midcalder Junction would be very short compared to new line sections south of Carstairs but would lead to dramatic improvements for the Scottish rail network.

If you take a pure bang per buck approach the best value sections are those that avoid slow parts of the existing route but can also be built relatively cheaply in flattish and undeveloped areas. Parts of the Glasgow and Edinburgh legs would satisfy these criteria but they have the disadvantage that each mile of track built only reduces journey time from the south to one of the cities. So the "bang" is only half as much as it is south of where the route splits (Carstairs or a replacement somewhere nearby). Edinburgh-Glasgow services would have to supply a lot of benefit for these sections to get near the top of the list.

An eastern HS route to Toton would interestingly provide enough speed and capacity to become the preferred route for London-Edinburgh, though possibly not London-Glasgow.

 

[gsnedders]

I looked at EDI - LON (all) next Tuesday, and that's 45 flights, albeit spread around LHR, LGW, LCY, STN and LTN. If you were to combine the HSR with a higher APD for routes that had an HSR alternative, then the modal shift could be quite high. Ideally, the only reason to fly to London would be to hub out somewhere else (and even that could've been dealt with an HS2 spur to LHR). (https://www.skyscanner.net/transpor...lse&inboundaltsenabled=false&ref=home#results)

As someone who flies GLA to LHR as a hub relatively often, I'd be unlikely to transfer to HSR. It's unlikely to be as quick (while there's the additional check-in time at GLA, it's a comparatively small airport, and you literally couldn't do an hour connection time at LHR onto long-haul from HSR because bag drop would've closed when the train arrives before you got there), you'd have to convince airlines to offer through ticketing so connections were guaranteed, and it's nice not having to deal with my luggage at Heathrow (especially given a HSR station would be unlikely to serve all three (future) terminals).

 

[The Ham]

As someone who flies GLA to LHR as a hub relatively often, I'd be unlikely to transfer to HSR. It's unlikely to be as quick (while there's the additional check-in time at GLA, it's a comparatively small airport, and you literally couldn't do an hour connection time at LHR onto long-haul from HSR because bag drop would've closed when the train arrives before you got there), you'd have to convince airlines to offer through ticketing so connections were guaranteed, and it's nice not having to deal with my luggage at Heathrow (especially given a HSR station would be unlikely to serve all three (future) terminals).

I think that it could be possible to improve things, however only if the airlines were onside. That would probably require such a significant modal shift that there were few people wanting to use the connecting flights.

For instance, they already have to process your luggage without it going to the standard luggage pick ups, as such it could be possible to arrange for your stuff to be transferred to your HSR service with you "collecting" it as you board the train but with a member of staff loading for you as an optional extra.

Given that there's probably something like a dozen people an hour, that's probably achievable to do.

It would probably need to head to OOC separately to you, but given that you have to clear immigration and customs whilst you're luggage doesn't (although it could need to have checks done to it to limit it being a useful smuggling route, or you would have to talk to a customs officer as part of the pick up process at the train station) chances are it could get there ahead of you.

 

[edwin_m]

I think it's unlikely HS rail could ever supplant interlining at Heathrow. Even with new infastructure all the way and a dedicated Scotland-Heathrow train (neither likely to happen) a 2hr train plus a 1hr check-in can't compete with a 1hr check-in plus a <1hr flight. Experience on the Continent suggests that a 3hr journey time would capture the majority of the domestic air market though, and with increased security in recent years that figure may have crept up a bit. The latest HS2 forecast is 3hr45min.

 

[snowball]

And whilst the line north of Wigan isn't 'slow' in ordinary railway terms, it is a crawl compared to HS2, and given that it is largely full anyway I am not sure quadroupling and a new line further north is going to beat out just bypassing the entire section - which saves the cost of quadroupling - and the less done to the conventional line the better for budgetary control.

But would incur the cost of long tunnels past the Lake District and through parts of the Southern Uplands.

 

[HSTEd]

But would incur the cost of long tunnels past the Lake District and through parts of the Southern Uplands.

The route all the way to the likely points for an Edinburgh/Glasgow split is pretty mountainous though.

 

[gsnedders]

I think that it could be possible to improve things, however only if the airlines were onside. That would probably require such a significant modal shift that there were few people wanting to use the connecting flights.

For instance, they already have to process your luggage without it going to the standard luggage pick ups, as such it could be possible to arrange for your stuff to be transferred to your HSR service with you "collecting" it as you board the train but with a member of staff loading for you as an optional extra.

Given that there's probably something like a dozen people an hour, that's probably achievable to do.

It would probably need to head to OOC separately to you, but given that you have to clear immigration and customs whilst you're luggage doesn't (although it could need to have checks done to it to limit it being a useful smuggling route, or you would have to talk to a customs officer as part of the pick up process at the train station) chances are it could get there ahead of you.

I agree it's not insurmountable, but it's certainly not easy. Is there anywhere else where airline to HSR interlining is frequently done for journeys this long?

As for numbers, the majority of domestic passengers at Heathrow are connecting, so it's more than a few dozen in total. It's also nowhere near evenly distributed across the day IME.

I think it's unlikely HS rail could ever supplant interlining at Heathrow. Even with new infastructure all the way and a dedicated Scotland-Heathrow train (neither likely to happen) a 2hr train plus a 1hr check-in can't compete with a 1hr check-in plus a <1hr flight. Experience on the Continent suggests that a 3hr journey time would capture the majority of the domestic air market though, and with increased security in recent years that figure may have crept up a bit. The latest HS2 forecast is 3hr45min.

So, from where I live in Glasgow, connecting on to a long-haul flight from T5:

0:15 - taxi to airport
1:30 - at Glasgow airport (and this is pretty generous! especially in the mornings I often have a sit-down meal at Spoons in that, though it provides a decent margin in case of extreme traffic to the airport)
1:30 - GLA-LHR
1:00 - MCT onto connecting flight

Total: 4:15.

Compared with by train, assuming a hypothetical 2hr train:

0:15 - taxi to Central (depending on how much luggage I have, I might actually get a suburban train there, but that's end-to-end slower, so let's keep it fair versus the plane)
0:30 - at Central (note the minimum connection time is 0:15, so this is arguably generous)
2:00 - Central to Heathrow Airport Station
0:15 - Heathrow Airport Station to T5 (I think this is roughly right for the current T2&3 station?)
1:30 - at LHR before boarding (note the 1:00 cut-off for luggage check-in for long-haul, so we can't safely reduce this without ending up with little slack)

Total: 4:30. OK, so if we cut it down to 15 minutes at Central then we're even.

Onto a long-haul flight, even a two hour journey from Central to Heathrow is only matching the time of flying from GLA.

 

[The Ham]

I agree it's not insurmountable, but it's certainly not easy. Is there anywhere else where airline to HSR interlining is frequently done for journeys this long?

As for numbers, the majority of domestic passengers at Heathrow are connecting, so it's more than a few dozen in total. It's also nowhere near evenly distributed across the day IME.

Two factors, firstly I had assumed that there would be a need to connect from Heathrow to OOC, without that connection it would make it easier still.

Secondly I was assuming that you probably wouldn't be able to replace every connecting flight. As there'll always be those willing to fly even if there's a comparable option by using trains. As such the busiest connecting flights would probably continue to exist, even to the likes of Manchester.

Given the range of flights, chances are the numbers per flight is fairly small and so, depending on frequency of rail services (probably not so that relevant to Scottish connections) the numbers per train could be fairly small.

So, from where I live in Glasgow, connecting on to a long-haul flight from T5:

0:15 - taxi to airport
1:30 - at Glasgow airport (and this is pretty generous! especially in the mornings I often have a sit-down meal at Spoons in that, though it provides a decent margin in case of extreme traffic to the airport)
1:30 - GLA-LHR
1:00 - MCT onto connecting flight

Total: 4:15.

Compared with by train, assuming a hypothetical 2hr train:

0:15 - taxi to Central (depending on how much luggage I have, I might actually get a suburban train there, but that's end-to-end slower, so let's keep it fair versus the plane)
0:30 - at Central (note the minimum connection time is 0:15, so this is arguably generous)
2:00 - Central to Heathrow Airport Station
0:15 - Heathrow Airport Station to T5 (I think this is roughly right for the current T2&3 station?)
1:30 - at LHR before boarding (note the 1:00 cut-off for luggage check-in for long-haul, so we can't safely reduce this without ending up with little slack)

Total: 4:30. OK, so if we cut it down to 15 minutes at Central then we're even.

Onto a long-haul flight, even a two hour journey from Central to Heathrow is only matching the time of flying from GLA.

In which case it comes down to other factors; the first being costs, the second being frequentcy of services, with others also probably playing a part.

For instance, if there's one long haul flight to where you are going a day and it connects poorly with flights whilst there's better connections with rail then you could be looking at some more noticeable time difference.

However as stated above you're unlikely to ever get rid of all connecting flights for various reasons, even if rail was a better option.

 

[Bald Rick]

There aren't actually a substantial number of flights to the central belt from those airports though, I make it 9 to Edinburgh and 6 to Glasgow tomorrow (from Heathrow).
Even if you ran hourly trains to each destination you are still going to swamp the market and your benefit-cost ratio is going to be terrible.

That’s because you looked up a Saturday in summer. Which is when much of the UK based short haul fleet is shipping people out to Europe, rather than between London and Scotland. Also the London - Scotland market is typically business and weekend trips away, and definitely not
Saturdays.

Typical daily flights (not Saturdays) are 30 each way London - Glasgow, and 45 each way London - Edinburgh (rising to 50+ in August when the festival is on). That’s around 10,000 trips a day each way, more than enough to sustain a half hourly non-stop high speed rail service.

 

[HSTEd]

That’s because you looked up a Saturday in summer. Which is when much of the UK based short haul fleet is shipping people out to Europe, rather than between London and Scotland. Also the London - Scotland market is typically business and weekend trips away, and definitely not
Saturdays.

Typical daily flights (not Saturdays) are 30 each way London - Glasgow, and 45 each way London - Edinburgh (rising to 50+ in August when the festival is on). That’s around 10,000 trips a day each way, more than enough to sustain a half hourly non-stop high speed rail service.

Half hourly is not going to build a business case however.
1300 seat long captive formation is the kind of train we are talking about.

You are going to need a lot more than ten thousand trips a day each way, and you will not get the inter-lining passengers anyway.

You will move an order of magnitude more passengers per track kilometre, if not more, with the West Anglia route.

 

[The Ham]

Half hourly is not going to build a business case however.
1300 seat long captive formation is the kind of train we are talking about.

You are going to need a lot more than ten thousand trips a day each way, and you will not get the inter-lining passengers anyway.

You will move an order of magnitude more passengers per track kilometre, if not more, with the West Anglia route.

10,000 will certainly not be enough of a business case for the whole route, it also wouldn't be enough for any segment of the route. However that's not the only flow that would be being considered to make a 2 hour London (or Heathrow)/Southern Scotland service viable.

For instance once there's enough demand to justify a new line London-Newcastle via Cambridge and Leeds (with the latter to allow connections to the existing HS2 route) then it's likely that there would shortly after be demand for further improvements.

For instance there's likely to stay to be capacity constraints heading north of Newcastle and/or south of Edinburgh/Glasgow meaning that an extra line could be viable. Likewise these going to be more demand for a direct link from Heathrow.

With there being less branches from this Eastern HS line (and the reduction in the to Leeds flows from the southern end of HS2) 1tph running fast Heathrow to Newcastle where it splits to serve Edinburgh and Glasgow would be a fairly basic service.

In fact I would suggest that such a service could, with a suitable HS line heading south, originate from somewhere else (Southampton or Portsmouth could be good candidates). As there would likely be demand for a London facing and Northern facing link from Heathrow. As such Southampton/Portsmouth to London HS services via Heathrow could be another service opportunity.

Although slightly off topic, a through HS service from Southampton/Portsmouth calling at Reading, Heathrow and Newcastle to Edinburgh/Glasgow would likely be justifiable even without the need for Heathrow passengers connecting from flights to Scotland.

A second service an hour from Heathrow to Scotland calling at Cambridge and a few others stations, probably wouldn't be much slower (say 2 hours 15, assuming 2 hours for the fast service).

Once you have that level of service there's probably going to be a significant number of people who will opt to use the HS services over flying. As such it is likely that the number of flights from Scotland could well reduce as demand (for non connecting travel) reduces. This in turn would reduce the number of flights, which would make connections to long haul flights less attractive, making it more likely that the numbers of people going to Heathrow by flying from Scotland would reduce further.

Once you've got a good network of HS lines the number of regional flights would drop, as such those airports would look to replace their income and the obvious result would be to have more longer distance routes, which could then result in fewer people needing to connect to flights at Heathrow.

 

[edwin_m]

It would be very difficult to connect an eastern HS link for through running to Heathrow.

 

[Bald Rick]

I’m not particularly advocating such a service, merely pointing out that there are a lot of flights from London to the central belt.

Also worth pointing out that there are about 3-5000 people doing the journey by train, and a surprising number who drive (including me, as it was quicker than the alternatives) who would swap to a quicker rail service.

Taken together there’s an opportunity of around £1billion revenue a year, just for London to Scotland. That’s before induced growth.

But an HSL to Cambridge and Peterborough won’t happen, at least not this side of 2050.

 

[po8crg]

As someone who flies GLA to LHR as a hub relatively often, I'd be unlikely to transfer to HSR. It's unlikely to be as quick (while there's the additional check-in time at GLA, it's a comparatively small airport, and you literally couldn't do an hour connection time at LHR onto long-haul from HSR because bag drop would've closed when the train arrives before you got there), you'd have to convince airlines to offer through ticketing so connections were guaranteed, and it's nice not having to deal with my luggage at Heathrow (especially given a HSR station would be unlikely to serve all three (future) terminals).

Manchester-London on WCML is about the same as Glasgow-London on HSR would be with HSR all the way, so it's a reasonably fair comparison.

The only flights to London now are those to Heathrow for transfers onto long-haul flights. There used to be flights to LGW, LCY and STN at least - not sure if there ever was a flight to Luton.

I'm told that the vast majority of people on the Manchester-London flight (once known as the shuttle) are transfers onto long-haul from Heathrow, and most of the rest are people going to the Thames Valley. There is almost no Manchester destination traffic, and very little London destination traffic going to London proper (as opposed to TV). The only people I personally know to have caught that flight recently were either getting transfers from Heathrow or were heading for Microsoft in Reading.

I'd expect something similar for Glasgow and Edinburgh - retain flights to Heathrow for transfers, but lose flights to the other London airports, because if you want to go to London itself, then the train is preferable.

The only way to do train-to-plane is the way that Air France/SNCF do it at Charles de Gaulle ("TGV AIR"), where you can check-in at your departure station and the transfer/security at the airport are prioritised if the train is late (so you don't have to comply with a one-hour bag drop rule if the train is late: as long as you can physically get from platform to skybridge before takeoff, you can board your flight - if you miss your flight, then it's like if you miss it because a transfer is late, ie you get the next flight). This was invented so they could get rid of Lyon-Paris flights and release the slots for other uses, but I doubt that the UK airlines and rail will co-operate closely enough to do this, even if they're both Virgin-branded.

 

[4-SUB 4732]

Jim Steer's thinktank Greengauge 21 has published its latest thoughts on what to do with HS2 and what to do next, article release can be found here.

It's quite a large document, so I haven't done much more than skim. Take home points, as per the press release:



Main points, as I see them [beyond the expected/reasonably expected enhancements]: a link from the eastern spur of HS2 to Birmingham-Derby line would allow cross country to utilise the NE spur (via New Street). The lack of this connection is something that's been bugging me for some time, so is sensible.

The other heavily pushed suggestion is a short HS line from Stratford to Stansted and Colchester and Cambridge, promising very short journey times (as well as allowing direct Cambridge-Colchester services and beyond). Whilst this would have WAML relieving benefits, I can't quite say I'm sold on the idea from any sensible basis (though I personally wouldn't complain about a Cambridge - London high speed line...).

Interesting to hear what he says.

Can't fault that we need to not just build HS2 with classic links and expect everything to be fine - we need to have everything built, perfect and ready across the entire rest of the network before the day that HS2 comes on line...

 

[HSTEd]

How about a line at 230kph using very high capacity double deck trains (2+3 double deck, like a Regio 2N or TWINDEXX Express) with 1750 seats or more per formation.

Could run along the south coast from Weymouth to Brighton, then run through the Airport, then to a station in the centre of London.

It would relieve intermediate and long distance services on multiple lines and would be able to run from a Fenchurch street style terminus as it would run a single stopping pattern as it would still easily be able to beat the existing routes on travel time.

EDIT:

Indeed you could probably run it out of the Waterloo International terminus after Crossrail 2 frees up some platforms there.
5 400m platforms already available!

 

[The Ham]

How about a line at 230kph using very high capacity double deck trains (2+3 double deck, like a Regio 2N or TWINDEXX Express) with 1750 seats or more per formation.

Could run along the south coast from Weymouth to Brighton, then run through the Airport, then to a station in the centre of London.

It would relieve intermediate and long distance services on multiple lines and would be able to run from a Fenchurch street style terminus as it would run a single stopping pattern as it would still easily be able to beat the existing routes on travel time.

I would suggest that the new line starts from the Dorchester stations. As that would significantly reduce the construction costs associated with trying to get to the centre of Weymouth. I would then build, with some of the savings, a metro service centred around the new station so as to provide a frequent service to Weymouth and to the other parts of Dorchester so as to not allow things down much but to make it attractive to a wider area.

Likewise the next stops could be Wareham and Ringwood - with a new line to connect Ringwood with Bournemouth to enable a shuttle service to run between Wareham and Ringwood via Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch to allow people to connect to the fast services without showing down the fast services overly much and saving on construction costs.

Then a cut a cover tunnel through the New Forest before heading deeper down to pass under Southampton for the next stop.

Then it would turn and be a submerged tunnel forming a shallow near to the coast until just after the River Gamble before coming back up to the surface before tunneling under Portsmouth Harbour for the next stop.

The tunnel would continue under Portsmouth before becoming a submerged tunnel across to Brackelsham Bay where it would then go overland to stop at Chichester Parkway.

Then back to the coast for a submerged tunnel between Bogner and Littlehampton before tunneling under Brighton (for the next stop) and heading north to Gatwick and London.

 

[Tobbes]

The other way you drive modal shift from air to HSR is tax, specifically Air Passenger Duty (APD). If you were to create a rule that said for any city pair in the UK with a rail alternative of <2h 30, APD was £500 each way, you'd soon see modal shift and the airlines deciding to get the interlining sorted out.

(BTW, wasn't there a DB/Lufthansa interlining service at Frankfurt with ET403s a while back?)

 

[gsnedders]

(BTW, wasn't there a DB/Lufthansa interlining service at Frankfurt with ET403s a while back?)

More than that; from 1982 they weren't listed as DB services, but as Lufthansa services, valid with air tickets only.

 

[swt_passenger]

Indeed you could probably run it out of the Waterloo International terminus after Crossrail 2 frees up some platforms there.
5 400m platforms already available!

They’ve been shortened already to about 240m allow the approach S&C to be remodelled for higher frequency suburban services. (As you possibly knew.)

 

[Bald Rick]

The other way you drive modal shift from air to HSR is tax, specifically Air Passenger Duty (APD). If you were to create a rule that said for any city pair in the UK with a rail alternative of <2h 30, APD was £500 each way, you'd soon see modal shift and the airlines deciding to get the interlining sorted out.

(BTW, wasn't there a DB/Lufthansa interlining service at Frankfurt with ET403s a while back?)

That would essentially be Manchester or Leeds to London. APD, new security arrangements and better rail services (and air connections abroad) have already seen off all but the most dedicated air passengers on these routes. For example an average of 220 people a day fly each way between Leeds and London. On the Manchester route it’s about a thousand. Two decent train loads between them. Hardly worth bothering about.

 

[HSTEd]

They’ve been shortened already to about 240m allow the approach S&C to be remodelled for higher frequency suburban services. (As you possibly knew.)

I suspected something like that had been done, bit of a pity but oh well.

 

[swt_passenger]

I suspected something like that had been done, bit of a pity but oh well.

Yes, quite unusually the way it’s ended up the international (Grimshaw) trainshed now extends beyond the platform ends and over some of the S&C. At least when it fails the techs will be able to work in the dry...

 

[HSTEd]

Yes, quite unusually the way it’s ended up the international (Grimshaw) trainshed now extends beyond the platform ends and over some of the S&C. At least when it fails the techs will be able to work in the dry...

Well.... after Crossrail 2 we could always put the platforms back up to the full length!

The hard part would be clearing a long enough stretch of the viaduct to get a ramp into a tunnel in without blocking up too many roads.

 

[swt_passenger]

Well.... after Crossrail 2 we could always put the platforms back up to the full length!

It isn’t that easy. Remember that Crossrail 2 relieves the main suburban side only, P1-P6. The Windsor - Reading side service group will still be using P19 and the 5 international platforms. That side is currently a 10 car railway, except for a few 12 car platforms. If the hypothetical long trains that people are proposing are arriving on the main line side where CR2 has made space, they must head for the main station.