High Speed Rail - food for thought

[MattRat]

I'm surprised nobody bit, but as not I'll say it!

The UK definitely needs high speed rail for the east coast as well. Relying on HS2 for all London - North travel is working one asset way to hard, creating a network too vulnerable to disruption, making capacity shortages likely to drive up prices, and preventing serving all the areas of the country that could benefit from HSR from doing so.

I'm sure they'll be one built when the ECML gets full, just like the situation with the WCML now.....

 

[Speed43125]

I'm sure they'll be one built when the ECML gets full, just like the situation with the WCML now.....

Should have gone with that Virgin proposal from 20 years ago on their HS line from Peterborough to Newcastle

 

[HSTEd]

Should have gone with that Virgin proposal from 20 years ago on their HS line from Peterborough to Newcastle

I wonder where we would be now if it had been built

Would we be talking about a Retford-Sheffield-Manchester HSL or would they still want to build a full west coast line?
Would we be talking about a new terminus and a Peterborough-London section?

 

[A0]

Well HS2 is clearly overbudget. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not far off the Chuo Shinkansen price per mile. It's a terrible example of what it would cost for Scotland and Wales.

So what do *you* envisage for Scotland and Wales and how much should it cost?

You can cite HS2 as overbudget, but on what basis do you believe a scheme in Scotland or Wales would be cheaper?

Scotland's hardly got a clean record on major infrastructure projects coming in on budget

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== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Feb 2022 ==

I'm sure they'll be one built when the ECML gets full, just like the situation with the WCML now.....

The ECML is pretty much 4 track from London - Peterborough, with only Welwyn as the serious challenge to that.

The demands on the ECML are *much* lower than the WCML - even if you only look at their own 'long distance' services that's clear.

Euston is despatching long distance services to:

Manchester, Liverpool, Chester & N Wales, Birmingham & West Mids, Glasgow via Trent Valley, Glasgow / Edinburgh via West Mids, Blackpool.

Compare that to the ECML with Leeds being one branch, Newcastle & Edinburgh the main route and York or Lincoln the third - it's a much simpler line to operate. Only Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh are having to compete for capacity against local services, compared to Birmingham & West Mids, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow - all of which are more extensive than the East Coast's contentions.