HS2 would not serve the core North East - York - Leeds - Manchester - Liverpool axis, though would significantly reduce journey times for Manchester - Birmingham and Leeds - Birmingham passengers. The lower usage, capacity and frequency of the routes to/from Birmingham suggest that they are of lesser importance to passengers and business than the Leeds - Manchester axis. However, evidence from the rest of Europe suggests that connecting regional centres to a capital city benefits the capital city more than the regional centres.
As I said before, HS2 Ltd and the Government know that the Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds axis will require a major upgrade. This upgrade will not be on the scale of HS2 as it will be physically shorter and geographically much more concentrated, so the cost and time necessary for planning and construction will be significantly lower than either of the HS2 phases. It is very unlikely that 400m long double-decker trains will be needed on this route so it is unlikely that it will require entire new stations to be built as HS2 does. As a result it will almost certainly take the form of Javelin-style units running on upgraded and new sections of track - rather like what the Scottish Government plan to do between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Any new or reopened alignments can be built to a UIC GC structure gauge so as to not preclude further upgrades in the future when it is made necessary by demand or operational requirements. This route would not need to be capable of 400km/h by any means so the new lines will be able to follow existing road and rail alignments more than HS2 is able to, reducing its environmental impact and cost slightly. Because this route would not be dependent upon HS2 in order to function, coupling it to the HS2 scheme directly would be not only unnecessary but would create more risk for both schemes. We can do other new infrastructure projects at the same time as HS2 - the slow pace of construction means that at any one point in time there is still plenty of capacity for other projects to be built at the same time.
Would a line to Scotland be able to support a number of (possibly double-decker) 200m / 400m trains per hour, even if carrying almost all of the traffic? For such a line to have a very dominant modal share fares would have to be very low. In the rest of Europe many people prefer to take slower services than pay higher fares for high speed rail. The
failure of Eurostar to drive ferry companies out of business as predicted in the business case suggests that conventional rail is likely to respond to the challenge of HS2 if competition between operators continues. How much would the travel market have to grow for this line to be viable? I couldn't suggest an answer to this questions but imagine that this would need to be investigated before making judgements on the viable of such a line.
Yes, a line to Scotland will not be filled with 18tph of 400m long double-decker trains an hour, even if every single air journey from Scotland to London and Birmingham were replaced with a journey on rail. It is particularly difficult to limit the amount of capacity when building a new HSR line - single track with crossing loops limits it far too much and introduces unacceptable risk for reliable running while double-track provides the same amount as there is anywhere else upon the line. Even in Phase 2 the plan is only for a single train from Birmingham to the Central belt on HS2 per hour - alternating between going to Glasgow and Edinburgh and only a single 200m long unit to match. The continuation of the line to Scotland instead much justify itself on journey time improvements, capacity relief for freight on the existing line and the modal shift it would generate without a question of a doubt from air to rail between London and Scotland. The line between Bamfurlong and wherever the E&G delta junction will be will cost around ten billion pounds alone, which is a very significant amount of investment in a route which again will not see itself filled to the brim with passengers (that is, unless we decide to fill it up by piling the tickets to Manchester and Birmingham high and selling them cheap - the trains are going to have the seats anyway so why not fill them and make money from onboard things?). What this investment would do though would be to free up the disproportionately many landing/takeoff slots used by the passengers flying from the London airports to Scotland. Combined together the passenger numbers from Heathrow to Glasgow, Edinburgh and Newcastle are the second highest of all flows: 1.2m + 0.8m + 0.5m = 2.5m; JFK is 2.8m and Dubai is 2m. These flights will predominantly by done with small aircraft which are much less efficient per passenger kilometre than a larger plane, let alone HSR. If we add Manchester, which is obviously served by HS2 but is still a significant number of flights at 0.7m, and Aberdeen at 0.7m as well then the modal shift from air to rail could free up significant capacity at Heathrow or allow the residents around it some more peace and quiet. The costs of further Heathrow or other London airport expansion, not only financial but social and environmental, make the costs of extending HS2 that bit further a lot more palatable. I haven't added the Scotland figures from Gatwick or Stansted but these are millions as well.
Given that the infrastructure Eurostar uses has capacity limits, I would argue that it is important to use it to the greatest environmental benefit, meaning attracting passengers from air. Given that Eurostar has the dominant share of the three capitals market, this means attracting passengers making longer journeys. Others however take a different view. However, the
European Commission states that 43% of the Channel Tunnel's capacity is unused and I believe LGV Nord runs around 7-8 tph, suggesting that there is capacity for additional services. I agree that there is a large potential for expanding international rail services currently hampered by the security and passport checks mandated by the UK government in a Parliamentary bill, in particular by running direct trains from London to Rotterdam and Amsterdam, Köln and Frankfurt and Lyon and Marseille.
Freight was always a central part of the business case for the building of the Channel Tunnel (
http://www.parliament.uk/business/p...s/RP95-2/channel-tunnel-rail-link-bill-199495 - see page 4) and some magazines have devoted articles to the failure of the Channel Tunnel to attract significant freight flows. If the infrastructure had not been built, European governments could have heavily taxed airlines while railways could have promoted the lower fares on the rail-sea-rail service which would not have faced the high access charges Eurostar faces on HS1 and in the Channel Tunnel today. However, heavily taxing airlines does not fit with the philosophy of current European governments and the Channel Tunnel may have been justifiable due to the very long journey times of the rail-sea-rail route and the greater potential of the Channel Tunnel route to serve longer distance markets.
Eurostar are adding extra services with their new fleet of trains capable of travel beyond the three capitals + ski/summer service so some of this extra capacity is going to be used. These new trains show what's now capable when we build new HSR routes as they can be bought almost off the shelf from anywhere - the extra fireproofing required over completely standard units is still a lot less than the need to completely rebuild the train for the UK loading gauge.
The Channel Tunnel saw us build not only a new rail passenger route but a new rail freight route as well. Rail has a particularly difficult time in the UK on intermodal transport because very few of the distances for freight are significant enough here that rail is a vastly cheaper and easier option than simply keeping it on lorries all the way to the its final destination. When the freight comes off a ship to Europe, it is very easy for that ship just to dock somewhere reasonably centred in the UK such as Hull or Liverpool on its trip to the continent and have the UK-bound freight loaded onto lorries for the reasonably short distance then to where it will need to go. This is why the proposals to reopen the Great Central as a freight-only route have not been taken ahead and instead we have a scheme which we can guarantee will have a large amount of usage from day one. As we will not be performing many more massive capacity increases on our roads, and the cost of road haulage is only going to increase in comparison to rail, the only way is up for the future of rail freight. Building the Channel Tunnel when it was has given us many benefits and it is unlikely that it would have been a better idea to wait until it was absolutely necessary to build it. Adding extra services on existing lines, where that capacity exists already, will only take a few months of planning at most whereas building an entirely new piece of infrastructure like the Channel Tunnel will take decades in total. Much better to have the possibility there immediately than it is to not build it until it's too late. Not building the Channel Tunnel would not have ever increased the amount of freight being transported to and from the UK by environmentally-conscious methods. When we run le Shuttle services we're running them entirely on electricity and not causing any localised pollution; ferries cause enormous amounts of localised pollution due to oil spills and their burning of fossil fuels.
This is a valid point, though most local services serving Manchester Piccadilly and Leeds terminate there. Most platforms at Manchester Piccadilly and some at Leeds are terminating platforms. This limits the difference in time the different categories of train need to spend in the platforms.
My point still stands that these, and the paths the intercity services use to get in and out of the stations, will now become available for more local services. Local services will still be able to vacate the platforms faster than intercity ones: looking at Real Time Trains today for Piccadilly the VT 1H64 from Euston arrived 1149 and left for Euston as 1A32 at 1215 - 26 minutes of occupying platform 5. NT 2H51 from Rose Hill Marple arrived 1157 but left as 2H52 on the return at only 1205 - only eight minutes of occupying platform 2. Walking the extra 9 coaches to the other end above what a Pacer/156 has cannot take 18 minutes so it must be that the IC services take longer. At 26 minutes a pop the platforms used by a Pendolino are out of action for a whole half hour, whereas on local services they'll be done in ten: 2tph versus 6tph. This may likely be a very simplistic view of the operations here but the gist of what I'm saying rings true as local services in no way are going to take as long or longer than IC ones to turn around. HS2 adds extra platforms to Piccadilly and makes them independent of the station throat and surrounding lines, something that simply adding extra platforms onto the station as it is cannot ever replicate.
HS2 stations may all have some form of connection to the rest of the network, but the extra time spent connecting to and from the HS2 stations is likely to negate the time savings the line makes possible.
If you are travelling long distances on HS2 then the time savings of the journey will outweigh the connection time, especially when the local services will be more frequent and will connect better to HS2 than they are able to today. If you are making a journey where the journey time improvements are marginal then the existing lines will still have services which follow the overall route of HS2 but stop in more stations. HS2 isn't going to be the only way of getting between London and Birmingham or Leeds and Sheffield. If it's faster for you to stay on these services then you will still see the quality improve post-HS2 as your stations can be served more regularly and you will not compete for seats with people who are travelling significantly further. If you live in Coventry, and wish to travel to London, you might find it easier just to stay on a service going along the WCML. Unlike today, where Coventry can only be served as an intermediate stop between London and Birmingham where the train will have largely filled up before starting its journey, your trains will be free of people going between city centres and dedicated to people who are travelling between intermediate stops and from there to cities and vice-versa. Trains which currently pass through non-stop will be able to stop, allowing you direct links to many more places than currently possible. If you are lucky enough to live currently on a route which is then next-stop-London, then it is very possible that your train will be slower to London because not every station can get a non-stop service and your one really only gets one now because it's the only way they can serve your station on the timetable. On the other hand you will now see a much more frequent service, which will reduce connection times across the network, and you will not have to stand to get on.
The approximately £40 bn to be spent on HS2 could be spent on any other project. HS2 therefore inevitably prevents other projects from going ahead or at the very least prevents a reduction of the national debt.
HS2 is an investment where we know that we can get the money back in the end and profit overall. Very few other schemes, including the world beyond rail, promise real commercial returns for the Government on top of the environmental and connectivity benefits. Borrowing costs are currently at extremely low levels so if we borrow now, when the network is up and running we can reap the money gained from revenue and use it for whatever we wish. If we do not spend the money now, we will not add another source of government income for the future which means that we will be very slightly better off in the very short term but then we will be significantly worse off in the long term.
40/50/80/whatever number of billions people claim it will cost (it is actually costed at £28bn for the scheme with an extra 50% on top for contingency) is really not that much money for the United Kingdom over the 20 years it will be spent. It is capital spending, which we currently do not do enough of, where we spend money and actually get something tangible as a result. We can absolutely afford to spend it because we are spending the same amount per year on another massive infrastructure project (Crossrail) as we will per year on HS2, and no one particularly notices nor cares. Crossrail 2 will cost less than its predecessor as there are fewer expensive stations under the centre of London and because it will not require the same level of improvement on the surface lines it links; it is also funded separately and simultaneously with HS2.
Another crucial reason why HS2 isn't able to inhibit other projects on the existing network is that until the trains start running for testing (when all the infrastructure is done anyway along the running lines) the construction is just another construction project where we can build (98% of) it without worrying about trains actually running. The teams and equipment capable of working on the the running railway have a full works schedule for several decades to come but none of them are going to be required for the vast majority of HS2 works. If we embarked on massive upgrades to the existing north/south instead then we wouldn't have the railway construction capacity to do the electrification and other improvements which are planned for everywhere else in the country.
