Personally, I'd knock Euston down and start the station again. Make is a gateway to London fit for the 21st Century rather than something which looks like a 1970s provincial shopping arcade.
What might be worth doing, and could well be achieved off the back of this 3 year delay, is to first build the HS2 part of Euston but connect the classic lines to it, then flatten the 1960s bit and rebuild that, ideally with perhaps 10-12 300m platforms rather than the present mix. Both obviously to the same design so once it was finished you wouldn't know it was in 2 bits - sort of like how New St was rebuilt!
I have a feeling this was part of the original plan at one point.
You might well be able to fund it by getting rid of the essentially disused parcels deck and putting office and residential development on top instead, perhaps including better access to the platforms i.e. several accesses midway instead of one end-on.
You couldn't just close it for a couple of years and flatten and rebuild. You might be able to get away with IC into OOC for a short period, but the commuter services carry as many people if not more, and far too great a volume for long term bustitution.
Personally i would make the HS2 tracks horizontal low level to current tracks at Euston so a connection to HS1 could be made in the future
Well that's fine since its been deleted from the scheme.The Meadowhall stop makes absolutely no sense at all.
So.... Meadowhall is bad because lots of people go there, thus ensuring that lots of transport links are available?Meadowhall isn’t a great idea for a regional hub. Why might you ask? Well for one thing it’s one of the busiest junctions on the M1, combined with the traffic going to and from Meadowhall shopping centre that sees around 30 million visitors per year, then there’s the traffic from the Arena, centertainment, Ikea, and the retail park. The roads struggle as it is, creating a major station hub there would make it even worse.
Taking a train to Meadowhall and connecting takes an hour?Despite the fact that passengers numbers for Sheffield Midland are suppressed (anecdotal evidence suggests this), it still has more passengers per year than all of the South Yorkshire stations combined! Why should passengers have to faff around with the inconvenience of catching a connecting train to and from Midland station just to use the new HS2 line? There wouldn’t be any time benefits for people travelling from Sheffield to Leeds and Sheffield to London.Any time saved is lost because of the connection.
There are no other major urban areas in West Yorkshire to serve.Imagine if HS2 were to miss out Leeds city centre in favour of an out of town regional hub for West Yorkshire.
Well that's fine since its been deleted from the scheme.
Sheffield now gets a spur with a token service southbound and no service at all northbound, I hope the council is happy.
So.... Meadowhall is bad because lots of people go there, thus ensuring that lots of transport links are available?
Taking a train to Meadowhall and connecting takes an hour?
There are no other major urban areas in West Yorkshire to serve.
South Yorkshire is not just Sheffield.
EDIT:
It's too late to meaningfully affect Phase 1 or 2A.... but 2B should be built entirely in tunnels.
I'm sick of getting bogged down in years of arguments.
And then it will randomly start falling down.Get the Chinese to build it, with Chinese labour under Chinese laws. It would be finished 5 times quicker, well within the revised budget (including bribes) and without long ongoing arguments about whether (for example) a specific tree should be saved...
One of the NPR ideas is a connection back onto HS2 north of Sheffield so Sheffield-Leeds trains can use it.Well that's fine since its been deleted from the scheme.
Sheffield now gets a spur with a token service southbound and no service at all northbound, I hope the council is happy.
It's too late to meaningfully affect Phase 1 or 2A.... but 2B should be built entirely in tunnels.
I'm sick of getting bogged down in years of arguments.
Well given it keeps blowing budget estimates.....It wouldn’t make any difference, at all, to the planning stages. Except that it would be back to the drawing board (adding at least three years) and make it much more expensive, and thus unaffordable.
Well given it keeps blowing budget estimates.....
But regardless, the backlash against building any linear infrastructure gets worse every time.
If you can't affordably put it in tunnels then eventually you won't be building it at all.
If you think the fight over phase 1 was bad, its probably going to get worse.
We can't even build overhead power lines now, and those don't do anywhere near as much wildlife damage as a railway or a road.
In fact, the HS2-East spur should be cut back to Nottingham/toton, and the leg to Leeds replaced by an extension from Manchester to Leeds.
Joining the MML at Toton will be little slower than joining it south of Chesterfield, and since there is no plan for a way for traffic going to Sheffield to rejoin the line, there is little purpose in routing trains that way.
A Manchester-Leeds line picks up more far more traffic per km built.
There are no other major urban areas in West Yorkshire to serve.
But regardless, the backlash against building any linear infrastructure gets worse every time.
If you can't affordably put it in tunnels then eventually you won't be building it at all.
If you think the fight over phase 1 was bad, its probably going to get worse.
I hope such a link is possible, as it would also allow Midlands Connect to run fast Birmingham-Nottingham trains. However the policy now seems to be not to change the alignment of Phase 1 because of all the extra work and delay doing so, including going back to Parliament.I would also have a link from HS2 to the classic network in the Birmingham terminals area to allow HS trains to run through to “classic line” destinations such as Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury and Bristol.
I would do London - Crewe all in one go with a late 2028-2029 opening, then cancel phase 2b through the East Midlands and extend to Leeds via Manchester instead. I would also have a link from HS2 to the classic network in the Birmingham terminals area to allow HS trains to run through to “classic line” destinations such as Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury and Bristol.
So you’re going to cancel the eastern leg and leave Sheffield (one of the countries largest cities) completely unserved? Since you’re cancelling that you’re also cutting Sheffield from its NPR services, you know the services that are reliant on HS2, what do you propose to do then? Serving Leeds via Manchester is also a bad idea as you would be adding 25 minutes or so to the Leeds services.
If NPR wants to pay for that alignment, they can pay for that alignment.So you’re going to cancel the eastern leg and leave Sheffield (one of the countries largest cities) completely unserved? Since you’re cancelling that you’re also cutting Sheffield from its NPR services, you know the services that are reliant on HS2, what do you propose to do then?
Really?Serving Leeds via Manchester is also a bad idea as you would be adding 25 minutes or so to the Leeds services.