If HS2 phase 2a gets built, what high speed services could run?

[growse]

Phase one is only high speed rail project in the world not to benefit the people who live on the route

Does HS1 benefit the residents of Rainham?

Or are we being selective about what "benefit" and "people who live on the route" means?

(If you mean Aylesbury, just say Aylesbury!)

 

[MatthewHutton]

Does HS1 benefit the residents of Rainham?

Or are we being selective about what "benefit" and "people who live on the route" means?

(If you mean Aylesbury, just say Aylesbury!)

Yes. Because it got faster direct services to London.

For the area between Leamington Spa and Ruislip the benefits are extremely weak.

 

[A S Leib]

Yes. Because it got faster direct services to London.

For the area between Leamington Spa and Ruislip the benefits are extremely weak.

This is going off-topic, but that feels like a consequence of history in that if the Chiltern Main Line had been electrified and maybe quadruple track for most of its length, more London – Birmingham intercity services might have gone that way rather than via Coventry with poorer local services, which hasn't been the case for the line, especially post-Covid with extra stops on Oxford, Banbury and Birmingham services.

 

[growse]

Yes. Because it got faster direct services to London.

I meant Rainham in Essex, which HS1 cuts through without stopping.

Zero benefits there, right?

if the Chiltern Main Line had been electrified and maybe quadruple track for most of its length, more London – Birmingham intercity services might have gone that way rather than via Coventry

This is a good idea. But sadly it'll never happen soon, largely due to the cost of battling the nimbys. "Once bitten" as the saying goes...

 

[The Planner]

That would be my gut feeling too. And honestly I would expect they are doing 60-90 second stops with slower acceleration.

But certainly as we are currently doing 120 second stops on our long distance services if we adopt their practices we should be able to somewhat shorten that. It’s difficult to argue that we cannot get queuing by the right entrance etc if it is printed on the platform accordingly - even if those queues are somewhat less orderly than East Asia.


I would really like to see 2A at least if possible.

Rolling stock determines that. Door cycles are too long.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The North Wales Coast line (I think) is still planned to be electrified under the Integrated Rail plan

I doubt that very much. The Sunak proposal is in the bin.
The WG is very lukewarm about £1 billion being spent wiring the North Wales main line - they would prefer any new cash spent down south.
Something may come out of the regional plans (North Wales metro etc), and maybe discontinuous electrification might help, but there is no current "plan" to electrify to Holyhead.
An upgrade at Chester to separate Merseyrail onto a new platform, leaving P7 for more frequent TfW/Avanti services, is more likely.
Llandudno Jn-Holyhead also needs resignalling first, not to mention Chester-Crewe/Warrington.

 

[MatthewHutton]

I meant Rainham in Essex, which HS1 cuts through without stopping.

Zero benefits there, right?

I think that perhaps more thought should have been put into the area north of the river and maybe a parkway station north of the river would have been justified. Personally at first glance I think one could look at extending the Liberty Line to Ebbsfleet.

That said Rainham Essex has a population of only 12000, most of the land close to the railway is industrial and broadly the railway runs along the river so few people would have been negatively affected by road closures and extra traffic during construction.

This is a good idea. But sadly it'll never happen soon, largely due to the cost of battling the nimbys. "Once bitten" as the saying goes...

The Chiltern mainline was upgraded substantially in the 2000s to 100mph running etc without having substantial issues with NIMBYs. Likely because that project did in fact benefit local people.

 

[The Planner]

The Chiltern mainline was upgraded substantially in the 2000s to 100mph running etc without having substantial issues with NIMBYs. Likely because that project did in fact benefit local people.

It was already there, it makes it a lot easier.

 

[Zomboid]

I think that perhaps more thought should have been put into the area north of the river and maybe a parkway station north of the river would have been justified

It's a high speed line. It can't stop everywhere, that would defeat the point. Ebbsfleet serves the motorway network of the south east corner of England (though without international services it's a little pointless in that sense), so Rainham International would be instead of Ebbsfleet.

It was already there, it makes it a lot easier.

I would imagine a lot of the potential nimbys wouldn't even have noticed things like the doubling and increased line speed.

 

[cle]

Why should a railway benefit every place it passes through?

It's a long distance high speed line, of course it can't have tons of stops. And it's deliberately routed through less developed and less populated areas... which would not justify the costs or the slowdown.

How parochial should we get - "I see masts and they offend me, therefore as a compensation, I should benefit from the railway"
There are large gaps between motorway junctions, and many places are still on A roads. Or if a plane passes on its flightpath, is that unfair if you are hear or see it?

 

[MatthewHutton]

Why should a railway benefit every place it passes through?

It's a long distance high speed line, of course it can't have tons of stops. And it's deliberately routed through less developed and less populated areas... which would not justify the costs or the slowdown.

How parochial should we get - "I see masts and they offend me, therefore as a compensation, I should benefit from the railway"
There are large gaps between motorway junctions, and many places are still on A roads. Or if a plane passes on its flightpath, is that unfair if you are hear or see it?

Because every other country that has built high speed rail has built stations for towns of 50k or more. Certainly everything with a population of 100k has got a station.

Also actually if you see masts then you also benefit from the much lower noise electric trains produce.

 

[A S Leib]

South of Birmingham, a 50,000 cut-off leaves you with High Wycombe (5 miles from the current route), Aylesbury (1 mile), Coventry (4 miles) and (barely) Banbury (6 miles) and Leamington Spa (4 miles). Is serving those places on a high-speed route worth* adding further complications to a route which likely have at least half a dozen trains per hour even without the eastern leg?

*As a net benefit; of course those living in those towns and nearby would likely say yes if the line is being built either way.

 

[MatthewHutton]

South of Birmingham, a 50,000 cut-off leaves you with High Wycombe (5 miles from the current route), Aylesbury (1 mile), Coventry (4 miles) and (barely) Banbury (6 miles) and Leamington Spa (4 miles). Is serving those places on a high-speed route worth* adding further complications to a route which likely have at least half a dozen trains per hour even without the eastern leg?

*As a net benefit; of course those living in those towns and nearby would likely say yes if the line is being built either way.

I think there is a pretty strong argument against building 5 stations. But it should be possible for the people who live in those towns to board an HS2 service with a direct connecting service that runs at least half hourly and it should also be possible for them to drive and park at an HS2 station.

 

[Zomboid]

Why? HS2 will be carrying trains like the Euston - Glasgow (first stop Warrington), and Euston - Manchester (first stop Stafford). The people of Banbury don't have or particularly need great access to those trains anyway as they have direct trains to Manchester and Birmingham (from where direct trains to Scotland are available).

All those towns other than Aylesbury already have direct trains to Birmingham International, which will connect with "Interchange". And Aylesbury could end up with a direct train to OOC.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Why? HS2 will be carrying trains like the Euston - Glasgow (first stop Warrington), and Euston - Manchester (first stop Stafford). The people of Banbury don't have or particularly need great access to those trains anyway

Same reason every other country built a whole series of regional stations on their high speed lines. To appease local opinion and to get the project built on time and on budget.

Also actually they often do pretty well on traffic. Le Creusot gets nearly 800k passengers a year for example - https://ressources.data.sncf.com/explore/embed/dataset/frequentation-gares/table/?disjunctive.nom_gare&disjunctive.code_postal&q=Le Creusot TGV&refine.nom_gare=Le Creusot - Montceau-les-Mines - Montchanin TGV

All those towns other than Aylesbury already have direct trains to Birmingham International, which will connect with "Interchange". And Aylesbury could end up with a direct train to OOC.

High Wycombe doesn’t - and aside from Coventry the others only have hourly connectivity. Also the service from Birmingham Interchange leaves a lot to be desired with at best hourly onward service.

Also there is nowhere you can go with parking.

And there is no reason to believe the Aylesbury Old Oak Common connection is happening any time soon - nor that it will be significantly faster than going via Marylebone.

 

[Zomboid]

Well where should stations be added to HS2 then? And which trains should stop there?

 

[growse]

Same reason every other country built a whole series of regional stations on their high speed lines. To appease local opinion and to get the project built on time and on budget.

This idea that the opposition from the Chilterns would have been substantially less if only they would have built a parkway station seems highly naïve.

In reality, any such token offering would have been simultaneously too far from everywhere, too close to somewhere, too big, too small, too expensive, not as big an investment as liked, and both too frequently and too infrequently served.

Throwing away billions of public money on a white elephant to nominally placate nimbys is not a good idea, no matter how often it's been done elsewhere.

The Chiltern mainline was upgraded substantially in the 2000s to 100mph running etc

Ah, so we agree that the good people of the Chilterns already have existing serious rail infrastructure that connects them into both London and north via Birmingham?

Given that the point of HS2 is to relieve the capacity of the stopping services that serve the commuter towns, it's hard to see how a Chiltern parkway furthers that cause.

 

[MatthewHutton]

This idea that the opposition from the Chilterns would have been substantially less if only they would have built a parkway station seems highly naïve.

Not really. High speed rail projects in other countries where they have built intermediate stations have cost far less than HS2 has. And typically they have had fewer delays in construction as well. HS2 is what, a decade late at this point?

And yes obviously you would never appease the worst of the NIMBYs. But you never would.

And as it stands you have very little support so there isn’t even arguing between different groups.

Throwing away billions of public money on a white elephant to nominally placate nimbys is not a good idea, no matter how often it's been done elsewhere

Why would a parkway station cost billions?

Ah, so we agree that the good people of the Chilterns already have existing serious rail infrastructure that connects them into both London and north via Birmingham?

The service on the Chiltern Mainline doesn’t really connect well with services beyond Birmingham.

Well where should stations be added to HS2 then? And which trains should stop there?

Probably you stop most HS2 trains at Birmingham Interchange and do any required upgrades to send the full half hourly cross country service via Birmingham International as part of the project.

Then in the south you build a station in the Aylesbury area, most likely at Calvert where it crosses East West Rail (as if you want to serve both branches from the south then the easiest is this build the station to the north) and you then extend the via Amersham local service to there and do the required upgrades, likely restoring the Beaconsfield overtaking tracks, to run the High Wycombe stopping services half hourly and also extend those to Calvert.

Or perhaps you only extend the Amersham services to Calvert and you do High Wycombe to Old Oak Common - but you actually do it as part of the initial project and not as an extra that might maybe happen someday.

 

[eldomtom2]

South of Birmingham, a 50,000 cut-off leaves you with High Wycombe (5 miles from the current route), Aylesbury (1 mile), Coventry (4 miles) and (barely) Banbury (6 miles) and Leamington Spa (4 miles). Is serving those places on a high-speed route worth* adding further complications to a route which likely have at least half a dozen trains per hour even without the eastern leg?

*As a net benefit; of course those living in those towns and nearby would likely say yes if the line is being built either way.

A Coventry station would allow for a few more existing services to be removed from the WCML and moved to HS2. Currently only 2tph can be moved to HS2 without stations losing service - Euston-Manchester via Crewe (first stop Stafford) and Euston-Glasgow via Trent Valley (first stop Warrington). Everything else makes at least one non-Birmingham stop before reaching Handsacre, with the exception of the Chester/NWC services which as previously discussed can't be moved to HS2. With a Coventry station you can transfer an additional 1tph - the Euston-Birmingham stopping at Coventry and Birmingham, and you could also perhaps get away with cutting the London-Birmingham-Scotland/Blackpool services back to Birmingham-Scotland/Blackpool.

Of course if it's tenable to remove through expresses to the north from places like Milton Keynes, Coventry, and Nuneaton then you don't need intermediate stations and can move most AWC services onto HS2. The question is if that is politically tenable, and I confess to not really having any knowledge about that.

 

[growse]

Not really. High speed rail projects in other countries where they have built intermediate stations have cost far less than HS2 has. And typically they have had fewer delays in construction as well. HS2 is what, a decade late at this point?

There's no evidence that building a parkway station would have helped HS2 be built any cheaper or any sooner. Correlation is not causation.

Why would a parkway station cost billions?

Because once you've worked out where to put it, and budgeted for building it, fought the local councils who'll litigate every step of the way, and then compromised the resulting outcome (leading to less effectiveness), it's hard to see the bill not being billions - *especially* given how bad HS2 has been at spending money efficiently.

The service on the Chiltern Mainline doesn’t really connect well with services beyond Birmingham.

What's the blocker / issue here? Why is hijacking a national infrastructure project the right answer?

 

[Zomboid]

here's no evidence that building a parkway station would have helped HS2 be built any cheaper or any sooner. Correlation is not causation

I have no real idea why HS2 is costing so much, but I don't think it's because they're not building enough.

In other countries high speed lines are often to serve a different purpose to HS2, so simple comparisons are unlikely to mean a lot.

 

[WideRanger]

Because every other country that has built high speed rail has built stations for towns of 50k or more. Certainly everything with a population of 100k has got a station.

Fujisawa (population of more than 400,000), while having a huge industrial base, and some rather lovely coastline, has the Shinkansen passing through it but no station.

 

[Energy]

This is a good idea. But sadly it'll never happen soon, largely due to the cost of battling the nimbys. "Once bitten" as the saying goes...

There's little point in quad tracking, as Marylebone and Moor Street aren't big enough to take a significant uplift in services. Chiltern's service pattern as it is now serves it well, it's to serve the intermediate towns.

Because every other country that has built high speed rail has built stations for towns of 50k or more. Certainly everything with a population of 100k has got a station.

France has a very different population distribution, with more people living in cities, and outside of cities, it is far sparser.

A Coventry station would allow for a few more existing services to be removed from the WCML and moved to HS2. Currently only 2tph can be moved to HS2 without stations losing service - Euston-Manchester via Crewe (first stop Stafford) and Euston-Glasgow via Trent Valley (first stop Warrington). Everything else makes at least one non-Birmingham stop before reaching Handsacre, with the exception of the Chester/NWC services which as previously discussed can't be moved to HS2. With a Coventry station you can transfer an additional 1tph - the Euston-Birmingham stopping at Coventry and Birmingham, and you could also perhaps get away with cutting the London-Birmingham-Scotland/Blackpool services back to Birmingham-Scotland/Blackpool.

Of course if it's tenable to remove through expresses to the north from places like Milton Keynes, Coventry, and Nuneaton then you don't need intermediate stations and can move most AWC services onto HS2. The question is if that is politically tenable, and I confess to not really having any knowledge about that.

Adding Coventry and potentially Wolverhampton[1] and I reckon you can get it down to:

LNWR
2tph London - Crewe (upgrade from 1tph)[2]
2tph London - Birmingham stopper (existing)
South WCML services have no change.

XC
1 or 2tph Manchester - Bournemouth as is.
1tph Reading - Newcastle via East West Rail, Rugby & Coventry[3]

Chiltern & WMR
As is.


All Avanti services on HS2.

[1] Despite having similar total passenger numbers, Coventry is significantly more London-weighted than Wolverhampton, which is overwhelmingly towards Birmingham. Here are the stats from the ORR destination matrix 2022-2023 (later years aren't dissimilar).

Origin	Destination	Total
Coventry	Birmingham New St	1,073,351
^	London Euston	540,963
Wolverhampton	Birmingham New St	859,227
^	London Euston	170,115
Birmingham Intl	Birmingham New St	635,527
^	London Euston	274,168
^	Coventry	182,601
^	Wolverhampton	103,442

A potential option is diverting a fast Chiltern service to go via Birmingham New St, Sandwell & Dudley, and Wolverhampton.


[2] The LNWR service to London is 10 mins slower at Rugby and 15 mins slower at Nuneaton. I don't consider this to be significantly slower, and knowing people locally, a more reliable and cheaper WCML is the higher priority.


[3] Coventry - MKC is 59 mins Avanti vs 32 mins LNWR. Diverting an XC service via EWR ensures that Coventry - MKC still has a fast train, and provides an XC service to Rugby.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Because once you've worked out where to put it, and budgeted for building it, fought the local councils who'll litigate every step of the way, and then compromised the resulting outcome (leading to less effectiveness), it's hard to see the bill not being billions - *especially* given how bad HS2 has been at spending money efficiently.

The quid-pro-quo you do is that they are quiet about planning issues in exchange for a stop.

Fujisawa (population of more than 400,000), while having a huge industrial base, and some rather lovely coastline, has the Shinkansen passing through it but no station.

Fujisawa isn't really completely cut through by the Shinkansen as it goes further inland. However even so it is only half an hour from both Odwara and Shin Yokohama depending on which direction you want to go.

There's little point in quad tracking, as Marylebone and Moor Street aren't big enough to take a significant uplift in services. Chiltern's service pattern as it is now serves it well, it's to serve the intermediate towns

Marylebone could clearly handle 12 trains an hour if they made the effort.

Also we are talking about four tracking to improve the outer London service so there is no way they would be going anywhere near Birmingham.

France has a very different population distribution, with more people living in cities, and outside of cities, it is far sparser.

This is very true. But other countries like Japan, Taiwan and Germany do have a more similar population distribution to Britain - and they have more intermediate stations.

 

[A S Leib]

[3] Coventry - MKC is 59 mins Avanti vs 32 mins LNWR. Diverting an XC service via EWR ensures that Coventry - MKC still has a fast train, and provides an XC service to Rugby.

I don't think leaving Leamington Spa to Oxford as 1tph and Banbury to Oxford as ~1.5tph (280,000 passengers per year) is enough to outweigh having a fast Coventry to Milton Keynes service (40,000 per year), or a Rugby CrossCountry service (11,000 to Manchester, although I don't know how much split ticketing at Birmingham or Coventry there is). Having the proposed Oxford to Moor Street Chiltern service would make that more viable.

Given that Winslow's around thirty miles longer than Banbury for Oxford to Coventry, that would also mean slowing down a long-distance service which isn't particularly fast to begin with.

 

[MatthewHutton]

I have no real idea why HS2 is costing so much, but I don't think it's because they're not building enough.

In other countries high speed lines are often to serve a different purpose to HS2, so simple comparisons are unlikely to mean a lot.

Too few stations meaning you have to do lots and lots of other mitigations and the councils are continually delaying the project is part of the sky high costs.

 

[Zomboid]

The quid-pro-quo you do is that they are quiet about planning issues in exchange for a stop.

I can't think of a worse way to plan something.

HS2 very deliberately doesn't pass close enough to anywhere of any note to actually provide a station, so you'd end up with stations in the middle of nowhere serving nobody in particular, eating line capacity for no real benefit.

don't think leaving Leamington Spa to Oxford as 1tph and Banbury to Oxford as ~1.5tph (280,000 passengers per year) is enough to outweigh having a fast Coventry to Milton Keynes service (40,000 per year), or a Rugby CrossCountry service (11,000 to Manchester, although I don't know how much split ticketing at Birmingham or Coventry there is). Having the proposed Oxford to Moor Street

I have to do Oxford to Stafford reasonably often, and I always end up with a split ticket at Leamington. Probably not a hugely significant flow, but it'll skew the figures for all three stations.

 

[MatthewHutton]

HS2 very deliberately doesn't pass close enough to anywhere of any note to actually provide a station, so you'd end up with stations in the middle of nowhere serving nobody in particular, eating line capacity for no real benefit.

This is really not true at all.

If you serve Calvert you would be serving Oxford, Aylesbury, Bicester and MK which have a combined population of 700k. The French have built entire high speed lines (LGV Est) to serve fewer people.

More importantly it is impossible to believe that any other country would miss out on giving Stoke on Trent a station (population 300k or more), nor would they miss out on stopping all trains at a station on the outskirts of the 2nd and 10th largest cities in Britain.

I can't think of a worse way to plan something

It’s pretty clearly how everyone else goes about it. The Chuo Shinkansen very deliberately has one stop per prefecture.

 

[A S Leib]

More importantly it is impossible to believe that any other country would miss out on giving Stoke on Trent a station (population 300k or more), nor would they miss out on stopping all trains at a station on the outskirts of the 2nd and 10th largest cities in Britain.

It's not impossible to believe that when, for example, the 11:22 Paris to Nice skips Marseille (followed by an 11:38 service terminating at Marseille, with the city in general having a much less frequent high-speed service than what Curzon Street was intended to have).

 

[MatthewHutton]

Given that Winslow's around thirty miles longer than Banbury for Oxford to Coventry, that would also mean slowing down a long-distance service which isn't particularly fast to begin with

An Oxford—Winslow-Trent Valley-Glasgow cross country service would be more compelling IMO.