99% of the freight is on the slow lines, it doesn't release anything meaningful if you do that and has little benefit. ETCS cab signaling is going to be rolled out regardless of HS2, so why use a system that offers little capacity and is effectively absolute block?
As it stands, Radio Token requires trains to stop to exchange tokens, and is extremely poor use of capacity.
A entirely new railway is an expensive business. If you're going to build one, it makes sense to use if for passenger services, ideally carrying 16+ tph, all at high speed non-stop. Taking the fastest non-stopping trains off the existing network gives you a huge increase in slow train capacity.
Yes. They reckoned they could do the whole route from London to Liverpool via Sheffield for five billion, if I recall correctly.
.The cost of building a line capable for clearance of such vehicles would be rather large - the Euro Shuttle is larger clearances than any UIC-specified gauge. Although with well wagons it'd be potentially possible to fit in GB+ I think, but then transhipment times and the UK's rather small size (London to the Scottish Central belt being only 400miles) eats into the economic worth of such a proposal.Thanks for the answers
One last shot:
1 As the Uk seems addicted to articulated tractor-trailer lorries; What if rather than containers, said freight only lines were set up to carry unattended trailers like the Euro shuttle the Euro Shuttle, as a rolling road?
Don't know, but they certainly aren't as efficient as conventional container flats in tonnes/metre.
I meant compared to non well wagons carrying unattended trailers on a larger loading guage rolling road, as zak500 seemed to imply a disadvantage to well wagons.
Well wagons will (in general) be less efficient to load as you can't just drive the full length of the train as you can on the channel tunnel shuttles, because the bogies will be between the decks not under them. They are also less space efficient for the same reason, and have lower ground clearance so may need track maintenance to be more frequent/careful. If you designed a suitable terminal and had specific wagons built you could negate most of the handling disadvantages, but you'd still need to build completely separate infrastructure which would be captive to the larger loading gauge.
But it saves paying a driver for a bit, plus the government could copy the Germans and arrange tax so that for long journeys rail is cheaper than lorry.
While I sympathise with this point immensely, a rolling road operation would have to concentrate traffic on a handful of terminals to remain economically viable and that's not going to make a dent in HGV Road use.
You may be more efficient but there's a lot of other economic factors that drag it back to road. There's a reason US has an intercontinental highway system as well as having the clearance to run rolling roads or piggyback trains.
Yes, but economic factors can be tweaked by government action hence my mention of Germanys hgv distance policy taxation .
Tweaked, but not wholesale rewritten. It is a significant economic advantage to the UK that it is comparatively small, but this works against railfreight. The UK distribution industry is based in the 'Golden triangle' of the East Mids for good reason. There's an interesting Desktop exercise (perhaps more an MSc/MEcon project) in whether or not a rolling road from somewhere in Kent to East Mids airport would be viable, but then again the entire point of HS2 was to release far more cost-effective freight capacity by getting the fast trains onto the infrastructure they could make best use of.
Quite possibly, but then FOCs probably have a significant amount of externalised costs borne by others for railfreight operations. Diesels under the wires, HAW trains smashing pointwork, delays, bridge strikes, etc.
HGvs pay a far greater portion of their costs and externalities than freight rail does. Given that freight rail pays essentially nothing towards infrastructure and almost nothing in fuel duty and VAT.
You could probably make a case for a piggyback service operating as an extension of the Chunnel shuttle to a suitable terminal somewhere on the M25 or so.
If you'll forgive the bluntness being disheartened is rather pointless. As suggested upthread our geography is hugely influential and we can't change it. Provision of rail infrastructure is a big ticket item and needs decent volumes of traffic to fully justify it. As such there is bound to be an approximate minimum distance over which even bulk railfreight is a viable competitor to road transport. That distance is generally reckoned to be at least 150 miles. So almost no trans-Pennine railfreight and few inland container terminals in the SE of the country. The best we can hope for is increased capacity on the busiest existing routes by way of facilitating longer trains through extended loops, signalling alterations, grade separation of key junctions, etc. And even those don't come cheap (who exactly is paying?) assuming there is even room to accommodate them. Frankly it could even be argued that for the good of the whole nation's economy private motoring should be subject to the occasional restriction to improve the flow of HGVs!
