• Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Implications of a Hypothetical GB Ultra-fast Metro

Status
Not open for further replies.

HSTEd

Veteran Member
Joined
14 Jul 2011
Messages
17,872
Crayonistas of the world unite!

Well we've had a lot of recent discussion about reopenings vs new lines, so I thought I'd do a thread on something I've been toying with for a while, mainly for my supervisor in relation to transport decarbonisation.
I know I am considered to be a bit of a techno-utopian by the denizens of the forum, but I'm of the opinion that testing the limits of technology tells us interesting things.

Anyway, my own view is that most of the succesful innovations in recent years have been towards a turn-up-and-go or metroised railway, with high intensity services.
High intensity services also make changing easy, so reduce the problems caused by an inability to run trains from everywhere to everywhere.

So what if we take this to its ultimate limit?

Let's say we built a 505km/h Chūō Shinkansen-style maglev line from one end of the country to the other and ran it as a metro? If we ditch the Japanese mixed stopping pattern and run it as a metro, it appears that 10tph would be achievable at the least.
So we end up with something like the journey time chart in the image (in minutes):
Ultraspeed Metro Table.png

Now let's say that with our average wait time of 3 minutes, and an optimistic interchange time to/from other public transport of five minutes, and assuming HS2/NPR are built - what impact does this have?

(For the sake of argument assume pricing is comparable or lower to equivalent conventional rail journeys, and I've constrained accelerations to be comparable to the tube so standing passengers are allowed)

If anyone wants to discuss the technical realities of this, I can make another thread, but right now I'm more interested in the wider "network effects", how do service patterns etc change. So just assume what I'm proposing is buildable.
Also obviously station locations are illustrative, more than anything
 
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

JonathanH

Veteran Member
Joined
29 May 2011
Messages
20,157
What sort of HS metro service would start in Penzance? I think Truro would be more appropriate to be able to capture all of the West Cornwall custom.

At these kind of speeds I think you would be looking at regional feeder stations so I'm not sure it would be Meadowhall - Leeds ignoring the population in the North West.

A 'spine' of this kind with a somewhat contorted run from Bristol to a place some way inside the London boundary and then to Toton doesn't really make sense on a map. It would appear to need a straighter route. Even Plymouth - Birmingham Interchange - HS2 - London would be competitive at these speeds.

Key point is that a spine, hub and spoke model would seem to make sense. However, what can't be forgotten is that a classic network is still needed for the intermediate stations.
 

HSTEd

Veteran Member
Joined
14 Jul 2011
Messages
17,872
What sort of HS metro service would start in Penzance? I think Truro would be more appropriate to be able to capture all of the West Cornwall custom.
Well all the especially popular with rich people parts of Cornwall tend towards being further west.

(St Ives, Carbis Bay etc)

Plenty of day trip and commute potential there.

Interestingly the shortest journey time from Truro to Plymouth would seem to be via Penzance in this scheme, which shows how ridiculous Cornish railways are.

[Perhaps Cambourne? With suitable local transport it could be convenient for Truro, Penzance, St Ives, Falmouth etc]

At these kind of speeds I think you would be looking at regional feeder stations so I'm not sure it would be Meadowhall - Leeds ignoring the population in the North West.
The population of the North West is pretty well swept up by NPR/HS2 though.

For example if you want to access the SW end of this line, from Birmingham you can be in OOC in 38 minutes, you can be at Toton in 20.
You gain very little by going to Birmingham, you might cut 15 minutes off the London journey time, but that just turns HS2 phase 1 into a stranded asset.

Same sort of argument for Manchester, its only 64 minutes to OOC (as opposed to maybe 40 on a maglev), and with NPR you can be at Leeds in 20-odd minutes if you are heading north.


A 'spine' of this kind with a somewhat contorted run from Bristol to a place some way inside the London boundary and then to Toton doesn't really make sense on a map.

Well when your train can eat up 8km in a minute, taking the shortest route seems to be relatively less important.
 
Last edited:

JonathanH

Veteran Member
Joined
29 May 2011
Messages
20,157
Well when your train can eat up 8km in a minute, taking the shortest route seems to be relatively less important.
You still need to find the money to build the route in the first place and mileage is important for that point of view. As almost suggested in one of the HS2 threads, it would almost certainly be easier to build any new line almost entirely underground (other than stations)

[Perhaps Cambourne? With suitable local transport it could be convenient for Truro, Penzance, St Ives, Falmouth etc]
Possibly - 40 minutes on the existing railway from Penzance to Truro at present. I suppose a central point in West Cornwall makes some sense even if some people have to go in the wrong direction first to use the railway.
 

Irascible

Established Member
Joined
21 Apr 2020
Messages
2,226
Location
Dyfneint
If it's a Metro, presumably you're making more stops than in the table? at the sort of speeds it'll get to fairly rapidly a couple per county should be fine, eh. 10mins Exeter-Plymouth for instance suddenly makes cross-county travel wildly more attractive.
 

HSTEd

Veteran Member
Joined
14 Jul 2011
Messages
17,872
If it's a Metro, presumably you're making more stops than in the table? at the sort of speeds it'll get to fairly rapidly a couple per county should be fine, eh. 10mins Exeter-Plymouth for instance suddenly makes cross-county travel wildly more attractive.

I thought about the stop spacing quite a bit, but each stop will cost about 3 minutes on the end to end journey time, so its a question of weighing one against the other.
 

Irascible

Established Member
Joined
21 Apr 2020
Messages
2,226
Location
Dyfneint
I thought about the stop spacing quite a bit, but each stop will cost about 3 minutes on the end to end journey time, so its a question of weighing one against the other.
Even at those sorts of speeds I wonder how many journeys really would be end-to-end vs relatively local. Also I guess, given the speeds you wouldn't need that much stock to run a fairly frequent service, so I guess you could still run limited express as well as full-stop metro if there was some demand, without bloating maintenance costs ( although you'd have to insert some loops which on a maglev are not going to be cheap - edit: well it depends on the track arrangement, I guess - if the guides are outside rather than it being arranged like a monorail it might be a little easier mechanically ).
 
Last edited:

Aictos

Established Member
Joined
28 Apr 2009
Messages
10,403
It wouldn't do anything to free up existing capacity on the classic rail network though as you still be stuck with the existing capacity problems.

And while it might work for other countries eg Japan that doesn't mean it would work the same here as you can't have a one size fits all approach so the idea is redundant before it even gets to the drawing board.
 

HSTEd

Veteran Member
Joined
14 Jul 2011
Messages
17,872
Even at those sorts of speeds I wonder how many journeys really would be end-to-end vs relatively local. Also I guess, given the speeds you wouldn't need that much stock to run a fairly frequent service, so I guess you could still run limited express as well as full-stop metro if there was some demand, without bloating maintenance costs ( although you'd have to insert some loops which on a maglev are not going to be cheap - edit: well it depends on the track arrangement, I guess - if the guides are outside rather than it being arranged like a monorail it might be a little easier mechanically ).
Unfortunately mixed stopping patterns will kill the lines capacity.
The Chuo Shinkansen will only manage six trains per hour, there is apparently a serious problem with how slow the pointwork is to operate.

A metro stopping pattern allows normal operation to proceed without any pointwork at all, if you provide balloon loops at the termini.

I expect most journeys on the line would only be one or two stops, but I ideally wanted the vast majority of the country to be in a single "day trip" area.
Supposedly a rule of thumb for a day trip is about 2 hours each way, which means day trips to West Cornwall from as far north as Newcastle.

You still need to find the money to build the route in the first place and mileage is important for that point of view. As almost suggested in one of the HS2 threads, it would almost certainly be easier to build any new line almost entirely underground (other than stations)
Indeed, but this has to be weighed against the necessity of carrying very large amounts of traffic.


Possibly - 40 minutes on the existing railway from Penzance to Truro at present. I suppose a central point in West Cornwall makes some sense even if some people have to go in the wrong direction first to use the railway.
I think it is important, in situations like this, to remember that the physical location of points is less important than the travel time between them.
Ideally this system would form the spine on which a "UK tube", analogous to the London Underground would be built.

How each point relates to each other in 3D space doesn't matter, it just becomes a series of connections.
 
Last edited:

Irascible

Established Member
Joined
21 Apr 2020
Messages
2,226
Location
Dyfneint
So if you do double the number of stops, does eery large population centre still have access to a leisure area inside 2 hrs? what's the magic number for commuting? I know people already commute from Bristol & even Exeter to London but I had a 90 min commute at one point & really couldn't stand it for very long, so I'm not sure what it'd be.

How does cross-channel travel look if you converted the chunnel?
 

HSTEd

Veteran Member
Joined
14 Jul 2011
Messages
17,872
So if you do double the number of stops, does eery large population centre still have access to a leisure area inside 2 hrs? what's the magic number for commuting? I know people already commute from Bristol & even Exeter to London but I had a 90 min commute at one point & really couldn't stand it for very long, so I'm not sure what it'd be.
Well 11 additional stations would extend the end to end journey time by ~33 minutes (if we assume negligible additional track length).
That would take us to about 3hr24 end to end.

It depends how you position the stations though obviously.

There are a couple of reasonable targets, but probably not eleven.

How does cross-channel travel look if you converted the chunnel?
You lose the shuttle unfortunately, so I can't see it being worth it

Not much interest in the thread, depresingly.

But I did look into Basingstoke and Bletchley as station locations.

Basingstoke gives much better access to the South East.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top