northwichcat
Veteran Member
Rail Technology Magazine said:The railway across the north needs a bigger, more expensive, and transformational solution to fix its historical lack of investment, because what is committed now simply is not enough, rail bosses have said.
The leaders of Transport for the North (TfN) and Northern Rail, David Brown and Alex Hynes, agreed that the next 44 months of the new Northern and TransPennine Express franchises will address this lack of investment, but will not provide the transformational transport infrastructure that we need to deliver to really make this one of the best regions in the world.
Speaking at the Northern Powerhouse Conference yesterday, attended by RTM, Hynes added: Someone described it to me the other day: all we want to do is travel across as fast as we can travel down.
That implies a journey time between Leeds and Manchester of 30 minutes, which is not going to be delivered by any of the current rail schemes which are funded, which is why we have to work together and say: if were going to place a value on the gap in wealth and living standards between the north and the south, then we have to do something big and we have to do something different.
Asked what this big solution would be, the Northern Rail MD said the north should focus on what outcomes it wants to deliver rather than concentrate on the specifics.
We shouldnt talk about tunnels and roads and if its 140mph trains or 225mph trains, he said. What we should be clear about is what we want the journey times to be, what we want the frequencies to be, and then clever people will design a solution.
Lets not fall into a trap, backing a technology or backing a route or backing a mode right now. Lets decide what we want to deliver.
While he acknowledged that the north needs to upgrade its current lines to provide better capacity, he said its essential to look beyond that to something much larger so that we can separate the traffic by speed, and then get the best of both worlds.
At the moment, we have to compromise all the time, Hynes added.
Agreeing with him, Brown, who is currently leading the development of a final plan for TfN, said: We have a lot of full trains at the moment. Were going to roll out some longer trains and some newer trains, which gives us some breathing space for seven to nine years. By the end of this franchise, theyll probably be full again.
You can keep making them a bit quicker and slightly longer, but at some point, that stops and therefore, if you want to build more capacity between two key points, youll need a new line.
But actually, you cant pretend that youre meeting peoples expectations by just taking a minute off of journey times and making trains better. You have to move to something which is bigger and more expensive, but is transformational.
Freight wedged in between passenger trains
The two leaders were speaking as part of a six-man panel comprised of bosses across rail and freight, including representatives from HS2 and Network Rail.
While the lions share of the debate focused on passenger services, those present also discussed the poor travel times for freight journeys due to a lack of capacity in the network.
Responding to these concerns, Hynes said: The fact of the matter is that the network is so full that those freight trains were talking about have to be wedged in between passenger trains and take all sorts of ridiculous circuitous routes.
I dont think we should defend it thats just the reality. It shows the need to invest in more infrastructure. If you cant move goods and people around your region, then that is going to throttle economic growth.
Speaking of Northern Rails upcoming franchise, which is set to replace the dreaded Pacer trains and increase service frequency, Hynes commented: Im operating 2,000 more services a week, which is going to make it even more difficult to put more freight trains through.
That is why despite all these good news in the short and medium terms, we have to help TfN make the case for more, because whats committed is not enough.
HS2 Ltds development director for phase 2, Paul Griffiths, also participating in the panel, said HS2 will be all about fixing those problems, but also about starting to put in new infrastructure.
He continued: It will be new and modern infrastructure, rather than the old Victorian infrastructure we have now and that starts to free up capacity and hopefully to provide room for trains and freight.
HS2 frees up those paths. We start to have an impact on the most congested bits of the West Coast Main Line, for example, which is pretty much full as of today.
http://www.railtechnologymagazine.c...l-not-deliver-transformational-infrastructure
George Osborne was warned you can't keep operating more services without infrastructure improvements back in 2007 when he was backing 3tph between London and Manchester when there weren't paths to allow it without local service cutbacks. It seems that he still hasn't taken that feedback on board.