"Rail’s growth agenda evaporates as Treasury takes control"

[Watershed]

I guess we are talking around a £750k - £1m cost of staffing gates round the clock but I note that Southern are prepared to do that at Reigate and 100 other stations. I would imagine that the potential evening revenue loss at Reigate is less than it is at a Southeastern station in London.

I can't imagine that it costs £100m to staff Southern's barrier lines.

 

[JonathanH]

I can't imagine that it costs £100m to staff Southern's barrier lines.

No, oops, I might be a factor of 7 out. If that is the case, then even less reason not to install gates at all Southeastern suburban stations and staff them from first to last trains, just like Southern, TfL and others do.

 

[Starmill]

No, the "elephant in the room" for Northampton isn't Leicester. I've posted this before, but in almost 2 decades of living in Northampton I've yet to meet anyone who regularly travels to Leicester for work or leisure. Birmingham, yep, Coventry, yes, Milton Keynes, definitely, London, absolutely, even one or two for Oxford.

The claim there is sufficient demand to support a rail reinstatement between Leicester and Northampton is laughable.

I think it's pretty irrelevant anyway really, anyone from Northampton who needs to get to Leicester will use a train from Wellingborough or Kettering, connecting with a bus, or just driving there instead of to Northampton station. Unless the argument is about a train service from Northampton to Wellingborough.

 

[tomuk]

I think it's pretty irrelevant anyway really, anyone from Northampton who needs to get to Leicester will use a train from Wellingborough or Kettering, connecting with a bus, or just driving there instead of to Northampton station. Unless the argument is about a train service from Northampton to Wellingborough.

Why would anybody drive 20-30mins to Wellingborough to get the train when they can drive straight up the M1 in 50mins to 1hr.

 

[Starmill]

Why would anybody drive 20-30mins to Wellingborough to get the train when they can drive straight up the M1 in 50mins to 1hr.

If you take the market as the start point it's 12 miles to Wellingborough railway station via the A45 and 42 miles to Leicester railway station via the M1. Not a good case for rail at all given there aren't many direct trains but absolutely not no case.

In reality it will depend where exactly in Northampton you wish to start from.

 

[LesF]

On the contrary, I would arguet hat HS2 needs to be the last thing to be cut.

HS2 actually offers the potential for attracting new revenue streams and will be considerably cheaper to operate than conventional railway infrastructure.

Can you qualify those claims? Who would make a journey by HS2 who wouldn't have travelled by the existing fast services? HS2's own projections rely heavily on the transfer of existing passengers to HS2 and on leisure travellers who will not want to pay premium fares. The passenger numbers claimed by HS2 would only be achieved if you PAID people to ride it!
As for operating costs, projects of the magnitude of HS2 always have expensive teething problems and are typically into first maintenance before the problems are sorted. The slab track favoured by HS2 costs twice as much initially, saves a lot on maintenance in the early years, then a heck of a lot when it has to be replaced, as the Germans have found.

 

[Starmill]

Who would make a journey by HS2 who wouldn't have travelled by the existing fast services?

Rather a large number of people. But this is still the wrong question even so, because a single person moved from existing services to HS2 services creates more than one additional person space on the conventional network.

The passenger numbers claimed by HS2 would only be achieved if you PAID people to ride it!

This is obviously wrong.

 

[HSTEd]

Can you qualify those claims? Who would make a journey by HS2 who wouldn't have travelled by the existing fast services?

People who don't want to spend two hours travelling between Manchester and London?

Are you suggesting that slashing journey times to key load centres won't encourage additional travel?
Would that be virtually the first time ever that has been the case?

HS2's own projections rely heavily on the transfer of existing passengers to HS2 and on leisure travellers who will not want to pay premium fares. The passenger numbers claimed by HS2 would only be achieved if you PAID people to ride it!

What HS2's pre coronavirus projections say is only part of the question.

The fact remains that moving a passenger between stations on HS2 will cost much less than doing so on a conventional train.
High capacity trains, making many more round trips than conventional trains with far less crew, and likely higher seating density due to the much shorter journeys.

Any journey that can be made on HS2 would be cheapest for the railway to provide using HS2.

The cheapest way for the railway to move someone from London to Birmingham/Manchester etc is not to put them on a Class 350 or something on the WCML, its to buy an Avelia Horizon, configure it for single class operation with 740 seats per 200m set and put it to work on shuttles, possibly coupled to other trains.

A high speed set coupled to another set that was going to run anyway has no staff operating costs at all. Even if you have to run it specially you have half a crew member per set!

The operational savings from completing rationalising away the long distance Chiltern operations, gutting most of the ICWC and WCML slow long distance trains and pushing as many passengers onto HS2 as possible is far greater than the costs of operating HS2.

Especially if you just mothball lines like Stone-Colwich which serve little purpose in the post HS2 world.

 

[The Planner]

Especially if you just mothball lines like Stone-Colwich which serve little purpose in the post HS2 world.

Done to death, it has a use (including to HS2) and would unlikely save a vast amount in the long run.

 

[domcoop7]

I don't want to divert this thread into HS2, but...

Can you qualify those claims? Who would make a journey by HS2 who wouldn't have travelled by the existing fast services? HS2's own projections rely heavily on the transfer of existing passengers to HS2 and on leisure travellers who will not want to pay premium fares. The passenger numbers claimed by HS2 would only be achieved if you PAID people to ride it!

That's just not true.

Take a look on Twitter at any number of people (including Labour politicians - Andy Burnham has done it a few times, as have others) whinging about WCML services being either too overcrowded or too expensive or both. There's thousands of them.

Or, for contrast look at the Lumo threads on here, and again, experiences reported on social media of the opening weeks.

People clearly want to travel on these routes, and people clearly feel they're too expensive (one person Tweeted that it was cheaper to fly to COP26 from London than get the train, although we all of course know they tried to get an unrestricted open period return rather than a booked cheaper service, but still). Put the fare down, and it would be standing room only on peak services, with people denied boarding being a regular occurrence (see Lumo). And this is without going into the lack of paths at Manchester and New Street, etc.

Something has to be done, and HS2 provides the answer, so even with Treasury control of GBR, they aren't going to cancel it. (Of course even if they wanted to cancel it, they're a tad too late given that it's being built already!) If HS2 isn't built, the blowback to the Government with more overcrowding, excessive fares, and misery on current fast services would become a major political issue within a few years.

(Also worth pointing out that HS2 is currently provisioned separately to NR and is under Treasury control anyway - do you seriously think they'd agree to a budget going over £100million if there wasn't a strong case for it?)

 

[The Ham]

Can you qualify those claims? Who would make a journey by HS2 who wouldn't have travelled by the existing fast services? HS2's own projections rely heavily on the transfer of existing passengers to HS2 and on leisure travellers who will not want to pay premium fares. The passenger numbers claimed by HS2 would only be achieved if you PAID people to ride it!
As for operating costs, projects of the magnitude of HS2 always have expensive teething problems and are typically into first maintenance before the problems are sorted. The slab track favoured by HS2 costs twice as much initially, saves a lot on maintenance in the early years, then a heck of a lot when it has to be replaced, as the Germans have found.

To put some numbers to those claims, what needs more coaches, running 16 coach HS2 services between London and Manchester or 11 coach existing trains?

At first glance it's reasonable to say that HS2 needs more as the services are 5 coaches long, however what's the actual answer?

First off you need to look at how long it's going to take before you can use a train for the following services from a given location.

Currently from leaving (say) London to bring able to leave London again having gone to Manchester and then come back takes 5 hours, with HS2 it'll be 3.

Therefore at 3tph you'd need 15 sets currently and 9 sets with HS2.

15 sets with 11 coaches in each is 165 coaches, whilst 9 sets with 16 coaches in each is 144 coaches.

In reality currently there's a mixture of 9 and 11 coach sets, so the difference is closer. However many suggest that the alternative to HS2 is that we run 12 coach sets, that would make matters much worse at 180 coaches.

Given that (historically) the leading of coaches cost £100,000 each, even a saving of 5 coaches is a saving of £0.5 million a year.

However with much more capacity on a HS2 service (broadly the same as a 9 and 11 coach set combined), there's plenty of extra seats to be able to sell at a lower price to still generate the same money.

The time saving also reduces staff costs, as a driver and guard on a 6 hour shift could do 2 return runs with a ~30 minute break at each end, rather than just 1 on a 5 hour shift. As such, whilst you've increased the time working by 20% you've doubled the number of passengers the driver is carrying (even if there's no extra people on each train).

If the staff costs are effectively reduced by 40% (and typically staff costs make up 1/3 of TOC costs) just that alone could allow a £100 ticket to be reduced to £90 and the TOC still make more money.

Whilst maintenance could be more expensive, track access charges are measured in pence per mile, even at 30p/mile/coach on a 200 trip that's a total of £960 for a 16 coach set.

That's, at 50% loaded, a total of £2/passenger (some of which would be being paid anyway on the existing sets).

HS2 predicted a 1% shift from air, that doesn't sound much, but could be 1 million people. Likewise the 4% from road travel could be 4 million people. However many anticipate that there's are conservative estimates, given that there's 6 million air passengers between London and the Central Belt of Scotland each year and currently rail is a little slower city centre to city centre.

Now whilst half of those are making connecting flights at London, that's still 3 million who could use rail fairly easily, with the time advantage switching from flying to HS2 being marginally quicker and the potential to reduce ticket prices a little (as well as giving better connectivity to parts of the South East via Old Oak Common and maybe carbon taxes becoming more likely for flying) and there could be a significant switch from flying in that route.

There's then other routes which could also see people switch to rail from flying, which in turn could make such air routes less viable (but at least slightly more expensive as the costs are split between fewer passengers).

Even without carbon taxes, people are becoming more aware of the impact that their choices have. It's been calculated that for every 1kg of CO2 produced it results in 2,400kg of ice melting, and as such the less we produce the more ice which can be retained. As such even small changes like walking 2 miles a week rather than driving over a year is (assuming the numbers are right) a retention of 125m3 of ice.

That may sound a lot until you realise that there's 30 million km3 of ice in Antarctica alone. Whilst it's a small figure, that just one person, however if enough people did it out could be enough to keep enough of the ice sheet that there's actual assume left.

 

[fishwomp]

People who don't want to spend two hours travelling between Manchester and London?
[..]

So long as when they get to Manchester or London their local journey options for completing the journey are still there, and not culled to pay for HS2. People don't all live within walking distance of the HS2 stations.
Curzon St is getting better bus, taxi (and car drop off) provision than rail for the onward connections, so that's already a fail - but at least London and Manchester have good adjacent rail (adjacent _and_ with a platform).

 

[Bald Rick]

Curzon St is getting better bus, taxi (and car drop off) provision than rail for the onward connections, so that's already a fail

And tram, and Moor St / New St is hardly a stretch. Indeed HS2 train to Moor St at Birmingham will be a shorter distance than HS2 train to Circle line at Euston.

 

[Bletchleyite]

And tram, and Moor St / New St is hardly a stretch. Indeed HS2 train to Moor St at Birmingham will be a shorter distance than HS2 train to Circle line at Euston.

Though unless they've descoped it, doesn't the HS2 work fix that by adding an entrance that isn't half way up the road?

 

[Bald Rick]

Though unless they've descoped it, doesn't the HS2 work fix that by adding an entrance that isn't half way up the road?

Yes, but it still will be a walk of over 200m. HS2 to Moor St isn’t that. Neither is a particularly challenging walk, to be frank.

 

[Wolfie]

So long as when they get to Manchester or London their local journey options for completing the journey are still there, and not culled to pay for HS2. People don't all live within walking distance of the HS2 stations.
Curzon St is getting better bus, taxi (and car drop off) provision than rail for the onward connections, so that's already a fail - but at least London and Manchester have good adjacent rail (adjacent _and_ with a platform).

Do you actually have any knowledge of Brum at all? Curzon Street, New Street and Moor Street are all within (close!) walking distance of each other. The former will have tram links too.

And tram, and Moor St / New St is hardly a stretch. Indeed HS2 train to Moor St at Birmingham will be a shorter distance than HS2 train to Circle line at Euston.

Absolutely

 

[tomuk]

Do you actually have any knowledge of Brum at all? Curzon Street, New Street and Moor Street are all within (close!) walking distance of each other. The former will have tram links too.


Absolutely

New Street is bottom left. The main entrance of Curzon Street will be top left at junction of Freeman St and Park St. At most 200m Curzon Street to Moor Street and a further 500m to New Street.

Birmingham Moor Street

 

[Wolfie]

Yes, but it still will be a walk of over 200m. HS2 to Moor St isn’t that. Neither is a particularly challenging walk, to be frank.

Frankly there are stations where the internal walk is more than that....

 

[squizzler]

In the case of Northampton the elephant in the room is the lack of connection north to Leicester and beyond, the absence of a rail service along the M1 corridor. Rail journeys between Milton Keynes and Northampton upto Leicester are pretty much unviable due to the indirect, round-about route, even journeys upto Nottingham are uncompetitive. Compared to most of the UK transport network its rather unique in having a major motorway route without a rail alternative.

This matter will of course be addressed in due course by England Economic Heartland's proposal for for a brand new railway between Banbury to Peterborough via Northampton, so-called Northern Arc. They are proceeding with a connectivity Study. Clearly the Subnational Transport Bodies need to continue to work up the case for new investment, since rail planning and investment is long term.

 

[fishwomp]

Do you actually have any knowledge of Brum at all? Curzon Street, New Street and Moor Street are all within (close!) walking distance of each other. The former will have tram links too.


Absolutely

Sigh.. yes. If the Manchester route goes ahead, I'll likely be using it to change. Given our inter-city network is based around New Street, it's not really helpful to tell me about Moor St ("if I wanted to go there I wouldn't start from here" level of quality directions..). I'll just have a 13 min walk - door to door, not platform to platform.. Just check Google Maps for directions. 13 mins is not a close walk when you are lugging baggage or when you have any form of mobility issue..

Is it really helpful for others to suggest other stations are longer for internal walks - even if such an example of New Street - Curzon length were there, telling me that the walk from somewhere else is worse is no excuse for doing something badly today. Even if you can spend 15 minutes locked in the Maze of Gold/Silver/Bronze zones in New Street today, it's still no excuse for a poor future plan.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Sigh.. yes. If the Manchester route goes ahead, I'll likely be using it to change. Given our inter-city network is based around New Street, it's not really helpful to tell me about Moor St ("if I wanted to go there I wouldn't start from here" level of quality directions..). I'll just have a 13 min walk - door to door, not platform to platform.. Just check Google Maps for directions. 13 mins is not a close walk when you are lugging baggage or when you have any form of mobility issue..

It doesn't take 13 minutes to walk from New St to Moor St. It's about 5.

 

[Watershed]

Sigh.. yes. If the Manchester route goes ahead, I'll likely be using it to change. Given our inter-city network is based around New Street, it's not really helpful to tell me about Moor St ("if I wanted to go there I wouldn't start from here" level of quality directions..). I'll just have a 13 min walk - door to door, not platform to platform.. Just check Google Maps for directions. 13 mins is not a close walk when you are lugging baggage or when you have any form of mobility issue..

Is it really helpful for others to suggest other stations are longer for internal walks - even if such an example of New Street - Curzon length were there, telling me that the walk from somewhere else is worse is no excuse for doing something badly today. Even if you can spend 15 minutes locked in the Maze of Gold/Silver/Bronze zones in New Street today, it's still no excuse for a poor future plan.

The tram will be available for those who cannot manage the walk.

 

[Railwaysceptic]

It doesn't take 13 minutes to walk from New St to Moor St. It's about 5.

I'll have to time myself next time I do it. It seems a bit longer than that to me.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'll have to time myself next time I do it. It seems a bit longer than that to me.

Do you go through the tunnel or up through the centre? I can see the latter easily taking 13 minutes.

Google Maps thinks 6 minutes via the tunnel.

 

[Wolfie]

I'll have to time myself next time I do it. It seems a bit longer than that to me.

Certainly, even with bags, less than 10 mins and l'm waiting for an ankle op.

 

[CdBrux]

What do you propose as a solution, then? Even electric cars won't be as they still suffer congestion.

If electric cars become more self drive and able to keep a small and constant distance between them I would think they would use roadspace much more efficiently

 

[Bletchleyite]

If electric cars become more self drive and able to keep a small and constant distance between them I would think they would use roadspace much more efficiently

On motorways yes, but on urban roads cars already are very close together.

 

[CdBrux]

With regard to Northampton-MK, I suspect you would get more people doing that by rail if parking at the station were free, rather than at a very high price that is affordable if you're chucking a London fare on top but not a local one. Though the car-friendliness of MK is also an aspect of this - the other way round rail/bus might be favoured far more, again were parking free for rail users.

Could a combined parking & travel ticket address such an issue?

 

[domcoop7]

If electric cars become more self drive and able to keep a small and constant distance between them I would think they would use roadspace much more efficiently

Almost certainly true BUT full benefits would only be achieved once ALL vehicles, including cars, vans, HGVs, etc. have the self-driving mode. Which will be a long time coming.

At which point, one can also expect the population to have increased, the number of people with a car to have increased and journey times by road to still be slower - the benefits of less congestion, more consistent speed, and fewer accidents will be overtaken by volume so journey times will probably be the same as today.

 

[Annetts key]

If electric cars become more self drive and able to keep a small and constant distance between them I would think they would use roadspace much more efficiently

It’s still going to be a long time before the technology advances to the point where it becomes practical and is considered safe enough for use on public roads.