We need High speed Rail, but Is HS2 really Needed?

[Ianno87]

Here are a few reservations that I have about the current HS2 plans. Where shall I get started?

The idea of having separate branches for Manchester and Glasgow rather than a through line connecting them both is just absurd. Why would you just want to allow travellers from London to reach these two cities, and not link them with each other? The idea of putting as many cities as possibly on their own deprecate branch lines has got to be a joke, given that the very purpose of any line is to link places together, not to drive them apart from each other up different branches.

OK, lets assume for argument's sake that the HS2 Main Line is London to somewhere around Preston via Birmingham and Manchester City Centres.

To meet demand (and ignoring other possible destinations for a second), you *still *need 8 trains per hour south of Birmingham to meet the combined demand of Glasgow (2tph), Manchester (3tph) and Birmingham (3tph) to London, which *is* where the demand is, whether you like it or not.

So you're sending all passengers from Glasgow on a detour without really saving any operational cost (and probably increasing it slightly in fact) to justify it, whilst also making the operation of the Birmingham and Manchester city centre stations more complex with trains that are not providing useful capacity there (being in excess of requirements)

And all this is before you've considered the complexity of engineering cross-city high speed infrastructure for these cities!

 

[BluePenguin]

Only if it is connected to HS1 in such a way that enables through journeys to be made from North West to South East. Otherwise no HS2 is not needed and will not provide any benefit over strolling over to Euston.

 

[DavidGrain]

Putting the big cities on branch lines does make sense as it avoids the need to construct lines both north and south of the city centre with the cost of land acquisition and/or tunneling. Also with terminating trains stopped at platforms for longer periods you would need through lines to run either through the centre of the station or, better operationally, each side of the station. I am assuming that with the speed of the through trains you would need much more than the classic 6 footway between the tracks.

 

[si404]

Only if it is connected to HS1 in such a way that enables through journeys to be made from North West to South East. Otherwise no HS2 is not needed and will not provide any benefit over strolling over to Euston.

Translation: I don't care whether my train from Euston to Manchester has twice the seats and takes 66 minutes rather than 126 minutes, all I care about is removing the 'stroll' between London termini that I'm not that bothered about doing anyway...

 

[BluePenguin]

Translation: I don't care whether my train from Euston to Manchester has twice the seats and takes 66 minutes rather than 126 minutes, all I care about is removing the 'stroll' between London termini that I'm not that bothered about doing anyway...

Pretty much, although transferring between any London termini is something I hate doing and is something to be avoided and I am very very bothered about it - but not as much as transferring to Paddington with suitcases. Euston is at least walkable from St Pancras even if it is a few minutes slightly longer than from Kings Cross.

Although more seats will be nice and father journies are always welcome, I always have a seat reservation and some of the time saving is always lost immediately when transferring trains. Especially when an an hour is enforced by advance ticket itineraries.

 

[matacaster]

Once HS2, the commuter railway, is built from London to Birmingham I reckon that will remove the capacity problems between Manchester and London, most of which are at the southern en d of the route. I can't for the life of me see HS2 getting beyond Birmingham. Both northern legs of HS2 will in due course wither on the vine of cost, its's already been put back a year and Londoners will want and likely get crossrail 2,3,4,5, 6 etc first. All that is needed to solve the capacity issue from Leeds to London is to divert some Leeds trains to Birmingham and have a connection to HS2 there, plus some track straightening etc between Leeds and Sheffield to bring journey times Leeds to London to similar to now. Why go to huge expense to provide more capacity when you can just run classic trains on HS2. There is no need for 225MPH London to Birmingham the journey time is fine now, so use existing Azuma train design, have max speed 140 and existing trains can use the new route!

HS3 / Northern Powerhouse has degenerated from a high speed link from Newcastle to Liverpool to something that will barely reach 125 mph and will morph into a few piecemeal upgrades. What the north needs is LONGER trains (ie capacity) on Northern Powerhouse, and around 100mph would be fine with route straightening -sending it via Bradford will in due course found to be ruinously expensive due to lengthy tunnelling.

 

[Ianno87]

Pretty much, although transferring between any London termini is something I hate doing and is something to be avoided and I am very very bothered about it - but not as much as transferring to Paddington with suitcases. Euston is at least walkable from St Pancras even if it is a few minutes slightly longer than from Kings Cross.

Hate transferring Euston-Paddington with suitcases?

Well, good news! HS2 will stop at Old Oak Common on its way to Euston, where you'll have a same station change onto any GWML service you like!

 

[AndrewE]

Hate transferring Euston-Paddington with suitcases?

Well, good news! HS2 will stop at Old Oak Common on its way to Euston, where you'll have a same station change onto any GWML service you like!

Excellent... but the question that won't go away is "why waste so much time and money going to Euston?"

 

[Ianno87]

Excellent... but the question that won't go away is "why waste so much time and money going to Euston?"

As explained upthread.... It splits the passenger loading across two London stations, to spread out the inpact on the tube network, and maximise the number of lines connected to, thus onward connections.

Plus Euston is Zone 1, Old Oak isn't.

If it only went to Old Oak, then people would *really* be moaning about not getting to HS1!

 

[The Ham]

Once HS2, the commuter railway, is built from London to Birmingham I reckon that will remove the capacity problems between Manchester and London, most of which are at the southern en d of the route. I can't for the life of me see HS2 getting beyond Birmingham. Both northern legs of HS2 will in due course wither on the vine of cost, its's already been put back a year and Londoners will want and likely get crossrail 2,3,4,5, 6 etc first. All that is needed to solve the capacity issue from Leeds to London is to divert some Leeds trains to Birmingham and have a connection to HS2 there, plus some track straightening etc between Leeds and Sheffield to bring journey times Leeds to London to similar to now. Why go to huge expense to provide more capacity when you can just run classic trains on HS2. There is no need for 225MPH London to Birmingham the journey time is fine now, so use existing Azuma train design, have max speed 140 and existing trains can use the new route!

HS3 / Northern Powerhouse has degenerated from a high speed link from Newcastle to Liverpool to something that will barely reach 125 mph and will morph into a few piecemeal upgrades. What the north needs is LONGER trains (ie capacity) on Northern Powerhouse, and around 100mph would be fine with route straightening -sending it via Bradford will in due course found to be ruinously expensive due to lengthy tunnelling.

I would suggest that there's no space at the likes Manchester and Leeds for extra services. As such there would need to be a station rebuild to accommodate extra services. If you are doing that then the extra for 400m platforms probably isn't much more, but gains you a lot of extra capacity.

Then you would run into problems with getting extra trains into those cities, as such there's a need for extra lines. Again the extra cost of of those being HS lines is fairly small.

As such the cost of not building all of the route probably wouldn't save much over all the small projects which would be needed to run a reasonable service.

 

[AndrewE]

As explained upthread.... It splits the passenger loading across two London stations, to spread out the inpact on the tube network, and maximise the number of lines connected to, thus onward connections. Plus Euston is Zone 1, Old Oak isn't.

so change it then. A bigger zone 1? an isolated Zone 1 island? I'm sure a solution could be found.

If it only went to Old Oak, then people would *really* be moaning about not getting to HS1!

Not if it went deep, called at somewhere else useful, then terminated at Ebbsfleet or Ashford.

 

[HSTEd]

so change it then. A bigger zone 1? an isolated Zone 1 island? I'm sure a solution could be found. Not if it went deep, called at somewhere else useful, then terminated at Ebbsfleet or Ashford.

About the only public transport options available at Old Oak are Crossrail and the GWML Suburbans.
Euston has far more options available, and I doubt even Crossrail would cope with the entire HS2 load dumped on it.

 

[AndrewE]

About the only public transport options available at Old Oak are Crossrail and the GWML Suburbans.
Euston has far more options available, and I doubt even Crossrail would cope with the entire HS2 load dumped on it.

Now, maybe. But given that this is a massive investment for the UK don't you thing something more imaginative could have been done? It's not only for the benefit of inner London - well it is, but it shouldn't be.

 

[grumpyoldman01]

Another is the sheer haphazardness of it all - if this were China, HS1 and HS2 would have been planned together in one master plan, and most likely as just one line. Why couldn’t we have been a more ‘joined up’ in our thinking and planned them as one?

There is no rule that says that London-Kent/Paris has to be a different line from London-Birmingham/Glasgow, particularly when they form the same axis, anymore than Shanghai-Nanjing has to be a different line from Nanjing-Beijing which they aren’t.

BR's original plan for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link was conceived in such a way that it could easily have been extended to the north; it tunneled under London, and terminated in through platforms mainly beneath King's Cross. The route continued north to connect with the MML, and this was connected to the NLL by a new connection near West Hampstead Thameslink; if I remember correctly, the Eurostars would have been maintained at Cricklewood.

However, an alternative route was put forward (by Arup?), and this had political advantages over BR's route as it had the potential to attract investment to Thameside/East London; wasn't Heseltine involved in the route selection process?

The possibility of extending the CTRL northwards was, therefore, a direct consequence of BR's original plan

 

[richieb1971]

London is the problem that needs solving nothing else. It's the hardest place to build and the place everywhere must go. Euston is a weak place to terminate and is stp for hs1. Whilst we must adhere to these unwritten rules that you always use a pre existing place we will continue to hit bottlenecks before no time at all.

 

[Hetlana]

About the only public transport options available at Old Oak are Crossrail and the GWML Suburbans.
Euston has far more options available, and I doubt even Crossrail would cope with the entire HS2 load dumped on it.

Now, maybe. But given that this is a massive investment for the UK don't you thing something more imaginative could have been done? It's not only for the benefit of inner London - well it is, but it shouldn't be.

That is why I hate the fact that we don’t do joined up planning back in the UK and that we couldn’t have somehow done the obvious thing and plan HS1 and 2 and Crossrail all in one.

If this were China, or even Berlin, I’m sure that both lines would have been planned together, and rather than messing about with old termini like Euston and St Pancras, we’d be building a fresh new Hauptbahnhof, most likely at Old Oak Common to link the two with each other and with Crossrail.

And while we’re at it, we’d be joining the WCML, the GWML and the Chiltern Mainline (via the New North Mainline) together at Old Oak, to make it a true Hauptbahnhof, because the opportunities there are endless to bring those three mainlines together.

And while we’re at it, why not make Old Oak the new terminus for all three such lines, plus HS2, and free up some trackbed into, say Euston, for say housing.

In Berlin and many other German cities, they’ve pretty much done away with the ‘traditional’ rings of terminus stations with these mega-stations now being the norm, and it’s made things much more convenient.

Now, I’ve said that OOC would have been made the ‘terminus’, but like I and other people have argued it should actually also be a through station for some trains with HS1 and HS2 having trains travel from one onto the other.

Why not do the German thing and have intercity and express trains run through London and do what they did in Berlin back at the end of the nineteenth century, and build an express Crossrail for them?

This would allow Azumas from Bristol to run on to Norwich and javelins from Ashford to run on to Heathrow.

The fact that our planners have never considered any of this and are the best in the world for missing opportunities is what makes me so disappointed.

 

[richieb1971]

Whoa. Yes it's disappointing because we keep doing things the way we always have. Is it thinking outside the box if we copy better examples from overseas?

The only problem with through trains is passport control. I don't have an answer for it but continent is managing.

 

[The Ham]

OOC will, by connecting with the GWML will allow a lot of people from the Reading, Basingstoke, Southampton and Swindon areas to fairly easily connect with HS2.

Add in trains running through Heathrow over the Southern Approach and onto Guildford London and, to a lesser extent, Basingstoke and you open up access to Woking, Guildford, Farnborough, Petersfield, Portsmouth, Waterloo and the like, and quite a large area of the SWR network and possibly beyond within a change or two of being on a HS2 service.

 

[Ianno87]

Now, maybe. But given that this is a massive investment for the UK don't you thing something more imaginative could have been done? It's not only for the benefit of inner London - well it is, but it shouldn't be.

So the solution to avoid expensive tunnelled infrastructure into Euston is..... expensive tunnelled infrastructure?

 

[Ianno87]

OOC will, by connecting with the GWML will allow a lot of people from the Reading, Basingstoke, Southampton and Swindon areas to fairly easily connect with HS2.

Add in trains running through Heathrow over the Southern Approach and onto Guildford London and, to a lesser extent, Basingstoke and you open up access to Woking, Guildford, Farnborough, Petersfield, Portsmouth, Waterloo and the like, and quite a large area of the SWR network and possibly beyond within a change or two of being on a HS2 service.

There are also still aspirations to have stations on the nearby Overground routes, so orbital links all around inner London too.

 

[Ianno87]

so change it then. A bigger zone 1? an isolated Zone 1 island?

By Zone 1, I mean the Central Activities Zone (CAZ). i.e. where jobs and commercial opportunities are concentrated.

 

[B&I]

That is why I hate the fact that we don’t do joined up planning back in the UK and that we couldn’t have somehow done the obvious thing and plan HS1 and 2 and Crossrail all in one.

If this were China, or even Berlin, I’m sure that both lines would have been planned together, and rather than messing about with old termini like Euston and St Pancras, we’d be building a fresh new Hauptbahnhof, most likely at Old Oak Common to link the two with each other and with Crossrail.

And while we’re at it, we’d be joining the WCML, the GWML and the Chiltern Mainline (via the New North Mainline) together at Old Oak, to make it a true Hauptbahnhof, because the opportunities there are endless to bring those three mainlines together.

And while we’re at it, why not make Old Oak the new terminus for all three such lines, plus HS2, and free up some trackbed into, say Euston, for say housing.

In Berlin and many other German cities, they’ve pretty much done away with the ‘traditional’ rings of terminus stations with these mega-stations now being the norm, and it’s made things much more convenient.

Now, I’ve said that OOC would have been made the ‘terminus’, but like I and other people have argued it should actually also be a through station for some trains with HS1 and HS2 having trains travel from one onto the other.

Why not do the German thing and have intercity and express trains run through London and do what they did in Berlin back at the end of the nineteenth century, and build an express Crossrail for them?

This would allow Azumas from Bristol to run on to Norwich and javelins from Ashford to run on to Heathrow.

The fact that our planners have never considered any of this and are the best in the world for missing opportunities is what makes me so disappointed.

Why not find some way of improving long-distance services outside London, rather than feed yet more people through it who don't need to be there, at eye-watering cost ? After all, can't most German cities be reached from each other via ICE services without goinf via Berlin, which (rather like London) is stuck in one corner of the country ?

 

[quantinghome]

Why not find some way of improving long-distance services outside London, rather than feed yet more people through it who don't need to be there, at eye-watering cost ? After all, can't most German cities be reached from each other via ICE services without goinf via Berlin, which (rather like London) is stuck in one corner of the country ?

If only the plans for HS2 included direct services between regional cities...

News flash! They do!

 

[quantinghome]

so change it then. A bigger zone 1? an isolated Zone 1 island? I'm sure a solution could be found.

Zone 1 isn't some random zone drawn on a map - it represents the central activities zone for the capital. Every other country with a high speed rail network has chosen to have a station or stations in the centre of their capital city, and for good reason - it's where people want to go. It's the same reason the original main stations are built where they are.

 

[AM9]

Why not find some way of improving long-distance services outside London, rather than feed yet more people through it who don't need to be there, at eye-watering cost ? After all, can't most German cities be reached from each other via ICE services without goinf via Berlin, which (rather like London) is stuck in one corner of the country ?

Berlin is less than 100km from the Polish border and geographically, out on a limb compared with the Köln-Ruhr corridor, Frankfurt and even München. The centres that were part of West Germany are much more tightly integrated with Paris, Brussels, Zurich and of course London. Functionally, the IC services (and the demand for them) north and east of the Hartz mountains are more like (better) versions of the UK's Cross Country routes than those south and west of what was the old iron curtain frontline. The exception is them providing easy transport for politicians to/from the federal capital.

 

[AndrewE]

So the solution to avoid expensive tunnelled infrastructure into Euston is..... expensive tunnelled infrastructure?

No, I am not against expensive tunnelled infrastructure at all, I just think that the cost and disruption caused by trying to fit more platforms in at Euston are not justified, especially as it's not the main destination for people off the WCML (commuters, yes.) I would prefer to see a through station and the line continuing on to somewhere else more useful - like HS1 or Brighton.

Zone 1 isn't some random zone drawn on a map - it represents the central activities zone for the capital. Every other country with a high speed rail network has chosen to have a station or stations in the centre of their capital city, and for good reason - it's where people want to go. It's the same reason the original main stations are built where they are.

Except that Spain (at least) is putting its high-speed stations outside city centres in several places - not that I approve of that, mind. And the ststions are only where they are (not in "the City") because the railways were forbidden to penetrate the centre. Which is why teh Underground was invented, as was explained in the very good documentary presented by Michael Buerk last week.

And if Zone 1 is already has the highest economic activity it makes more sense to avoid driving it into meltdown. After all, if

BR's original plan for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link was conceived in such a way that it could easily have been extended to the north... an alternative route was put forward (by Arup?), and this had political advantages over BR's route as it had the potential to attract investment to Thameside/East London; wasn't Heseltine involved in the route selection process?

was good for spreading activity east, why not let a different side benefit too?

 

[Western Lord]

Berlin is less than 100km from the Polish border and geographically, out on a limb compared with the Köln-Ruhr corridor, Frankfurt and even München. The centres that were part of West Germany are much more tightly integrated with Paris, Brussels, Zurich and of course London. Functionally, the IC services (and the demand for them) north and east of the Hartz mountains are more like (better) versions of the UK's Cross Country routes than those south and west of what was the old iron curtain frontline. The exception is them providing easy transport for politicians to/from the federal capital.

Pre World War 2 the German rail network was very Berlin-centric. The post WW2 division of Germany, with Berlin in East Germany and cut off from the west led to the re-alignment of the West German inter city network basically on a north-south alignment.

 

[AM9]

Pre World War 2 the German rail network was very Berlin-centric. The post WW2 division of Germany, with Berlin in East Germany and cut off from the west led to the re-alignment of the West German inter city network basically on a north-south alignment.

The difference is that as well as being the administrative capital of the UK, London is quite central to UK commerce and much of the tech, industry. Berlin on the other hand is largely the political capital of Germany and plays a relatively small role in the german economy compared to London. So comparing the availability of key transport links there with those in the UK is not really that appropriate.

 

[jyte]

Jeezus sometimes I feel like these threads are groundhod day. Apologies if I fly of the rails here (hehe)

I can't for the life of me see HS2 getting beyond Birmingham.

Except for the fact that Phase 1 integrates into the existing WCML at Litchfield, some dozen miles North of Birmingham.

Londoners will want and likely get crossrail 2,3,4,5, 6 etc first.

Crossrail 2 is years off being built, and I'm not 100% sure it will. Crossrails 3-6 do not exist and I struggle to see the need for them. Crossrail is E-W, Crossrail 2 is SW-NE so maybe 3 would be NW-SE and 4 would be N-S, in which case Thameslink is Crossrail 4. Or Crossrail 0.

All that is needed to solve the capacity issue from Leeds to London.

If you're referring to capacity improvements on the ECML, those are not simple. Plus, Euston-Birmingham-Leeds is a wacky roundabout route. You want to make the North feel punished? Go ahead.

Plus some track straightening etc between Leeds and Sheffield.

"track straightening". Well, if you're talking a new 125mph alignment, that ain't cheap.

Why go to huge expense to provide more capacity when you can just run classic trains on HS2.

Because Classic trains run slower and will stuff up the pathing and capacity. You can run 20tph at 125mph, 20tph at 225mph or about half of that running a mixture of the two.

There is no need for 225MPH London to Birmingham the journey time is fine now, so use existing Azuma train design, have max speed 140 and existing trains can use the new route!

The real issue here is that the difference between building a new 140mph alignment and 225mph alignment is not great. Once you are building a new alignment, you might as well make it quick. The reason HS1 Phase 2 (Ashford-London) has a 140mph limit is that that was the best way to maximise capacity on that section of route with regularly stopping Javelins. 'On route' HS2 stops will be far less regular.

HS3 / Northern Powerhouse has degenerated from a high speed link from Newcastle to Liverpool to something that will barely reach 125 mph and will morph into a few piecemeal upgrades.

Agreed, HS3 should be built. It should be quick (aka 140mph or more) and should properly tie into Northern HS2, turning it into a 'triangle', a much more useful integrated service. Sadly/Gladly, George Osborne is no longer chancellor.

What the north needs is LONGER trains (ie capacity) on Northern Powerhouse, and around 100mph would be fine with route straightening

To me this reads as if you are advocating for 'piecemeal' upgrades. If you decide to stick within the existing scope of the alignment, you will butt heads with the rules of physics pretty quickly having spent a silly amount of money. Why not just build a new alignmentt?

The reality is that a wide variety of alternatives have been studied for HS2, and having looked at those studies, they're solid. HS2 is the best way to better provide better North-South capacity.

 

[DavidGrain]

A comment I made on my return from my first visit to Berlin in 1998 was to compare the Stadtbahn with putting the entire rail network of London north of the Thames through the City Widened Lines (now the Hammersmith and City Line). I was also confused because my train tickets were made out to Berlin Stadtbahnhof, a station that did not then exist on the Berlin railway map.