One quite striking thing about German high-speed rail development compared with HS2, or France LGVs, is a lot of their high-speed lines are much shorter, and built strategically to fill gaps in their network.
So for instance, the Mannheim–Stuttgart high-speed line line is just 61 miles long, Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle is 76 miles. They are planning Hanau-Gelnhausen as well which is something like 15 miles.
Are there any places in the UK where short-ish lines might be appropriate?
Obviously HS3/NPR from Liverpool to Leeds via Manchester might fall into this category
There have been ideas floating around Glasgow to Edinburgh, too.
Are there any others that might make sense?
One idea that I think would make sense is a line between Leicester and Coventry. It currently takes over an hour between tho cities with a change (which have populations of 350,000 and 325,000 respectively and only 24 miles apart).
A line could connect to the existing line at Exhall at one end and join the Midland Main Line south of Wigston to avoid constructing in built-up areas, and partially follow the M69 route. It could probably get the journey between the two cities down to something like 15-20 minutes (its 26 miles by road and takes 44 minutes in a car).
If you combined it with a re-doubling, electrification, and junctions with HS2 on part of the Leamington to Coventry line, you'd in theory be able to run HS2 services from London to Coventry and Leicester.
London-Coventry would be down from an hour to about 25 minutes, London-Leicester 40 minutes down from an hour, and you could potentially continue services to Nottingham on the MML which would be good for regional connectivity – Coventry Nottingham is currently just under two hours by train and requires a change despite the two fairly large cities being 40 miles apart! (You'd probably be looking at 40 minutes Leicester to Nottingham assuming the only thing you did to the MML was electrify it.)
There wouldn't be the slots on HS2 phase 1 to do the London services at the moment, but were a future eastern high speed line to take some of the traffic to Yorkshire off HS2, it would be a good candidate for using the rest of the capacity (and also justify building the line via Cambridge/Lincoln/Doncaster instead of via Leicester.)
So for instance, the Mannheim–Stuttgart high-speed line line is just 61 miles long, Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle is 76 miles. They are planning Hanau-Gelnhausen as well which is something like 15 miles.
Are there any places in the UK where short-ish lines might be appropriate?
Obviously HS3/NPR from Liverpool to Leeds via Manchester might fall into this category
There have been ideas floating around Glasgow to Edinburgh, too.
Are there any others that might make sense?
One idea that I think would make sense is a line between Leicester and Coventry. It currently takes over an hour between tho cities with a change (which have populations of 350,000 and 325,000 respectively and only 24 miles apart).
A line could connect to the existing line at Exhall at one end and join the Midland Main Line south of Wigston to avoid constructing in built-up areas, and partially follow the M69 route. It could probably get the journey between the two cities down to something like 15-20 minutes (its 26 miles by road and takes 44 minutes in a car).
If you combined it with a re-doubling, electrification, and junctions with HS2 on part of the Leamington to Coventry line, you'd in theory be able to run HS2 services from London to Coventry and Leicester.
London-Coventry would be down from an hour to about 25 minutes, London-Leicester 40 minutes down from an hour, and you could potentially continue services to Nottingham on the MML which would be good for regional connectivity – Coventry Nottingham is currently just under two hours by train and requires a change despite the two fairly large cities being 40 miles apart! (You'd probably be looking at 40 minutes Leicester to Nottingham assuming the only thing you did to the MML was electrify it.)
There wouldn't be the slots on HS2 phase 1 to do the London services at the moment, but were a future eastern high speed line to take some of the traffic to Yorkshire off HS2, it would be a good candidate for using the rest of the capacity (and also justify building the line via Cambridge/Lincoln/Doncaster instead of via Leicester.)
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