HS2 high-speed London-Birmingham route rail project - discussion

[Bahnhof Strasse]

No, it's going to be organised by among others my local SP branch. if you think that HS2 is just going to be opposed by daily mail reading twats then you are wrong. it's going to go through parkland on an estate in some cases hundreds of metres from people's houses. I actually do think we need high speed rail but just not this one tbh.

Not hundreds of meters away from people's houses and through parkland

*packs climbing and tunnelling gear

*realises HS2 not going through a school classroom with kiddies still inside it

*unpacks climbing and tunnelling shit

 

[frogwoman]

ah jesus.

most people round here don't want it. it will bring no benefit to anyone round here. people would accept it if occasionally it stopped at places like wycombe and aylesbury but it won't, it will push up the prices of those train services which won't come any more frequently and will even come less frequently. not to mention that the price of hs2 tickets will make it unaffordable for many people to travel.

 

[frogwoman]

Well then they'll have to put up with a railway line a few hundred metres away for a while. Are their objections anything other than pure NIMBYISM?

Yes. The fact that it doesn't stop in aylesbury and wycombe. The fact that this rich man's train set is just gonna be unaffordable for most people. The fact that it's not necessary. Investment in railway lines is badly needed, and there are already trains going from London to Birmingham and also fast ones, what this will do is just cut 20-30 mins off the journey time.

 

[Crispy]

people would accept it if occasionally it stopped at places like wycombe and aylesbury but it won't, it will push up the prices of those train services which won't come any more frequently and will even come less frequently.

Do you have a source for that? Because one of the key benefits of HS2 is that it will free up capacity on the WCML, allowing for more stopping services on that line. Wycomb and Aylesbury aren't even on the WCML, so quite why those stations will see any alteration in services is a mystery to me.

 

[frogwoman]

wycombe is, aylesbury may not be.

 

[Crispy]

I assume we're talking High Wycombe? That's on the Chiltern main line route, not the WCML.

 

[BigTom]

Yes. The fact that it doesn't stop in aylesbury and wycombe. The fact that this rich man's train set is just gonna be unaffordable for most people. The fact that it's not necessary. Investment in railway lines is badly needed, and there are already trains going from London to Birmingham and also fast ones, what this will do is just cut 20-30 mins off the journey time.

The cut in journey time is not the only (or main) benefit.. it's about freeing up capacity for more trains on the West Coast Mainline by taking high speed trains off those tracks onto separate ones. There'd be no point in having high speed trains if there were lots of stops..
Hopefully once the tracks are built up to Manchester, Leeds and beyond it'll also have a real effect on domestic flights, which need to end.

I think we have to have HS2. I have absolutely no idea at all if the proposed route is the best route for it.. but don't ignore the real benefits of it when you are criticising it. If you fairly regularly travel on the wcml from Birmingham to London then you know that it can't cope with more demand. Only the most off peak times have empty seats ime (anyone has any real stats on this would be interesting, obviously my experience does not constitute data). And we have to get people out of planes and cars and onto trains.

e2a: the wcml is the one that virgin trains run on isn't it? from New Street to Euston? Or is does it run to Reading?

 

[skyscraper101]

We'll see just how much capacity is freed when the prices for HS2 get published. It's not like its going to cost anywhere near as cheap as the prices of regular 20-minute slower trains.

 

[frogwoman]

i'm not saying that we don't need HS2,I actually think we do, but not this one.

 

[BigTom]

i'm not saying that we don't need HS2,I actually think we do, but not this one.

Is there an alternative route proposed?

 

[bi0boy]

Is there an alternative route proposed?

That route which doesn't go within hundreds of metres of anyone's house, or across parkland, or near any settlements where it won't have a station.

 

[frogwoman]

don't think so.

 

[bi0boy]

don't think so.

It's called flying. If we want less flying, we have to accept things going over the land.

 

[BigTom]

don't think so.

See, that's the problem.. aside from the cost of using the fucking thing, which I agree with completely, all the other objections are nimbyism imo. It annoys me that people focus on the drop in journey times when the main benefit is about capacity building, and creating a substitute for flights when it extends further north (which is about journey time of course).

Wherever this thing goes it's going to cut through parkland, forests etc. in principle, I think that is better than keeping the flights and/or putting extra capacity on motorways.
Unless you can show that there is a better route, one which affects less people and habitats, then you're going to struggle to get widespread resistance to this I think. I know that I won't get involved (on either side) with a campaign, because I don't have any idea about what route it should take.

 

[BigTom]

We'll see just how much capacity is freed when the prices for HS2 get published. It's not like its going to cost anywhere near as cheap as the prices of regular 20-minute slower trains.

From what I understand you are wrong, because what this will do is allow more trains to run on the regular tracks, which means more capacity even if the same number of people are using it.
Obviously the closer the prices are, the more people will shift over to HS2, but even if they don't do so in any real numbers, there will still be more capacity on the tracks.

I'm sure one of the railway geeks on here will be able to explain this or tell me I'm wrong

 

[Crispy]

It will enable more stopping trains on the regular tracks.

Capacity on a line is directly related to how similar the traffic is. If all the trains on the line go at the same speed at stop at the same stations, then you can run them very close together. This is why the tube can have 40 trains an hour on the busiest lines - all the trains are identical and they stop at all stations.

The WCML does triple duty as inter-city, suburban and freight. All three service types have different line speeds and stopping patterns, thus reducing capacity. Although some parts of the line are quad-tracked and can therefore separate the slow from the fast services, the two-track sections and restrictions due to tunnels/bridges/ station layouts etc. mean that it still has its capacity constrained by the service mix. The multi billion upgrades that were finished last year have pushed it as high as it can reasonably go.

So, in order for HS2 to actually deliver on its capacity promise, all (or nearly all) the high-speed traffic has to be removed from the WCML. If HS2 tickets are overpriced, then the WCML fast trains will still be in demand, the WCML will still be inefficient and the new line will have failed. There will be intense political pressure to keep the ticket price down, IMO.

 

[frogwoman]

nah if the WCL is the route I'm thinking of it doesn't go Reading it goes New Street/Snow Hill - Marylebone. That's another thing. There are already trains going in this direction and there are not enough of them. I fully agree with you about the capacity etc (although that's by no means the only route in the country with that problem - Didcot Parkway - London is the worst capacity route in the country). but couldn't this problem just be solved by putting on more trains? its fucking ridiculous that on a weeknight you have to wait one and a half hours for a train between two reasonably sized towns which are half an hour away from each other. There has been disruption on that route for years now while they've been repairing the track. we have a crumbling railway infrastucture round here and instead of building this thing why can't they just concentrate on that?

 

[frogwoman]

irrc the hs2 won't allow for freight trains, although i could be wrong on this.

 

[Crispy]

nah if the WCL is the route I'm thinking of it doesn't go Reading it goes New Street/Snow Hill - Marylebone.

That's the Chiltern line, not the WCL.

That's another thing. There are already trains going in this direction and there are not enough of them. I fully agree with you about the capacity etc (although that's by no means the only route in the country with that problem - Didcot Parkway - London is the worst capacity route in the country). but couldn't this problem just be solved by putting on more trains?

It's not that simple. The number of trains you can run is governed by the track and signalling, and the mixture of services. Most of our existing infrastructure is already running at capacity.

its fucking ridiculous that on a weeknight you have to wait one and a half hours for a train between two reasonably sized towns which are half an hour away from each other. There has been disruption on that route for years now while they've been repairing the track. we have a crumbling railway infrastucture round here and instead of building this thing why can't they just concentrate on that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiltern_Main_Line#Project_Evergreen_3
£250m is being spent on capacity and line speed improvements on the Chiltern line. This is probably what's causing the disruption you're talking about.

irrc the hs2 won't allow for freight trains, although i could be wrong on this.

It will be used for freight at night. As it will be built to European loading gauge, it will be able to carry European freight containers - a big deal indeed.

 

[BigTom]

Which is the WCL? Is it the one that runs through New Street and goes to Euston, or is it the one that runs from Birmingham to Reading (and on to paddington - although the trains from brum all go on to southampton I think)?

 

[bi0boy]

WCML is Euston -> Birmingham International
Chiltern Line is Marylebone -> Birmingham Snow Hill
Cross Country is Reading -> Birmingham etc

 

[laptop]

[HS2] will be used for freight at night. As it will be built to European loading gauge, it will be able to carry European freight containers - a big deal indeed.

Does that mean a lot of bridge works on (for example) the North London Line to link in to the network?

 

[ViolentPanda]

No, it's going to be organised by among others my local SP branch. if you think that HS2 is just going to be opposed by daily mail reading twats then you are wrong. it's going to go through parkland on an estate in some cases hundreds of metres from people's houses. I actually do think we need high speed rail but just not this one tbh.

TBF, froggie, going by places that are 100 meters from HS1, the sound baffles mean that there's no more noise than if you were a 100 meters from a standard railway cutting. I've got relatives in Kent who live closer to HS1 than that (between Ashford and the Channel Tunnel mouth. They've had no noise problems, and they're very "stand up for your rights" oldies who'd have complained like buggery if their sleep was being interrupted.

The parkland angle is a bastard, though. Losing amenities that usually don't get replaced is always a cunt.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Well then they'll have to put up with a railway line a few hundred metres away for a while. Are their objections anything other than pure NIMBYISM?

Well, there's loss of local amenity, if the parkland isn't replaced with more parkland elsewhere local, and given the price of developable land in that part of Surrey, replacement is unlikely.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Not hundreds of meters away from people's houses and through parkland

*packs climbing and tunnelling gear

*realises HS2 not going through a school classroom with kiddies still inside it

*unpacks climbing and tunnelling shit

You use shit for tunneling? How does that work?

 

[ViolentPanda]

See, that's the problem.. aside from the cost of using the fucking thing, which I agree with completely, all the other objections are nimbyism imo. It annoys me that people focus on the drop in journey times when the main benefit is about capacity building, and creating a substitute for flights when it extends further north (which is about journey time of course).

Wherever this thing goes it's going to cut through parkland, forests etc. in principle, I think that is better than keeping the flights and/or putting extra capacity on motorways.
Unless you can show that there is a better route, one which affects less people and habitats, then you're going to struggle to get widespread resistance to this I think. I know that I won't get involved (on either side) with a campaign, because I don't have any idea about what route it should take.

Mind you, Tom, it's peculiar how these sorts of developments always seem to impact most heavily on "the lower orders", isn't it?

 

[laptop]

It annoys me that people focus on the drop in journey times when the main benefit is about capacity building...

But capacity's a bit abstract, isn't it? Hard to fit into the sentence "What this would mean for you is..." without going on for a paragraph.

 

[bi0boy]

Mind you, Tom, it's peculiar how these sorts of developments always seem to impact most heavily on "the lower orders", isn't it?

No, given that most of the population are in "the lower orders". In fact I'd say it will impact most heavily on those in "the higher orders" who will no longer be able to keep their horses in the gardens or might only be able to have their homes compulsorily purchased for £1.2million instead of the £1.5million their friend from Country Life magazine said they could get.

 

[ViolentPanda]

No, given that most of the population are in "the lower orders". In fact I'd say it will impact most heavily on those in "the higher orders" who will no longer be able to keep their horses in the gardens or might only be able to have their homes compulsorily purchased for £1.2million instead of the £1.5million their friend from Country Life magazine said they could get.

It's a sarcastic remark aimed at the fact that historically, it's been working class areas that get flattened to make way for new rail development, and yet when it impacts on the better-off, we hear shrieks and wails in the media about how The Hon. Tristram Fudge-Packer will lose the bottom 400 (IIRC one of the papers did a 5 page spread on a load of "county set"-types who were being oppressed by HS2), but bugger all about how "ordinary people" are being affected.
Now, as I recall, about 90 toff homes or their grounds will be affected, according to what someone posted earlier in the thread. Me, I'm not particularly bothered about 90 people having hassle, when others who'll be affected, but don't have the social capital to get their complaints paid attention to, don't have the same forum for their issues about the line.

BTW, £1.5 million in the Chilterns? Are they living in a bothy?

 

[Reno]

Anything from 200 to 450 council tenants in Camden are at risk of losing their homes thanks to HS2.