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

[redsquirrel]

Well, you said:

Which is different to your claim.

 

[platinumsage]

HS2, and providing additional capacity in the central part of the network, can help those bits of the country beyond its immediate reach though. That's as long as you make improvements there too. For those saying that there needs to be a "big picture" improvement to the public transport network, that's true, and the picture has to involve improving (massively) things like local bus services, but for proper big picture improvements you need to invest in the core as well.

For example you could put loads of investment and improvements into Scotland's rail network and the GWML, and that would be great, and it could to some extent work independently of whatever happens with HS2 for medium length journeys within those areas... but if you want to try and transfer long distance traffic away from air and roads, then the network core is crucial to that because for journeys between, say, Scotland and South west england, it's no good to have a great network with plenty of capacity at each end but the middle bit clogged up with no space for through services to get through.

Will HS2 really make it easier to get from Truro to Inverness, or Aberdeen to Brighton?

 

[teuchter]

Will HS2 really make it easier to get from Truro to Inverness, or Aberdeen to Brighton?

Yes.

 

[alex_]

Yes.

Because the middle bit of the journey would be 2x quicker, But it might be quicker to fly.

 

[teuchter]

Yes, it will not bring every pair of locations in the UK within a travel time comparible to flying, but it will have that effect for some places, and in others, travel time is not the only thing that affects people's journey choices. So do things like frequency of direct/minimal changing connections, and reliability. Both of those things are affected by the crowded central parts of the national network at the moment.

 

[platinumsage]

Because the middle bit of the journey would be 2x quicker, But it might be quicker to fly.

How would a line from Euston to Manchester and Leeds make the middle bit of the journey from Truro to Aberdeen 2x quicker when you take into account the routing, changing and timetabling involved in joining and leaving the HS2 segment. Where would you even join HS2 on that journey...arrive Birmingham New Street and then walk to Birmingham Curzon Street?

 

[platinumsage]

Yes, it will not bring every pair of locations in the UK within a travel time comparible to flying, but it will have that effect for some places, and in others, travel time is not the only thing that affects people's journey choices. So do things like frequency of direct/minimal changing connections, and reliability. Both of those things are affected by the crowded central parts of the national network at the moment.

Im sure we’ll see fewer cross country and long distance direct services, in favour of more services terminating near HS2 stations, meaning many journeys that are now nice and direct will involve at least two changes and lots of walking.

 

[alex_]

How would a line from Euston to Manchester and Leeds make the middle bit of the journey from Truro to Aberdeen 2x quicker when you take into account the routing, changing and timetabling involved in joining and leaving the HS2 segment. Where would you even join HS2 on that journey...arrive Birmingham New Street and then walk to Birmingham Curzon Street?

presume you’d do Aberdeen - York, York Leeds, then Leeds old oak common, old oak common truro?

Edit - apparently it’s proposed York is on hs3

 

[teuchter]

Im sure we’ll see fewer cross country and long distance direct services, in favour of more services terminating near HS2 stations, meaning many journeys that are now nice and direct will involve at least two changes and lots of walking.

Well, being sure doesn't always mean being correct.

The pattern in recent decades has been to cut back long distance cross country services substantially. This is something that has already been happening under the current setup and the reasons given are often to do with increasing reliability and reducing knock on effects in a congested network.

 

[teuchter]

presume you’d do Aberdeen - York, York Leeds, then Leeds old oak common, old oak common truro?

Edit - apparently it’s proposed York is on hs3

Yup old oak common will become a significant new point of connection and change the pattern of services and fast connections between the sw and the north. As well as changing some journeys that currently go via Cheltenham and so on, there will be quite a few journeys that currently require a cross London interchange that will no longer need to.

 

[platinumsage]

presume you’d do Aberdeen - York, York Leeds, then Leeds old oak common, old oak common truro?

Edit - apparently it’s proposed York is on hs3

Truro to Scotland via London instead of Temple Meads? Madness.

Bristol to Birmingham via London too?

 

[alex_]

Truro to Scotland via London instead of Temple Meads? Madness.

Bristol to Birmingham via London too?

if it’s the quick way then yes. Plus the journey will be electric not diesel, so it’ll be much greener too.

none of the cross country lines are electric

 

[platinumsage]

if it’s the quick way plus the journey will be electric not diesel, so it’ll be much greener too

Im not sure routing the population of south west England through Euston when they want to go north is the brightest idea.

 

[alex_]

Im not sure routing the population of south west England through Euston when they want to go north is the brightest idea.

it’s the whole point of the old oak common station

 

[platinumsage]

it’s the whole point of the old oak common station

Still won’t make Bristol to Birmingham via GWR to London then HS2 anywhere near as quick as the direct route from Bristol to Birmingham.

HS2 will be useless for anyone in the south-west.

 

[Dogsauce]

Still won’t make Bristol to Birmingham via GWR to London then HS2 anywhere near as quick as the direct route from Bristol to Birmingham.

HS2 will be useless for anyone in the south-west.

so will the dualling of the A9 to Inverness.

 

[teuchter]

Im not sure routing the population of south west England through Euston when they want to go north is the brightest idea.

Seems you've not quite grasped some of the detail of this.

 

[alex_]

HS2 will be useless for anyone in the south-west.

I said this yesterday, can you perhaps outline some transport projects which would improve travel for everyone in the country ?

 

[BigTom]

This strikes me as a bit ridiculous. No single piece of rail infrastructure is going to connect everywhere to everywhere. That's no reason to argue against it surely.
You could run a high speed line from cornwall to london, wouldn't do anything for wales or scotland. You could run a line from truro to aberdeen and it wouldn't do anything for south east england or wales etc. Not an argument against building that line.

 

[stolinski]

so assuming [...] they don't price people out of it

yup that would be my concern

 

[alex_]

yup that would be my concern

I don’t understand the “they will make it too expensive to use argument”, they are going to need it to be full to make any money from it !

 

[SpookyFrank]

Im not sure routing the population of south west England through Euston when they want to go north is the brightest idea.

Should I get the direct train to Manchester, or one via London and also it costs more? Tricky one that.

 

[SpookyFrank]

This strikes me as a bit ridiculous. No single piece of rail infrastructure is going to connect everywhere to everywhere. That's no reason to argue against it surely.
You could run a high speed line from cornwall to london, wouldn't do anything for wales or scotland. You could run a line from truro to aberdeen and it wouldn't do anything for south east england or wales etc. Not an argument against building that line.

But this line looks like it was specifically designed to avoid the parts of the UK most in need of infrastructure investment.

 

[SpookyFrank]

so will the dualling of the A9 to Inverness.

Which costs how much, as a percentage of HS2? Or to put it another way, how many similar projects could shitcanning HS2 buy us?

 

[BigTom]

But this line looks like it was specifically designed to avoid the parts of the UK most in need of infrastructure investment.

How you would run a high speed rail line to be happy about it? Connecting up London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds seems like a good start to me, since these are the two biggest cities in the UK plus two of the bigger ones (i really don't know how big Manchester and Leeds are compared to other major cities).

I really have no way of judging what the parts of th UK most in need of infrastructure investment are but lets say they are cornwall/devon and east anglia (which seems fair). Should you build a high speed line from Truro to Norwich simply because these areas are under developed? Would it help them or be used? Probably not.

Now you can make the argument you started on in your next post but nobody has been saying "instead of HS2 we could spend that money on X,Y and Z which would provide more benefits" it's just been "HS2 doesn't help someone wanting to go from A to B so it shouldn't happen" which is nonsense.
But if you want to make that argument you need to provide some fleshing out to it. Want a new trans-penine express? How much will that cost? Want a direct line from Truro to Aberdeen? I bet that'd be most of the cost of HS2. Want investment in local services in Cornwall or Wales, again lets see something about how much that will cost.

And then we can decide if we're just giving ground here by making it an either/or question. We should have HS2 and investment elsewhere, not one or the other.

 

[platinumsage]

Should I get the direct train to Manchester, or one via London and also it costs more? Tricky one that.

The direct train now stops at 57 stations en-route, because passengers in a hurry are expected to use HS2.

 

[SpookyFrank]

How you would run a high speed rail line to be happy about it? Connecting up London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds seems like a good start to me, since these are the two biggest cities in the UK plus two of the bigger ones (i really don't know how big Manchester and Leeds are compared to other major cities).

I really have no way of judging what the parts of th UK most in need of infrastructure investment are but lets say they are cornwall/devon and east anglia (which seems fair). Should you build a high speed line from Truro to Norwich simply because these areas are under developed? Would it help them or be used? Probably not.

Now you can make the argument you started on in your next post but nobody has been saying "instead of HS2 we could spend that money on X,Y and Z which would provide more benefits" it's just been "HS2 doesn't help someone wanting to go from A to B so it shouldn't happen" which is nonsense.
But if you want to make that argument you need to provide some fleshing out to it. Want a new trans-penine express? How much will that cost? Want a direct line from Truro to Aberdeen? I bet that'd be most of the cost of HS2. Want investment in local services in Cornwall or Wales, again lets see something about how much that will cost.

And then we can decide if we're just giving ground here by making it an either/or question. We should have HS2 and investment elsewhere, not one or the other.

There's already a direct line from Truro to Glasgow, which isnae bad going. If everything is funelled via London and HS2 then long distance services on that line will be run down, so more changes and more congestion.

Incidentally, that line on its Devon stretch fell in the fucking sea a few years back. The only line into South Devon and Cornwall. Making sure that doesn't happen again would be a useful priority IMO.

 

[platinumsage]

How you would run a high speed rail line to be happy about it? Connecting up London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds seems like a good start to me, since these are the two biggest cities in the UK plus two of the bigger ones (i really don't know how big Manchester and Leeds are compared to other major cities).

I really have no way of judging what the parts of th UK most in need of infrastructure investment are but lets say they are cornwall/devon and east anglia (which seems fair). Should you build a high speed line from Truro to Norwich simply because these areas are under developed? Would it help them or be used? Probably not.

Now you can make the argument you started on in your next post but nobody has been saying "instead of HS2 we could spend that money on X,Y and Z which would provide more benefits" it's just been "HS2 doesn't help someone wanting to go from A to B so it shouldn't happen" which is nonsense.
But if you want to make that argument you need to provide some fleshing out to it. Want a new trans-penine express? How much will that cost? Want a direct line from Truro to Aberdeen? I bet that'd be most of the cost of HS2. Want investment in local services in Cornwall or Wales, again lets see something about how much that will cost.

And then we can decide if we're just giving ground here by making it an either/or question. We should have HS2 and investment elsewhere, not one or the other.

You'd have thunk someone had already looked at all this before deciding to go ahead with HS2 wouldn't you?

 

[teuchter]

There's already a direct line from Truro to Glasgow, which isnae bad going. If everything is funelled via London and HS2 then long distance services on that line will be run down, so more changes and more congestion.

That's just wrong. The existing route between Glasgow and Truro passes through areas with significant congestion. Even if a Truro-Glasgow train didn't use HS2, it would benefit from the capacity freed up on some of the lines it did use.

 

[Crispy]

Incidentally, that line on its Devon stretch fell in the fucking sea a few years back. The only line into South Devon and Cornwall. Making sure that doesn't happen again would be a useful priority IMO.

Work is well underway

Dawlish sea wall - section two - Network Rail

We have developed plans for Phase 2 of the new sea wall for Dawlish – a 415m stretch between the Coastguards and Colonnade breakwaters.

www.networkrail.co.uk