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HS2 under review


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22 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

While its true the UK suffered like all 'early adopters' / inventors of new tech from not understanding just how popular it would become, there is no reason to perpetuate such mistakes over 100 years later

Yes there is because to do otherwise is expensive and with Governments only being interested in the 5 years of their tenure we are stuck with the short term, cheapest oops I mean value for money options. 

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Can't remember whether this has been posted before in this thread but much of this infrastructure discussion seems rooted in PLAN versus NO PLAN.

  • NO PLAN surfaced around 1961-1962 with Beeching and his report a talking point alongside a Press full of "New Town blues".
  • NO PLAN gained momentum through attacks on Milton Keynes (the kilometre grid* of which I had a hand in developing  in Walter Bor's Liverpool's planning department) and years of dithering over the future for London Docklands.
  • Finally NO PLAN becomes the preferred mode after 1979 and the adoption of Milton Friedman's belief in the "Hidden Hand" of Adam Smith. Enterprise Zones for Developers are the answer to abandoned industry land. Private volume builders take over house building, build over Beeching's unprotected abandoned tracks.  'Short termism' reigns everywhere.
  • Once again we are totally immersed in NO PLAN through these coming weeks. One ray of relief is a new Council housing project in Norwich winning the Stirling Prize for architecture.
    dh

    * Washington new town (Bor's prototype for MK) is now part of Sunderland and its privatised housing is the most highly sought after locally for  'living over the workshop' families with young kids and Tranny vans.

 

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Looks like someone has been reading Adrian Quine's paper for the Adam Smith Institute. 

https://www.adamsmith.org/news

Regarding his suggestions, I was involved in assessing some work on my patch for re-opening the GC from the Aylesbury area to Rugby for at least 125mph running to increase capacity northwards out of London about 30 years ago. It included connections to the Trent Valley line at Newbold, the Birmingham line near Brandon and Woolston, and a new line to join the WCML on the way into Euston. One suggestion was for the DC Lines to be donated to the Bakerloo, abandoned south of Queens Park and rebuilt to provide six tracks through Kilburn and Primrose Hill then continuing by developing existing tracks down Camden Bank. 

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19 minutes ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

Looks like someone has been reading Adrian Quine's paper for the Adam Smith Institute. 

https://www.adamsmith.org/news

Regarding his suggestions, I was involved in assessing some work on my patch for re-opening the GC from the Aylesbury area to Rugby for at least 125mph running to increase capacity northwards out of London about 30 years ago. It included connections to the Trent Valley line at Newbold, the Birmingham line near Brandon and Woolston, and a new line to join the WCML on the way into Euston. One suggestion was for the DC Lines to be donated to the Bakerloo, abandoned south of Queens Park and rebuilt to provide six tracks through Kilburn and Primrose Hill then continuing by developing existing tracks down Camden Bank. 

 

 

Have they seen the size of the tunnels at Primrose Hill and Kensal Green? The ballast is so shallow that some of the sleepers have to be trimmed underneath at the ends.

 

Also what is the likely effect on line capacity of running 125MPH expresses on the Metropolitan Line, for the final run into London?

Edited by Trog
Another thought.
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1 hour ago, Davey said:

According to ITV Central News this evening it is being reported that the HS2 review has concluded the East Midlands Phase is to be scrapped. See Attached link :

 

https://www.itv.com/news/central/2019-10-10/hs2-review-to-conclude-next-week-as-east-midlands-phase-to-be-scrapped-say-sources/

 

Davey

 

If true, which seems likely, the East Midlands will have been stuffed twice over by the present Govt. Meanwhile the West Midlands have everything they want, gold-plated.

 

First, Grayling cancelled the promised MML electrification north of Kettering, so Leicester, Derby, Nottingham and Sheffield condemned to be a congested diesel secondary route until HS2 opens, delayed.

 

Now, HS2 likely to be cancelled. So we stay on a congested diesel secondary route forever. At least bring back electrification and route improvements to increase speed and capacity. 

 

Dava

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8 minutes ago, Trog said:

Have they seen the size of the tunnels at Primrose Hill and Kensal Green? The ballast is so shallow that some of the sleepers have to be trimmed underneath at the ends.

Yes, a bit of a rat-hole. One of the proposals was to rebuild the DC Lines tunnels at Primrose Hill.

 

12 minutes ago, Trog said:

Also what is the likely effect on line capacity of running 125MPH expresses on the Metropolitan Line, for the final run into London?

Various proposals at the southern end included a new line from North of Aylesbury to join the line into Euston. IIRC there wasn't any proposal for running south of Aylesbury on the GC/Met alignment

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1 hour ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

Looks like someone has been reading Adrian Quine's paper for the Adam Smith Institute. 

https://www.adamsmith.org/news

 

I like how option 1 (HS2) is condemned for being badly managed and over budget, yet they miraculously assume that their alternative set of options won't see the same delays and cost overruns that are common to any large project pretty much anywhere in the world.

 

As explained by many on here previously, it's easy to wave around alternatives when one doesn't have to actually face implementing them.

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9 hours ago, mdvle said:

 

As explained by many on here previously, it's easy to wave around alternatives when one doesn't have to actually face implementing them

He's an ex-journo, probably get rolled out by the Beeb next week and called a 'Transport Expert'. 

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6 hours ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

He's an ex-journo, probably get rolled out by the Beeb next week and called a 'Transport Expert'. 

He'll have to fight Christian Wolmar in hand to hand combat before attaining that position...

 

C6T. 

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56 minutes ago, Pandora said:

The link is his background in transport affairs ( note the non-executive directorship of the Settle and Carlisle)

 

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/adrian-quine-a3431425

 

 

Ah, an expert in 'thought leadership' - that should be enough to put off a lot of free thinkers if nobody else :rolleyes:   and he does seem to flit from job to job (or in some cases non-job to non-job) at rather short intervals - I wonder why?     And if he really is an 'expert' he will know exactly why HS2 is being built and will therefore obviously be supporting its construction with a detailed expression of the reasons for it and why all the various alternatives have been dismissed.  I wonder if he will?

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6 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

He believes in airline style competition on the Inter City routes - apparently all our issues are the fault of the DFT and the unions

 

https://www.adamsmith.org/news/airline-competition-train-report-quine

 

The Adam Smith Institute is, of course, an ultra free-market lobby group, but on some points, they certainly seem to be correct; DafT do tend to micro-manage the railways, and have done so now for at least 15 years. But they would like, in accordance with their free market thinking, for DafT not to be involved at all.

I would take issue with the first point in the summary at the top; I'm still not convinced that the rise in passenger numbers is exclusively down to privatisation. I thought that they were beginning to rise in the last few years of BR's existence

 

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Gridlock in the South East helped the railways, then people moving further out trying to find affordable homes within commuting distance.

 

Whilst I also agree the DFT may micromanage, I don't believe unfettered competition airline style fits either - Virgin having lost the WCML are now fans of this and want to suggest a scheme where services that are not full enough are simply cancelled and the passengers moved to another service - hmm.

 

Bus deregulation was such a success for free market thinking as well wasn't it, went well after Beeching too for all those cut off villages.

 

Anyway back to HS2 - if you prune it surely the business case for it shrinks too as it erodes the benefits.  It has to terminate in the centre of London and it needs to reach cities in the north and ideally the East Midlands too.

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3 hours ago, Classsix T said:

He'll have to fight Christian Wolmar in hand to hand combat before attaining that position...

 

C6T. 

it might be easier than you think, as Wolmar seems to have vanished off the BBC after he stood as a Labour candidate in a by-election.  We no longer have his independent impartial expert wisdom on why his political rivals transport plans are rubbish. 

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On 06/10/2019 at 13:05, Fat Controller said:

The first LGV started at Montbard, about as far from Paris as Reading is from London; it terminated about ten miles north of Lyon. This would have been about 1981/2. It was only about ten years later that the high-speed branch from TGV- Interconnexion was made from near Roissy to Gare du Lyon. Until then, the approach to Paris was a very leisurely one; that into Lyon still has a certain rustic charm.

Paris may have some large termini, but this was because there were fewer companies, and the French state took, and still takes, a very active role in strategic planning. There are few competing routes. There have been several large, and disruptive, rebuilding projects at the major termini, not always to the passenger's benefit. At Gare du Lyon, the suburban lines were buried, to give space on the southern side, whilst non-TGV services were transferred to Gare-du-Bercy ( a bit like some services from Paddington starting near Wormwood Scrubs) A similar situation obtains at Gare Montparnasse, though there, Montparnasse- Vaurigard starts at the equivalent of Royal Oak. 

I was resident in France at this time and naturally, took great interest in this project.

While I concur on most of your points, I really would like to point out that TGVs ran at approx. 137mph on 'classic' lines. Hardly what I'd call a leisurely trip!

And, they certainly did go right into GdL itself.

Cheers,

John

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20 hours ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

Yes, a bit of a rat-hole. One of the proposals was to rebuild the DC Lines tunnels at Primrose Hill.

 

Various proposals at the southern end included a new line from North of Aylesbury to join the line into Euston. IIRC there wasn't any proposal for running south of Aylesbury on the GC/Met alignment

 

Would a new line that shared the existing WCML south of ~Tring help much, surely the capacity south of there would remain the same, and you would then have two lines running at half capacity northwards.

 

Enlarging the DC tunnels at Primrose Hill would be an interesting job for someone too as just outside the south portal of the slow line tunnel the Slow lines the Up DC line and the Dn North London Electric lines are all stacked one above the other. The DC is shallow enough that the slow lines top had a hump in it under the double junction in order to get over it.

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2 hours ago, 62613 said:

 

.... I'm still not convinced that the rise in passenger numbers is exclusively down to privatisation. I thought that they were beginning to rise in the last few years of BR's existence

 

 

The passenger numbers rose from their historical low in 1982, until the mid-late 1980's, but were falling from 1989/90 until around 1996, when they began to rise again.

The exponential growth didn't really start until post Hatfield.

 

 

.

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14 hours ago, Trog said:

 

Would a new line that shared the existing WCML south of ~Tring help much, surely the capacity south of there would remain the same, and you would then have two lines running at half capacity northwards.

 

 

This was looked into as part of Crossrail and the business case for a further version of the project running to Tring was ruled out on economic grounds.

In the meantime Euston becomes more run down and more depressing by the week.

Punctuality also seems to have taken a big hit, or have I just been very unlucky.

Bernard

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On 11/10/2019 at 15:29, woodenhead said:

He believes in airline style competition on the Inter City routes - apparently all our issues are the fault of the DFT and the unions

 

https://www.adamsmith.org/news/airline-competition-train-report-quine

Ah, I note how he 'skillfully' ignores various relevant issues to make some irrelevant points (e.g. one 5 car set in a GWR IET not in passenger use which he puts down to trade unions, weird!!).  the one thing he does get right is about DfT micro-management but he clearly doesn't understand how open access would work or the moderation of competition 'rules'.

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1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

Ah, I note how he 'skillfully' ignores various relevant issues to make some irrelevant points (e.g. one 5 car set in a GWR IET not in passenger use which he puts down to trade unions, weird!!).  the one thing he does get right is about DfT micro-management but he clearly doesn't understand how open access would work or the moderation of competition 'rules'.

He also seems to think that open access operators have inherently higher levels of passenger satisfaction through some magic of the free market, rather than because they're small operations who can focus on doing one thing very well.  Scale them up ten or twenty fold to Virgin proportions and they'd not score as well.

 

 

 

 

 

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On 10/10/2019 at 21:58, Dava said:

 

If true, which seems likely, the East Midlands will have been stuffed twice over by the present Govt. Meanwhile the West Midlands have everything they want, gold-plated.

 

Dava

If that's the case why are business leaders in the West Midlands somewhat miffed with the possibility the NE link is to be axed?

From what i gather the Birmingham-NE section was being championed in the West Midlands as well, because of the benefits of linking the economies of the West & East Midlands and on to Leeds.

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1 hour ago, melmerby said:

If that's the case why are business leaders in the West Midlands somewhat miffed with the possibility the NE link is to be axed?

From what i gather the Birmingham-NE section was being championed in the West Midlands as well, because of the benefits of linking the economies of the West & East Midlands and on to Leeds.

 

West Mids Business folk, most likely Ms Machancoses at Midlands Connect, may be 'miffed' but they still get 3 lines from Brum to London, 2 electrified. 4 major cities in the East Mids get just 1 congested diesel line with some Bi-modes. Go figure.

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