HS2

[lmsforever]

Today I saw HS2.s  latest bit of equipment a helicopter  in blue  with HS2 emblazened on the side  also the local paper has announced that an ex car dealers will be a base for them.  Work is being carried out along the length of our locality so expect to see embankments and bridges appering.

[62613]

On 20/05/2021 at 09:54, corneliuslundie said:

Perhaps someone should have shown her photos of the construction of the M1 - and 30 years later.

Jonathan

Or perhaps HS1 when being constructed, and now. I remember seeing such comparison photos in an edition of Rail magazine

[Kris]

The line to Leeds will go ahead according to the transport secretary. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57282010

[woodenhead]

Building it in a smarter way - that sounds like cost cutting to me, the same argument used for improving the Oxford Rd corridor in Manchester - they were meant to expand the length of Oxford Rd and add 2 more platforms at Piccadilly, but the Government said they were going to look at 'smart' alternatives to get more out of the existing infrastructure.

 

Birmingham to Toton via Burton on Trent, perhaps make use of Stenson then zoom past Toton up the MML to Sheffield where it meets Northern Powerhouse HS3 into Leeds.  No different than than running units from the North West up to Scotland on conventional track.

[jamie92208]

The devil of course will be in the detail. We'll only know that they are serious when a hybrid bill is introduced.

 

Jamie

[Edwin_m]

19 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

Building it in a smarter way - that sounds like cost cutting to me, the same argument used for improving the Oxford Rd corridor in Manchester - they were meant to expand the length of Oxford Rd and add 2 more platforms at Piccadilly, but the Government said they were going to look at 'smart' alternatives to get more out of the existing infrastructure.

 

Birmingham to Toton via Burton on Trent, perhaps make use of Stenson then zoom past Toton up the MML to Sheffield where it meets Northern Powerhouse HS3 into Leeds.  No different than than running units from the North West up to Scotland on conventional track.

That might be quicker London to Sheffield and Birmingham to Leeds, but London to Leeds by that route would be slower than the ECML.  

[Northmoor]

I agree that politicians do like to corrupt these terms (We've not cancelled this electrification scheme to save money; we've bought hybrid trains because they're "smarter") but actually with some rail projects (not necessarily HS2, it's design has surely been done to death by now), some smart thinking would achieve a lot. 

The obsession among certain politicians with the idea of a Trans-Pennine High Speed Rail Link (HS3?), seems to be focused on the glamour of a big speed number.  Unfortunately on such relatively short journeys as Manchester-Leeds, the difference in journey time between a 100, 125 and 150mph line is trivial, especially when you factor in the passenger's actual door-to-door time.  Plus there is the added complication of some substantial towns in the middle of the Pennines who might not want the new service to race past their town without stopping.

[woodenhead]

27 minutes ago, Edwin_m said:

That might be quicker London to Sheffield and Birmingham to Leeds, but London to Leeds by that route would be slower than the ECML.  

Heathrow to Old Oak to Leeds though might be less marginal, and if you're in London, Kings Cross is a super station now to travel from with shiny IEPs to whoosh you north.

[Kris]

To my eyes so long as this scheme goes ahead that is the key thing. if it is slightly different to first envisioned then so be it. We need to be building for the future and this is part of it.

[lmsforever]

And the saving to Glasgow will not be very good either plus the ordinary services in Scotland will all want paths ,if there are more than two high speed per hour it could cause a lot of problems.Many passengers will still want decent wcml services from Carlisle but dont want to go via Brum or Leeds because there is a great deal of demand to stations below the border. Okay for someone going direct across the border maybe but it is not the answer to predicted passenger rises on the normal network.  Construction around Marsh crossing seems about to start an will be complex due to the moving of the Risboro branch.A friend was telling me that at Quainton road closures caused problems when the Hall class loco left for the Battlefield line.The police said clearences were okay but as they moved the loco started to catch telephone ,electric wires came down and blacked out the village !!!!!

[Mike Storey]

On 28/05/2021 at 19:19, Northmoor said:

I agree that politicians do like to corrupt these terms (We've not cancelled this electrification scheme to save money; we've bought hybrid trains because they're "smarter") but actually with some rail projects (not necessarily HS2, it's design has surely been done to death by now), some smart thinking would achieve a lot. 

The obsession among certain politicians with the idea of a Trans-Pennine High Speed Rail Link (HS3?), seems to be focused on the glamour of a big speed number.  Unfortunately on such relatively short journeys as Manchester-Leeds, the difference in journey time between a 100, 125 and 150mph line is trivial, especially when you factor in the passenger's actual door-to-door time.  Plus there is the added complication of some substantial towns in the middle of the Pennines who might not want the new service to race past their town without stopping.

 

I think you are missing the point of NPR (Northern Powerhouse Rail, or HS3 as we know it). The ambition is to link up the three or four key locations with by far the highest demand, on the route (Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool and maybe Newcastle) in the fastest time possible, that is at a journey time comparable to routes further south, not to repeat the problems of the existing network, which tries to serve everyone, at every town along the route. So that requires a new route (for much of the distance, Leeds to Manchester at any rate) leaving the existing routes better able to cope with demand from intermediate stations.

 

Remind you of anything?

 

[lmsforever]

Just a thought a new line in the north will only solve some of the problems as now many people travel from thier local stations to wide range of destinations .But if a new line is built that will mean changes on journey ,not popular as has been found out in other locations,Also land for a new HS£ is at a premium and the distances are not worth a decent return for the works. The north does not need this type of line they need frequent reliable ,comfortable services that can move large numbers of people to where they need to be.Express services are needed out of the north but a HS line is not the answer. Sorry if I seem to be out of tune with the bright stars of London or the north I would suggest they actually ask the people where do you go and how often.A commuter into Bradford is not interested in train going at 225 plus mph he wants relability and decent fares,Our leaders tend not to take in the actuality only their  aspirations for personal greatness.

[Edwin_m]

26 minutes ago, lmsforever said:

Just a thought a new line in the north will only solve some of the problems as now many people travel from thier local stations to wide range of destinations .But if a new line is built that will mean changes on journey ,not popular as has been found out in other locations,Also land for a new HS£ is at a premium and the distances are not worth a decent return for the works. The north does not need this type of line they need frequent reliable ,comfortable services that can move large numbers of people to where they need to be.Express services are needed out of the north but a HS line is not the answer. Sorry if I seem to be out of tune with the bright stars of London or the north I would suggest they actually ask the people where do you go and how often.A commuter into Bradford is not interested in train going at 225 plus mph he wants relability and decent fares,Our leaders tend not to take in the actuality only their  aspirations for personal greatness.

Almost every local and regional authority in the North is strongly in favour of both HS2 and NPR, even some that wouldn't be served directly.  Many places not on the new route will have through services onto it, and (like HS2) taking the main city to city flows onto a new route means the timetables on the parallel existing routes can be re-planned to give the best service to the smaller intermediate stations.  

 

Again like HS2, the benefits of NPR rely on an effect called agglomeration, which essentially says that by making it easier to travel between places you create more interaction which improves the economy.  London has this already because it's so big, HS2 allows businesses to locate outside London and still have easy access to it, and NPR allows the cities of the North to work more closely together.   

[Mike Storey]

24 minutes ago, lmsforever said:

Just a thought a new line in the north will only solve some of the problems as now many people travel from thier local stations to wide range of destinations .But if a new line is built that will mean changes on journey ,not popular as has been found out in other locations,Also land for a new HS£ is at a premium and the distances are not worth a decent return for the works. The north does not need this type of line they need frequent reliable ,comfortable services that can move large numbers of people to where they need to be.Express services are needed out of the north but a HS line is not the answer. Sorry if I seem to be out of tune with the bright stars of London or the north I would suggest they actually ask the people where do you go and how often.A commuter into Bradford is not interested in train going at 225 plus mph he wants relability and decent fares,Our leaders tend not to take in the actuality only their  aspirations for personal greatness.

 

Well, you have an opinion, and one that may be shared by many.

 

However, the simple facts are that the majority of journeys made on the Trans-Pennine routes are from one big conurbation to another, and that most people's complaints are about not getting a seat from their local station, because the train is already full when it leaves Leeds/Manchester/Liverpool or wherever.

 

Many people also do not use the train for such "inter city" journeys because of the M62, where they perceive it is faster, or fast enough, to drive (notwithstanding the congestion, bad weather and sheer danger of most it).

 

The fact that the separate Trans Pennine TOC was initially so popular, being limited stop, more comfortable (in theory) and "faster", was proof of this concept, until it all became unreliable, due to the new trains, congestion on the tracks and of course the delays to infrastructure works. But, the idea was sound and it proved that there was latent, extra demand (modal switch and newly generated) - there just is not the room for it to co-exist with all the other business and keep growing at the same time. 

 

So, the aim is to make journey times more attractive for those majority of journeys, get people out of their cars and provide room for the more local journeys undertaken by everyone else. Which is much the same reason as for HS2.

[62613]

17 hours ago, lmsforever said:

And the saving to Glasgow will not be very good either plus the ordinary services in Scotland will all want paths ,if there are more than two high speed per hour it could cause a lot of problems.Many passengers will still want decent wcml services from Carlisle but dont want to go via Brum or Leeds because there is a great deal of demand to stations below the border. Okay for someone going direct across the border maybe but it is not the answer to predicted passenger rises on the normal network.  Construction around Marsh crossing seems about to start an will be complex due to the moving of the Risboro branch.A friend was telling me that at Quainton road closures caused problems when the Hall class loco left for the Battlefield line.The police said clearences were okay but as they moved the loco started to catch telephone ,electric wires came down and blacked out the village !!!!!

Passengers from the North and Scotland won't be doing that, though. When HS2 is complete, Brum will in effect be on a branch from the junction near Lichfield; trains from further north, unless routed into Brum, carry on straight down HS2 into London

 

[woodenhead]

15 hours ago, lmsforever said:

Just a thought a new line in the north will only solve some of the problems as now many people travel from thier local stations to wide range of destinations .But if a new line is built that will mean changes on journey ,not popular as has been found out in other locations,Also land for a new HS£ is at a premium and the distances are not worth a decent return for the works. The north does not need this type of line they need frequent reliable ,comfortable services that can move large numbers of people to where they need to be.Express services are needed out of the north but a HS line is not the answer. Sorry if I seem to be out of tune with the bright stars of London or the north I would suggest they actually ask the people where do you go and how often.A commuter into Bradford is not interested in train going at 225 plus mph he wants relability and decent fares,Our leaders tend not to take in the actuality only their  aspirations for personal greatness.

It's part of levelling up, why should only services to/from London benefit from high speed.

 

Lots of people do intercity travel between Liverpool and Newcastle and the main cities in between, speeding those up with a new route frees capacity on the commuter services for the smaller towns in between giving them more options too as it removes the non stop trains.

 

Up in the north, we don't want to just go to London, there's plenty of leisure actities to do and plenty of business to be done outside the capital.

[Zomboid]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

Up in the north, we don't want to just go to London, there's plenty of leisure actities to do and plenty of business to be done outside the capital.

The same is true in the south 

 

Major roads and railways are very London-centric around the south, possibly more so than further away from London.

[jamie92208]

I'm told that one journey that will really benefit from Phase 2b is Leeds to Birmingham which should cone down from 2 hours to just over an hour. That is a real improvement.

 

Jamie

[corneliuslundie]

But I think one point being made is that even for express limited-stop services between northern cities the benefit of increased line speeds above 125 mph is limited because of the relatively short distances. Newcastle to Birmingham is a decent distance but is unlikely to be non-stop. The benefit will be from a dedicate "express" route rather than extra high speed both for the faster trains and for local commuters when the fast trains are out of the way on their lines. So just widening stretches to four tracks is unlikely to achieve much. New routes are needed, but that is fraught in a fairly densely populated area.

Jonathan

[AMJ]

The main benefit is the increase in track capacity which many of those against the scheme fail to point out.  Semifasts on HS2 similar to the Javelin on HS1 plus freight paths on existing lines.

 

It has often been said to get from Leeds to Brum is longer time wise than journeys nearly twice the distance.

[Edwin_m]

5 hours ago, Zomboid said:

The same is true in the south 

 

Major roads and railways are very London-centric around the south, possibly more so than further away from London.

Which is one reason why East West Rail is being built.  This is, correctly, a conventional speed not a high speed railway because it serves various places between Oxford and Cambridge so wouldn't be able to get much above 100mph anyway.  It's a bit different in the north, because the places served are much larger, and they are mostly connected by existing routes with intermediate stations.  So the need is for more capacity in total, and for faster journeys between the main centres (where local trains can connect in), not for any service at all like EWR.  

[Pete the Elaner]

22 hours ago, lmsforever said:

Just a thought a new line in the north will only solve some of the problems as now many people travel from thier local stations to wide range of destinations .But if a new line is built that will mean changes on journey ,not popular as has been found out in other locations,Also land for a new HS£ is at a premium and the distances are not worth a decent return for the works. The north does not need this type of line they need frequent reliable ,comfortable services that can move large numbers of people to where they need to be.Express services are needed out of the north but a HS line is not the answer. Sorry if I seem to be out of tune with the bright stars of London or the north I would suggest they actually ask the people where do you go and how often.A commuter into Bradford is not interested in train going at 225 plus mph he wants relability and decent fares,Our leaders tend not to take in the actuality only their  aspirations for personal greatness.

 

We have been here before...

HS2 is not about speed. It is about freeing up capacity on existing lines which are overcrowded. Using the WCML as an example (because it is the most overcrowded), it needs to cope with all stations services, semi-fast services, express services which serve major cities & also freight.

Freight & stopping services can exist together because freight's slower speed will work with services which run a little faster but stop at many stations. This leaves room for semi-fasts.

Semi-fast & stopping services serve the stations along the route. Expresses don't - they can bypass them.

So if all other options like double deck lines & extra tracks alongside have been considered & dismissed as not feasible (& they have), then a new line seems to be the next best alternative.

If you are going to build a new line in the 2020s, why build it to Victorian standards? Technology has moved on. We can build machines that can go faster & are safer than back then, so why not?

 

A major issue was that because the new line is high speed, it was publicised like that. Whether this was the designers or media is irrelevant. A lot of the public believe it is being built specifically to cut journey times by running faster trains. This has never been true.

 

The same is true in the north: If existing lines can cope, then use them. If they can't & a new line is the next best option, why restrict it to 100mph just for the sake of it?

 

As for the question of why build new lines from London to the north but not between the northern cities? Deal with 1 problem at a time & start with somewhere which needs it most. If the WCML is deemed the most overcrowded, deal with this problem first then look at where needs it next. If this is Liverpool to Leeds via Manchester. Building all at once is expensive & creates shorter term employment. Doing one at a time allows the staff to be re-deployed to the next project, taking the experience with them so mistakes do not get repeated.

[corneliuslundie]

"Building all at once is expensive & creates shorter term employment. Doing one at a time allows the staff to be re-deployed to the next project, taking the experience with them so mistakes do not get repeated."

Exactly the mess the government got into before with no continuity of electrification and then too many all at once with few staff qualified to run them, but we must have all these schemes NOW.

Jonathan

[jamie92208]

If you look at the French High Speed network, they have picked off the most needed stretches first, Paris to Ly9n, then Paris to the north and the unnel. Next the fonndctor between the north and douth round Psris and Paris to Tours and Le Mans.  Next extend south in stages from Lyon to Marseille. After that Paris to the East followed by e tending the Tours Line to Bordeaux and Le Mans to Rennes. They have just announced new lines to extend from Bordeaux to Toulouse and also to join up the Lyon line to Spain.  There have been other bits but a network is emerging. It does work but is not perfect.

 

Jamie

[Zomboid]

1 hour ago, Pete the Elaner said:

The same is true in the north: If existing lines can cope, then use them. If they can't & a new line is the next best option, why restrict it to 100mph just for the sake of it?

The distances between the Liverpool/ Manchester/ Leeds are such that there wouldn't be much opportunity to exceed about 110-125 for meaningful distances. Being able to sustain those kinds of speeds between the major centres would be much more beneficial than going for very high speeds. The geography of the Pennines looks likely to mean that a 125mph alignment could be noticeably cheaper than going for 180-200.

 

Leeds to Newcastle is far enough to make use of higher speeds, but probably won't get them unless the existing ECML is upgraded.