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7 hours ago, eastglosmog said:

Article in the Time this morning (and I'm pretty sure elsewhere) about using giant 3D printers to form pre-cast concrete sections on site, to avoid having to transport them in from elsewhere. Reported it will keep costs down.

 

HS2 Ltd web site news section, today....

 

https://mediacentre.hs2.org.uk/news/3d-concrete-printing-and-graphene-combined-on-hs2-set-to-cut-carbon-content-by-up-to-50-percent

 

 

 

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4 hours ago, kevpeo said:

The eastern side on the other hand costs a lot for less time saving, as the east coast route is already pretty fast. You may gain ECML capacity by sending everything from north of Leeds down it, but would an hourly York/Leeds-KX stopper be enough. 

The draft post-HS2 timetables floating around show a similar number of trains to the present (pre-Covid) timetables, with a more frequent services heading off the ECML to places like Hull, Lincoln, Harrogate etc that currently have a less than hourly service, and with everything stopping at Grantham and Peterborough.  So there's no danger of the ECML becoming empty when the eastern bit of HS2 is built.

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2 hours ago, Edwin_m said:

 

If the journey time is no quicker, there's no real reason for people to use it, so it won't relieve capacity….. 


Leeds - London will probably be quicker via HS2 as any remaining services to London via the ECML, will make more intermediate stops and will be slower than today.

 

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1 hour ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

Since "Embedded Carbon" is a significant element of the CO2 equivalent associated with a major infrastructure project, cutting even one element of it by 50% is a big win.

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42 minutes ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

The draft post-HS2 timetables floating around show a similar number of trains to the present (pre-Covid) timetables, with a more frequent services heading off the ECML to places like Hull, Lincoln, Harrogate etc that currently have a less than hourly service, and with everything stopping at Grantham and Peterborough.  So there's no danger of the ECML becoming empty when the eastern bit of HS2 is built.

 

That is exactly the point.

Both the WCML & ECML are busy with 4 different speeds of traffic: Fast, long distance services, semi-fast, stopping services & freight.

Stoppers & freight can exist together quite well. Stoppers are usually faster when they are moving, but stopping at stations prevents them from catching up with slower freight trains.

Semi-fast services are more of a problem although not too bad, especially on the sections where there are 4 lines.

Fast services are different. They need careful planning to avoid catching up with slower trains.

The service timetable should arrange these so that fast trains are not held behind slower ones, but when something is delayed it passes on a delay to everything behind it.

 

Many local services are full & could benefit from extra capacity. You cannot run these elsewhere because they would not be serving the same towns. If you could re-route trains which do not stop at intermediate towns then you can use the capacity for extra local services.

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3 hours ago, Edwin_m said:

If the journey time is no quicker, there's no real reason for people to use it, so it won't relieve capacity.

 

I don't follow that - if a train travels via the new route instead of the old one, the passengers on it will travel via the new route, and extra capacity will have been generated.

 

The problem is that more people want to travel from A to B than the existing route can carry; the additional passengers who constitute the extra capacity won't care if their train uses the old or new routes, even if the journey times are exactly the same.

 

CJI.

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4 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

Leeds - London will probably be quicker via HS2 as any remaining services to London via the ECML, will make more intermediate stops and will be slower than today.

IIRC the current half hourly Leeds services are arranged so that one stops at Stevenage and Grantham, and the other at Peterborough (and then both do Doncaster and Wakefield) to eke a little bit of a journey time improvement by reducing the number of stops.

 

You can predict the newspaper headlines when 'rail bosses slow down services to force you to use HS2'

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15 hours ago, cctransuk said:

 

I don't follow that - if a train travels via the new route instead of the old one, the passengers on it will travel via the new route, and extra capacity will have been generated.

 

The problem is that more people want to travel from A to B than the existing route can carry; the additional passengers who constitute the extra capacity won't care if their train uses the old or new routes, even if the journey times are exactly the same.

 

CJI.

 

But only if ticket prices are the same, surely?

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10 hours ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

You can predict the newspaper headlines when 'rail bosses slow down services to force you to use HS2'

 

I doubt it will be that much of a story.  I don't recall a huge fuss when Kent Coast trains had stops inserted between Bromley South and Chatham when the Javelins started.  There's nothing new under the sun and many of the arguments are just geographically shifted re-treads of things that happened with HS1.  Kent Coast on HS1 had a slow start but in recent years it was often full and standing and there weren't enough units, higher fares notwithstanding.  Loadings on the classic route held up very well too.  The only real difference with HS1 is that the terminus is in a different part of London which means if your destination is in south west central London then the classic route is often quicker.  That won't apply with HS2 but much of the rest will. 

 

It is often forgotten that journey time/fares/convenience is a complex market dynamic and a shorter journey time is not the highest priority for everybody. 

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12 hours ago, Mark Saunders said:

The term Capacity can be applied in two ways.

 

The number of trains that can be accommodated on a route or

 

The number of passengers that can be accommodated on a train.

Or the number of train seats per day on a route?

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3 hours ago, DY444 said:

 

It is often forgotten that journey time/fares/convenience is a complex market dynamic and a shorter journey time is not the highest priority for everybody. 

Absolutely this. A few years back SWMBO and I went to London for a bit of opera culture. I wasn't for driving around the metropolis, or parking at a convenient underground station to the North. But we were inhibited by costs. So we had a look around the National Rail site to see what was available, and....there was a fare from Stoke for £30 each return. Were we bothered that it took two and a half hours and stopped at every station down the Trent Valley? No! It got us to the ROH on time, and we enjoyed the show. Bargain!

 

It seems to me that moving the long distance non-stops to HS2 would facilitate this kind of service, and maybe allow some to run to Manchester as well as Crewe/Liverpool.

 

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Agreed. Quite a few people, including me, use the Chiltern route from Birmingham to London, slower, but if a loco hauled train much more pleasant. And cheaper.

And i don't understand all the comments about premium fares. There has never been any suggestion that there will be. Quite simply, the fastest trains will use HS2 instead of the WCML with the same fare structure as now. Or have things changed behind the scenes?

Jonathan

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2 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

.........i don't understand all the comments about premium fares. There has never been any suggestion that there will be. Quite simply, the fastest trains will use HS2 instead of the WCML with the same fare structure as now. Or have things changed behind the scenes?

 

The people who talk of premium fares, seem to do so in the context of assuming that the HS2 services will be a new (premium) alternative to the existing IC services on those routes.

An option, or choice if you like.

There's appears to be a failure to understand that this won't be the case and that most, if not all of the existing IC services will be switched onto HS2 (using new trains of course).

Effectively the same services, but upgraded to new trains and running on a new HS line instead.

 

I think this is where some of the "white elephant" comments come from.

A misplaced belief or suspicion that passengers will ignore the HS2 services, or will resist paying any such "premium fare", and will stick with the regular IC services...thus rendering HS2 as a "White Elephant".

Failing to note that the regular IC services will no longer exist.

 

Just another example of the general ignorance around what HS2 actually is and what it's for, which fuels the misinformed public debate.

.

 

.

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Fares will be set so people use the services.

We have not seen first class disappear from railways or aircraft & these are more expensive.

There will always be people prepared to pay more for a premium service, whether this is for comfort or speed.

On occasions, it has been possible to get an advance first class ticket cheaper than an advance standard one. It is just a matter of getting the fares right to match the services available. If they are too high or low to begin with, they will be adjusted.

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8 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

Agreed. Quite a few people, including me, use the Chiltern route from Birmingham to London, slower, but if a loco hauled train much more pleasant. And cheaper.

And i don't understand all the comments about premium fares. There has never been any suggestion that there will be. Quite simply, the fastest trains will use HS2 instead of the WCML with the same fare structure as now. Or have things changed behind the scenes?

Jonathan

 

6 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

The people who talk of premium fares, seem to do so in the context of assuming that the HS2 services will be a new (premium) alternative to the existing IC services on those routes.

An option, or choice if you like.

There's appears to be a failure to understand that this won't be the case and that most, if not all of the existing IC services will be switched onto HS2 (using new trains of course).

Effectively the same services, but upgraded to new trains and running on a new HS line instead.

 

I think this is where some of the "white elephant" comments come from.

A misplaced belief or suspicion that passengers will ignore the HS2 services, or will resist paying any such "premium fare", and will stick with the regular IC services...thus rendering HS2 as a "White Elephant".

Failing to note that the regular IC services will no longer exist.

 

Just another example of the general ignorance around what HS2 actually is and what it's for, which fuels the misinformed public debate.

 

Fares from SE stations valid via HS1 are higher than those which are just valid via the classic routes so the premium fares talk for HS2 is a presumption that the same will apply. 

 

Obviously nothing has been announced but it wouldn't surprise me if stations in the West Midlands and beyond had different "high speed" and "non-high speed" non-discounted fares as many stations in Kent do.  Having said that I would expect the continuation on HS2 services of the long established practice of tranches of advance tickets being priced at the level deemed appropriate to maximise loadings, especially off-peak (if that exists post-Covid).  

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1 hour ago, DY444 said:

 

 

Fares from SE stations valid via HS1 are higher than those which are just valid via the classic routes so the premium fares talk for HS2 is a presumption that the same will apply. 

 

Obviously nothing has been announced but it wouldn't surprise me if stations in the West Midlands and beyond had different "high speed" and "non-high speed" non-discounted fares as many stations in Kent do.  Having said that I would expect the continuation on HS2 services of the long established practice of tranches of advance tickets being priced at the level deemed appropriate to maximise loadings, especially off-peak (if that exists post-Covid).  

The business case for HS2 makes the assumption that fare levels will generally be in line with current (in real terms).  There's nothing to stop someone in the government deciding to do something different when the time comes, but if the objective was to get the best financial case you'd most likely avoid the spend of multiple tens of billions by not building HS2 at all.  Benefit to the economy as a whole, and thus to the tax base, is probably achieved by setting fares at a reasonable level that comfortably fills the trains.  

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On 03/08/2021 at 21:09, Edwin_m said:

The business case for HS2 makes the assumption that fare levels will generally be in line with current (in real terms).  There's nothing to stop someone in the government deciding to do something different when the time comes, but if the objective was to get the best financial case you'd most likely avoid the spend of multiple tens of billions by not building HS2 at all.  Benefit to the economy as a whole, and thus to the tax base, is probably achieved by setting fares at a reasonable level that comfortably fills the trains.  

 

I think "the assumption that fare levels will generally be in line with current (in real terms)" can reasonably be described as sufficiently vague not to rule out anything.  For a start fares today from anywhere to anywhere will be higher in real terms than they were when that business case was framed as the annual (invariably) above inflation fare rises see to that so the baseline of that assumption is flawed before we even start. 

 

I expect there to be a range of fares at different price points just as there are today.  Some of those fares will be more than via the classic route and some will be less just as they are today for HS1 from stations in Kent.  Because of the complexity of the fares system it is very difficult to compare anything except anytime fares and I will be very surprised if those fares are the same via HS2 as they are via the classic route.  There's also the uncertainty caused by Covid which has not so much moved the goalposts on transport economics than transferred everything to a completely new playing field which nobody has seen before.  Anything said pre-Covid about HS2 fares (or indeed any fares) means nothing now imo.   

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Much of the discussion on fares seems to be about destinations on HS2. However, since for some destinations all the express long distance services to further destinations now using the WCML will switch to HS2 I am sure that there would be outrage if they were hiked above general national levels.

I regard HS2 as the alternative to widening the WCML. If that had been done instead there would have been no thought of premium fares. I am afraid that the branding as "High Speed" has done more harm than good.

However, I agree with DY144 that post Covid and renationalisation we are in uncharted waters. Another Beeching ahead? I hope not but it depends whether the Treasury or those looking at the future win the arguments.

Jonathan

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Many of the discussions regarding HS2/classic routes/fare structions are the same as those applied to the Birmingham Toll Relief Road some years ago. The junction layouts were arranged to "encorage" you to easily end up on the toll road if you did not really want to use it. No doubt similar principles will be employed for HS2.

 

The toll road is stil there & AFAIK making a profit & the M6 is still there. Personally, as I know the area well I don't use either, but I digress.

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50 minutes ago, ess1uk said:

 

It is all a budget con. Leeds will have been moved to a different project & therefore a different budget.

 

Phase 2b of HS2 will get binned in order to cut the budget, so the cost of phase 2b will disappear.

Phase 3 will be cancelled for now.

Phase 2b will be re-branded as Phase 3.

What was phase 3 will be re-branded as phase 4.

 

So phase 2 will be cheaper because it does not contain 2b.

Phase 3 will probably cost the same but include a totally different section of railway.

Don't mention phase 4, which was never there in the first place.

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