HS2 construction updates

[Horizon22]

First and biggest mistake remains the decision to call it 'HS2'. That immediately upset millions of people. Too late to rename it but 'RT1' aka 'Relief Track One' would have been a more appropriate and less contentious name

Why? It is a High Speed line and it is the 2nd one. High Speed should engender good vision of a futuristic, environmentally friendly, fast high-speed service. Unfortunately the PR has been on the defensive from almost the start, primarily because of the price tag. RT1 sounds very boring and dull.

 

[NoRoute]

Not necessarily true - some non-London journeys on the WCML are slower/less frequent than they ought to be. Take Coventry to Milton Keynes which (pre-Covid) lacked an 08xx arrival at MK for commuters, and the rest of the day is an hourly service. Reasonably attractive if you're near the station, but if you're not it is much less attractive than a car (compared to running, say, a half hourly train that would be a decent improvement on this).

That's an interesting example, because it isn't clear whether HS 2 going to improve, worsen, or make no difference to that?

Neither city is served by HS2 so the issue revolves around the freeing up of capacity for new services, but any improvement on that route must necessarily consider the other stations in between and the major destinations of London and Birmingham at each end because we're unlikely to see a pure Coventry to Milton Keynes service, too few passengers and what about Rugby, Northampton, Bletchley and passengers wanting to go to London or Birmingham? Which implies additional London to Birmingham services stopping at the major towns and cities along the route, but if all of the end to end, London to/from Birmingham passengers are now all or mostly on HS2 are improvements to these services financially viable?

It seems unlikely that having built HS2 and added new direct London to Birmingham services, that we'd then see additional services duplicating that route added to the WCML. The passengers will be spread more thinly over more services, the economics might point to cutting London to Birmingham services on the WCML.

 

[Bald Rick]

Re the air market, the UK should copy the French and make it a bailout condition for airlines that they cannot sell tickets to London where the rail journey is less than three hours, except for connections. It would give rail a post covid boost to get people travelling again.

That would do very little here, Because there are very few flights in this country that have a competing rail route of less than 3 hours. Basically it’s London - Manchester and London - Newcastle. Pre Covid that was a total of about 24 flights a day, and something like 70% of passengers on those flights are connecting at Heathrow. The 30% represents perhaps 1000 passengers a day, and many of them would just drive or choose not to travel.

Fascinating, tyvm. So 2h 20m non-stop?

Theoretically, but there’s not the market for that.

 

[CW2]

Not necessarily true - some non-London journeys on the WCML are slower/less frequent than they ought to be. Take Coventry to Milton Keynes which (pre-Covid) lacked an 08xx arrival at MK for commuters, and the rest of the day is an hourly service. Reasonably attractive if you're near the station, but if you're not it is much less attractive than a car (compared to running, say, a half hourly train that would be a decent improvement on this).

It is a question of balance. Firstly if you stop a train at MK then a relatively small number of people benefit, and a much larger number of people have their journey time to London extended by five minutes.
Secondly (pre-COVID) if you stopped a train on the Up Fast at MK in the morning peak, there would be a mass influx of MK commuters keen to save a few minutes on the journey time to London. This would result in the train being full and standing, and an unpleasant experience for the West Midlands folk on their allegedly fast run to Euston.
Finally (again per-COVID) the additional peak-only services with different stopping patterns which run during the peak are reliant upon everything having much the same stopping pattern, i.e. non-stop south of Rugby. If you start shoving MK stops in, you wreck the peak hour entirely.
The stopping patterns were set in line with the (then) anticipated levels of demand. Once an hour from Coventry to MK seems sufficient to me. Otherwise you end up with all West Midlands services calling at Rugby, MK and Watford Junction, and losing 10 minutes or more in the process.

 

[squizzler]

It is such a shame that all of those involved in the promotion of HS2 from conception to the present day have serially failed to get the purpose of the project across to the masses and allowed it's opponents and detractors to capture the media's attention. Even on a rail special-interest social media platform like RUK, ignorance of the true aims of HS2 still prevail.

Especially on RUK. Having partipated in threads in Covid measures, I got the impression that this forum harbours a lot of contrarianism and distrust for experts than I previously thought. It is clear that this forum is out of step with wider public discourse in many matters and it is possible that HS2 is one of them.

 

[AM9]

Especially on RUK. Having partipated in threads in Covid measures, I got the impression that this forum harbours a lot of contrarianism and distrust for experts than I previously thought. It is clear that this forum is out of step with wider public discourse in many matters and it is possible that HS2 is one of them.

HS2 is small beer among the issues where minority views are regularly endured here, but for a railway-oriented board, it seems a strange place to air an uninformed opinion on such a high profile rail project.

 

[Bald Rick]

One issue with HS2 in public terms, compared to - say - the building of a new motorway is that for a significant majority of the population the railway - any railway - is irrelevant. But most people see road / motorway congestion pretty regularly. Therefore, very simply, in most people’s minds building an expensive motorway helps the traffic wherever it I should built; building an expensive railway just helps a select few “and I’m not one of them”.

Of course you can’t expect the public to have studied transport planning and understand why they’re are wrong.

 

[Ianno87]

That's an interesting example, because it isn't clear whether HS 2 going to improve, worsen, or make no difference to that?

Neither city is served by HS2 so the issue revolves around the freeing up of capacity for new services, but any improvement on that route must necessarily consider the other stations in between and the major destinations of London and Birmingham at each end because we're unlikely to see a pure Coventry to Milton Keynes service, too few passengers and what about Rugby, Northampton, Bletchley and passengers wanting to go to London or Birmingham? Which implies additional London to Birmingham services stopping at the major towns and cities along the route, but if all of the end to end, London to/from Birmingham passengers are now all or mostly on HS2 are improvements to these services financially viable?

It seems unlikely that having built HS2 and added new direct London to Birmingham services, that we'd then see additional services duplicating that route added to the WCML. The passengers will be spread more thinly over more services, the economics might point to cutting London to Birmingham services on the WCML.

It is a question of balance. Firstly if you stop a train at MK then a relatively small number of people benefit, and a much larger number of people have their journey time to London extended by five minutes.
Secondly (pre-COVID) if you stopped a train on the Up Fast at MK in the morning peak, there would be a mass influx of MK commuters keen to save a few minutes on the journey time to London. This would result in the train being full and standing, and an unpleasant experience for the West Midlands folk on their allegedly fast run to Euston.
Finally (again per-COVID) the additional peak-only services with different stopping patterns which run during the peak are reliant upon everything having much the same stopping pattern, i.e. non-stop south of Rugby. If you start shoving MK stops in, you wreck the peak hour entirely.
The stopping patterns were set in line with the (then) anticipated levels of demand. Once an hour from Coventry to MK seems sufficient to me. Otherwise you end up with all West Midlands services calling at Rugby, MK and Watford Junction, and losing 10 minutes or more in the process.

But does a half hourly New Street-Euston service calling at (say) International, Coventry, Rugby, MK and Watford matter?

New Street/International-Euston passengers will be on HS2 if they want a fast service.

New Street/International/Coventry-MK/Watford passengers all benefit from more frequent services.

Rugby/MK-Euston benefits from the increased number of stops.

The only losers would be Coventry-Euston passengers (although who may have emptier trains now turning up) and Wolves-Euston who would have more stops along the way (unless they change to HS2)

 

[NoRoute]

One issue with HS2 in public terms, compared to - say - the building of a new motorway is that for a significant majority of the population the railway - any railway - is irrelevant. But most people see road / motorway congestion pretty regularly. Therefore, very simply, in most people’s minds building an expensive motorway helps the traffic wherever it I should built; building an expensive railway just helps a select few “and I’m not one of them”.

Of course you can’t expect the public to have studied transport planning and understand why they’re are wrong.

There's a flaw with your analogy because motorways have regular junctions allowing the towns and cities along the route to access them and directly benefit from the improvements they provide. With a motorway there is a clear cost-benefit case for the communities which it passes through, yes there's disruption and loss of amenity but they now have a fast motorway they can use.

HS2 is quite a different proposition because it does not stop in most of the communities it passes through, it provides no direct benefits. The community incurs the disruption and loss of amenity but there is no clear benefit. Any benefits are indirect and unclear, they are largely poorly defined arguments that it might 'free up capacity' potentially allowing improvements to existing rail services in the future, they are vague and undefined. It isn't clear whether those indirect benefits will materialise.

I think the public's reaction is quite understandable.

 

[Ianno87]

There's a flaw with your analogy because motorways have regular junctions allowing the towns and cities along the route to access them and directly benefit from the improvements they provide. With a motorway there is a clear cost-benefit case for the communities which it passes through, yes there's disruption and loss of amenity but they now have a fast motorway they can use.

HS2 is quite a different proposition because it does not stop in most of the communities it passes through, it provides no direct benefits. The community incurs the disruption and loss of amenity but there is no clear benefit. Any benefits are indirect and unclear, they are largely poorly defined arguments that it might 'free up capacity' potentially allowing improvements to existing rail services in the future, they are vague and undefined. It isn't clear whether those indirect benefits will materialise.

I think the public's reaction is quite understandable.

No the road analogy would be motorways taking long distance traffic off A roads, that frees up capacity on those roads for local journeys that you might otherwise be disincentivised to make due to congestion.

 

[NoRoute]

No the road analogy would be motorways taking long distance traffic off A roads, that frees up capacity on those roads for local journeys that you might otherwise be disincentivised to make due to congestion.

But curiously no one has built a motorway with no junctions between either end. M40 London to Birmingham has junctions at every major town on its route, same for M1, M6. From a public relations perspective the benefits of those motorways are clear to every town or city along the route. HS2 not so much.

Now if those motorway designers had proposed omitting all the junctions and just having one at each end, while there may have been some indirect and diffuse benefits to the communities on the route I doubt they would have been sufficient to sway public opinion.

 

[Ianno87]

But curiously no one has built a motorway with no junctions between either end. M40 London to Birmingham has junctions at every major town on its route, same for M1, M6. From a public relations perspective the benefits of those motorways are clear to every town or city along the route. HS2 not so much.

Now if those motorway designers had proposed omitting all the junctions and just having one at each end, while there may have been some indirect and diffuse benefits to the communities on the route I doubt they would have been sufficient to sway public opinion.

Some have been proposed - the M62 relief road through Greater Manchester (which even got as far as compulsory purchases around Prestwich), but was massively locally controversial.


The M11 is a curious example, which has the longest section between junctions of any motorway in the UK (none for 14 or so miles between Birchanger Green and Great Chesterford), but then has a flurry through Cambridge.

I was told by my late father-in-law that the original plan was not to have so many through Cambridge, to the objection of the locals who wanted to be able to access the motorway.

Some traffic computer modelling by the Highways Agency (or whatever they were called then) was run to try and prove the benefit of fewer junctions to support the planning enquiry.

However, a flaw was found In the modelling. Being the 1970s, this was all done on punch cards, so the model couldn't just be "re-run", and the result was the HA having to cave in and build local junctions.

 

[Bald Rick]

There's a flaw with your analogy because motorways have regular junctions allowing the towns and cities along the route to access them and directly benefit from the improvements they provide.

I get that, but that’s not what I meant - my fault for not explaining properly.

What I mean is that members of the public that live nowhere near a new motorway / road project (and thus won’t benefit from it or suffer any consequences) would, typically, understand that it needs to be built ‘because of the traffic’ - most people know that our roads are busy.

But members of the public that live nowhere HS2 generally won’t understand why it is needed, see the price, and think it’s a waste of money.

 

[quantinghome]

I agree with the need to decarbonise transport and that this will require improved public transport, but I'm not convinced HS 2 is an effective way to do this. Rail services along much of the HS2 route are already a faster and superior alternative to using the car, particularly when accessing London and other major cities where car use is now actively discouraged. HS2 improves existing rail alternatives further but doesn't offer anything fundamentally new so I wonder how much decarbonisation it will really deliver, I suspect a lot of travellers on those routes will already be using the train.

If the goal is to get people out of their cars and onto public transport then the country is probably better focussing its spending to target car usage where there is no public transport alternative, or where that alternative is a poor substitute for the car. That means improving existing regional and local rail services and restoring rail services to underserved communities. It also means investing in the unloved and under supported bus services and city transport options like trams.

Outside London and some of the big cities there really is no alternative to the car, London is different world. I suspect rolling out decent bus services across much of the country would cut car usage and decarbonisation at a lot lower unit cost than HS 2.

You don't seem to appreciate the current situation British railways face. Rail provides high speed, regional, commuter and freight services. Outside London, many of these have to share the same tracks. This kills capacity. If a train line has one type of service it could have as many as 12 trains per hour running. But if you have fast and slow trains running together only a few can be fitted into the timetable.

Local rail services in Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds require a step-change in capacity and frequency but that can't happen when the tracks are shared with intercity trains.

Medium to large size towns and cities on our current main lines like Milton Keynes, Rugby, Nuneaton, Peterborough, Grantham, Newark etc. have seen their train services cut in order to make room for the long distance traffic to Scotland, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle. There can be no improvement for these places without removing the long distance traffic to new tracks.

Cross-country services between our major cities are very slow and full because the same train is trying to serve local, regional and long distance journeys and is failing at all three. Longer trains may be a short term fix but something is very wrong with our railways if it's taking 2 hours to get from Leeds to Birmingham. We need to get those journeys competitive with the car. At the moment they're not.

"Why not upgrade our existing railway?" Well HS2 IS the upgrade. We've tried upgrading existing lines and we've seen blown budgets and marginal improvements which are quickly gobbled up by rapidly increasing passenger numbers.

 

[Ianno87]

"Why not upgrade our existing railway?" Well HS2 IS the upgrade. We've tried upgrading existing lines and we've seen blown budgets and marginal improvements which are quickly gobbled up by rapidly increasing passenger numbers.

This is what people *really* can't grasp.

HS2 provides exactly the same capacity uplift as adding two fast tracks on the WCML would, but with none of the hassle or limitations of having to rigidly follow the existing route. In both cases the rails are 1635mm apart and are connected together.

 

[quantinghome]

In both cases the rails are 1635mm apart and are connected together.

Let's hope not!

 

[Tobbes]

I get that, but that’s not what I meant - my fault for not explaining properly.

What I mean is that members of the public that live nowhere near a new motorway / road project (and thus won’t benefit from it or suffer any consequences) would, typically, understand that it needs to be built ‘because of the traffic’ - most people know that our roads are busy.

But members of the public that live nowhere HS2 generally won’t understand why it is needed, see the price, and think it’s a waste of money.

That's fair enough but the local impact is also clear. If (and I get it's an if) HS2 were accompanied by a conventional line to Rugby taking electrified Chiltern trains north via Aylesbury, Buckingham and Brackley, then the argument "it's no bloody good for us" would be reduced.

 

[Bald Rick]

Let's hope not!

Quite!

 

[ABB125]

That's fair enough but the local impact is also clear. If (and I get it's an if) HS2 were accompanied by a conventional line to Rugby taking electrified Chiltern trains north via Aylesbury, Buckingham and Brackley, then the argument "it's no bloody good for us" would be reduced.

**cough** Great Central? **cough**

 

[quantinghome]

Not to forget this sort of incident will become more frequent as the existing railway ages: Emergency landslip repairs secure railway between Milton Keynes and Birmingham (networkrailmediacentre.co.uk)

An early warning from a train driver, who reported something unusual when travelling over the section of track, meant teams could immediately put measures in place to control the problem.

However, hourly tests show the ground is still moving underneath several tracks on the West Coast main line.

We can't rely on nearly 200-year old infrastructure indefinitely.

 

[NoRoute]

You don't seem to appreciate the current situation British railways face. Rail provides high speed, regional, commuter and freight services. Outside London, many of these have to share the same tracks. This kills capacity. If a train line has one type of service it could have as many as 12 trains per hour running. But if you have fast and slow trains running together only a few can be fitted into the timetable.

Your comment and my response was specifically on the topic of decarbonisation and whether investment in HS2 is a cost effective means to achieve that. In terms of overall UK transport, the rail system in its entirely carries a relatively small fraction of total passenger miles at under 10%, therefore whatever you do to the rail system, even if you built HS2, added new services and you doubled passenger miles, it isn't going to have much impact on overall carbon emissions. That's just the reality of the situation, rail travel is a small fraction of road travel and that isn't likely to change because the rail system isn't suitable for many typical journeys.

So if the goal is to build a new high speed railway then fine, but if the goal is to decarbonise transport you'd likely get a far better return spending public money on bus and coach services and rolling out electric vehicle charging infrastructure across the country. Back in the 1950s bus services were used for more passenger miles than both rail and the private motorcar, they were the dominant form of passenger transport, now they're well behind rail,
they've been badly neglected.

 

[Tobbes]

**cough** Great Central? **cough**

"You may very well think that, I could not possibly comment ...."

 

[quantinghome]

Your comment and my response was specifically on the topic of decarbonisation and whether investment in HS2 is a cost effective means to achieve that. In terms of overall UK transport, the rail system in its entirely carries a relatively small fraction of total passenger miles at under 10%, therefore whatever you do to the rail system, even if you built HS2, added new services and you doubled passenger miles, it isn't going to have much impact on overall carbon emissions. That's just the reality of the situation, rail travel is a small fraction of road travel and that isn't likely to change because the rail system isn't suitable for many typical journeys.

So if the goal is to build a new high speed railway then fine, but if the goal is to decarbonise transport you'd likely get a far better return spending public money on bus and coach services and rolling out electric vehicle charging infrastructure across the country. Back in the 1950s bus services were used for more passenger miles than both rail and the private motorcar, they were the dominant form of passenger transport, now they're well behind rail,
they've been badly neglected.

Public transport is massively more space and energy efficient than car transport. If we switch to EVs you'd end up needing greater investment in electricity generation and supply networks than if we created a big modal shift from cars to public transport. Obviously rail is not going to be the solution to every transport need. Buses, trams and other forms of light rail obviously have a critical role to play, as well as 'active modes' i.e. walking and cycling. But rail certainly IS the solution to long distance travel between centres of large population and a significant part of the solution for local and regional journeys. That's where the rail investment should go and that's exactly what HS2 does. It plays to rail's strengths.

 

[snowball]

Some have been proposed - the M62 relief road through Greater Manchester (which even got as far as compulsory purchases around Prestwich), but was massively locally controversial.

I don't think it got anywhere near the stage of compulsory purchase. Compulsory purchase only happens when a scheme is fully confirmed and authorised to go ahead. What I suspect you mean is that it got as far as buying up houses that came on the market, some of which may have come on the market because people were worried because of the existence of the scheme.

The stretch without junctions would only have been about five miles from the M61 to the M66. There are many longer junctionless stretches of motorway already, and HS2 from OOC to Birmingham airport is probably 100 miles.

 

[bramling]

One issue with HS2 in public terms, compared to - say - the building of a new motorway is that for a significant majority of the population the railway - any railway - is irrelevant. But most people see road / motorway congestion pretty regularly. Therefore, very simply, in most people’s minds building an expensive motorway helps the traffic wherever it I should built; building an expensive railway just helps a select few “and I’m not one of them”.

Of course you can’t expect the public to have studied transport planning and understand why they’re are wrong.

Surely it isn’t rocket science for people to consider that people using HS2/trains in general could free up space on their motorway journey?

 

[Bald Rick]

Surely it isn’t rocket science for people to consider that people using HS2/trains in general could free up space on their motorway journey?

I genuinely don’t think many people think that way, for the same reason that most people can’t uderstand how new transport links generate traffic, or (getting current) people out walking in a busy park say “I can’t believe how busy it is, don’t they know they should be staying at home”

 

[HSTEd]

Surely it isn’t rocket science for people to consider that people using HS2/trains in general could free up space on their motorway journey?

That sort of logic falls down when people are constantly told there is no point to any road improvements because the congestion will inevitably return.
Somehow this magical demand-grows-to-meet-supply effect doesn't apply to traffic removed by improving trains.

 

[themiller]

Your comment and my response was specifically on the topic of decarbonisation and whether investment in HS2 is a cost effective means to achieve that. In terms of overall UK transport, the rail system in its entirely carries a relatively small fraction of total passenger miles at under 10%, therefore whatever you do to the rail system, even if you built HS2, added new services and you doubled passenger miles, it isn't going to have much impact on overall carbon emissions. That's just the reality of the situation, rail travel is a small fraction of road travel and that isn't likely to change because the rail system isn't suitable for many typical journeys.

So if the goal is to build a new high speed railway then fine, but if the goal is to decarbonise transport you'd likely get a far better return spending public money on bus and coach services and rolling out electric vehicle charging infrastructure across the country. Back in the 1950s bus services were used for more passenger miles than both rail and the private motorcar, they were the dominant form of passenger transport, now they're well behind rail,
they've been badly neglected.

I don’t have figures to hand but the majority of car journeys are short distance for which heavy rail is not appropriate (think driving a few miles for shopping or to drop of kids at school. This leaves commuting where rail is a great congestion buster and long distance where road can’t beat rail for speed.

 

[Ianno87]

That sort of logic falls down when people are constantly told there is no point to any road improvements because the congestion will inevitably return.
Somehow this magical demand-grows-to-meet-supply effect doesn't apply to traffic removed by improving trains.

Though at worst the new level of traffic is no worse than the old level of traffic on the same amount of tarmac.

Whereas with road building, that results in more cars and traffic overall.

 

[Hadders]

But curiously no one has built a motorway with no junctions between either end. M40 London to Birmingham has junctions at every major town on its route, same for M1, M6. From a public relations perspective the benefits of those motorways are clear to every town or city along the route. HS2 not so much.

Now if those motorway designers had proposed omitting all the junctions and just having one at each end, while there may have been some indirect and diffuse benefits to the communities on the route I doubt they would have been sufficient to sway public opinion.

People in the Chilterns kicked off massively when the M40 was built, even though there were many junctions. It'll all calm down once it's built and operating, and we'll wonder how we every managed without it. Exactly the same as what happened with HS1.