Where to put 400m platforms in Liverpool

[Nottingham59]

Following on from the Manchester Piccadilly thread, where in Liverpool could take 400m platforms?
These would be needed to handle full length HS2 train sets, even if the approach were on existing lines.

How to add 400m platforms to Manchester Piccadilly

If HS2 Phase 2B is not going to be built, then capacity to Manchester will be severely limited by the number of trains that can get through Colwich Juntion and Stafford. The only way to increase capacity to Manchester is to run longer trains. This is how I would add 3 x 400m platforms at...

www.railforums.co.uk

For what it's worth, I've identified four sites in the City Centre, but none of them are very satisfactory.


Adding the 400m platforms to the North of Lime St station would involve demolition, of both private homes and student accommodation:


...As would using the carriage road under the train shed to the south side of the station:

The site of the old Exchange Station would seem to be possible, if curved platforms were acceptable, but the site faces to the North West so a massive curve would be needed to head South. I assume the Seaforth Container Terminal branch could handle the traffic, but it would be an awful long way round.


One option would be a new station down by the water front, crossing over the Wapping Dock and the A5036 main road, and accessed by enlarging the old tunnel from Edge Hill that was abandoned when Lime Street was built.



The only other places I can see are out of the city centre, like Birkenhead. Or on reclaimed land in the Mersey estuary, perhaps as part of the proposed Mersey barrage.

Where would you put 400m platforms? Or is Liverpool destined to have only 200m or 250m trains for ever?

 

[Bletchleyite]

The demand from Liverpool (see the discussion on the Glasgow thread of how Liverpool has a very small hinterland of basically just what is on the Merseyrail map) is not sufficient to require them, 2x200m will be adequate (and given the more efficiently laid out HS2 units will basically be a doubling of capacity over the present 1x265m). A third London train per hour at 240m (i.e. extend the LNR Crewe) would provide all the capacity needed for a long time, plus a decent budget choice for the students etc.

 

[The Planner]

Anything that does happen will be at Lime St.

 

[Bevan Price]

Anything that does happen will be at Lime St.

Where the only place to put 400m platforms would be underground (and mega expensive).

 

[The Planner]

Where the only place to put 400m platforms would be underground (and mega expensive).

They wont be 400m.

 

[Mr. SW]

I looked at this a year or so ago out of curiosity, just to see for myself so I did a little research:

Positions of stations discussed in these two articles

https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/46763/html/
https://www.liverpolitan.co.uk/opinion/lime-st-or-bust

The Exchange site is completely awkward as to siting and infrastructure. The approach is weird and awkward and destructive. Exchange was above ground level but the approach will have to be through tunnel which means fiddling about with inclines and demolition.

Wapping Tunnel is too small and too historic, and anything other than the mildest modification is going to generate an enormous quantity of extremely difficult questions from some very important people indeed. You'll also have to drop Wapping/Chaloner Street as the old Wapping station site is only about one metre higher than the road. Also raising the station more than a token amount will result in an awkward incline with demolitions and the raising of roads like Jamaica Street. But the real barrier is the where the CLC line south of Central crosses the tunnel. The Northern Line tracks were lowered during reconstruction in the 70's which means hacking out the invert to considerable depth with steepening the incline from the present 1/48 to whatever they can get away with.

Read this

Wapping Tunnel – Subterranea Britannica

Subterranea Britannica is a society devoted to the study and investigation of man-made (including Nuclear Bunkers) and man-used underground places.

www.subbrit.org.uk

Any HS2 line will go to Lime Street, but 400m platforms will create an excavation of a cavern as far as Trowbridge Street, and nobody's going to do that. Liverpool doesn't need or deserve this sort of infrastructure work.

 

[Bevan Price]

I looked at this a year or so ago out of curiosity, just to see for myself so I did a little research:

Positions of stations discussed in these two articles

https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/46763/html/
https://www.liverpolitan.co.uk/opinion/lime-st-or-bust

The Exchange site is completely awkward as to siting and infrastructure. The approach is weird and awkward and destructive. Exchange was above ground level but the approach will have to be through tunnel which means fiddling about with inclines and demolition.

Wapping Tunnel is too small and too historic, and anything other than the mildest modification is going to generate an enormous quantity of extremely difficult questions from some very important people indeed. You'll also have to drop Wapping/Chaloner Street as the old Wapping station site is only about one metre higher than the road. Also raising the station more than a token amount will result in an awkward incline with demolitions and the raising of roads like Jamaica Street. But the real barrier is the where the CLC line south of Central crosses the tunnel. The Northern Line tracks were lowered during reconstruction in the 70's which means hacking out the invert to considerable depth with steepening the incline from the present 1/48 to whatever they can get away with.

Read this

Wapping Tunnel – Subterranea Britannica

Subterranea Britannica is a society devoted to the study and investigation of man-made (including Nuclear Bunkers) and man-used underground places.

www.subbrit.org.uk

Any HS2 line will go to Lime Street, but 400m platforms will create an excavation of a cavern as far as Trowbridge Street, and nobody's going to do that. Liverpool doesn't need or deserve this sort of infrastructure work.

As "Planner" says, Lime Street will not be getting 400m platforms.
Even if such platforms were wanted, it is physically impossible (other than underground). They would need to excavate a lot of the cutting adjacent to the station. For safety reasons, they would close all tracks into / out of Lime Street for as long as work was in progress - and I see no way that anyone is going to allow Lime Street to be closed - for how long? - at least 5 years I suspect.

 

[Meerkat]

How many TPH could through platforms handle? Could you get away with an underground 260m island (to let full length classic trains use it) with a tunnel through to Birkenhead where there is more space for a terminal (that I am sure Peel Ports would love for the Birkenhead Waters scheme that bubbles along). Shame that Central and Lime Street don't really line up for a Crossrail style two ended underground station that connected the two.
Just need a quick shake of that magic money tree, but just imagine how transformational it would be! (other power point buzz words are available on request).

 

[MarkyT]

How about using varying length portions adding up to 400m. A ~260m unit heading to Liverpool Lime St could be paired with a ~140m unit for a secondary destination in the N. West, splitting at Crewe. For the shorter unit, I'd suggest Chester (and eventually N. Wales) alternating with Manchester Airport via Wilmslow, assuming a half-hourly Liverpool service. For best journey times to the city, the northbound longer Liverpool unit would always leave Crewe first so would be at the front of the formation. The trains on order can probably be reconfigured for different lengths. That's certainly been an advertised feature in publicity for recent Japanese-derived HS trains, which with fully distributed power can be reformed fairly easily without drastically affecting the power-to-weight ratio and hence performance. So for a notional 400m train formed from 2 units, it might be perfectly feasible to redistribute the intermediate cars differently between the four driving cars.

 

[Krokodil]

How about using varying length portions adding up to 400m. A ~260m unit heading to Liverpool Lime St could be paired with a ~140m unit for a secondary destination in the N. West, splitting at Crewe. For the shorter unit, I'd suggest Chester (and eventually N. Wales) alternating with Manchester Airport via Wilmslow, assuming a half-hourly Liverpool service. For best journey times to the city, the northbound longer Liverpool unit would always leave Crewe first so would be at the front of the formation. The trains on order can probably be reconfigured for different lengths. That's certainly been an advertised feature in publicity for recent Japanese-derived HS trains, which with fully distributed power can be reformed fairly easily without drastically affecting the power-to-weight ratio and hence performance. So for a notional 400m train formed from 2 units, it might be perfectly feasible to redistribute the intermediate cars differently between the four driving cars.

One of the HS2 services was supposed to have a Lancaster portion on the back. The other was just planned to run as a single 200m set all the way from London. I agree that it would be good if the other one was for Chester/North Wales, post electrification of course. I'm not sure about having different lengths, what happens during disruption? If the southbound portion from Chester runs late do you hold the one from Liverpool outside Crewe until it arrives? If you don't you'll have reversed formations which will cause issues on the return journey. At least with standardised length it doesn't matter if they couple up out of order, Control can just swap the rest of the diagrams over and the unit that started in Liverpool will end up in Chester instead.

 

[Technologist]

How many TPH could through platforms handle? Could you get away with an underground 260m island (to let full length classic trains use it) with a tunnel through to Birkenhead where there is more space for a terminal (that I am sure Peel Ports would love for the Birkenhead Waters scheme that bubbles along). Shame that Central and Lime Street don't really line up for a Crossrail style two ended underground station that connected the two.
Just need a quick shake of that magic money tree, but just imagine how transformational it would be! (other power point buzz words are available on request).

I think this potentially how you do it.

Use Barcelona Line 9 type solutions with a 12m single bore tunnel with both tracks and the platforms in it. Platforms can then be arbitrarily long.

Line 9 is 47km long with 50 stations all in tunnels for about 8.4 billion Euros . This suggests that this may be an affordable way to do it even factoring in cost and productivity differences between Spain and the UK.

You'd need 3.6 miles of tunnel and 1 underground plus 1 terminal station next to Birkenhead central. Based on the Line 9 costs that would be about £1 billion.

 

[Meerkat]

You'd need 3.6 miles of tunnel and 1 underground plus 1 terminal station next to Birkenhead central. Based on the Line 9 costs that would be about £1 billion.

The Birkenhead station doesn’t need to be near a current Birkenhead station - those connecting can just stay on to the Liverpool connecting station.
So it can be cheaper - above ground in the docks to be developed and/or near the motorway connections.

 

[The Ham]

It does raise an interesting question, could there be a 400m station on the outskirts of Liverpool which then allowed the two halves to then enter the city.

Obviously the second service would have a circa 5 minute gap from the first train, which would likely mean that the desire would be to be in the front portion. However, you could manage that by only selling discounted tickets for the rear portion, so if you wanted the faster journey time you'd have to pay extra (of course some would reduce this extra cost by splitting their tickets to change at the outskirts station).

The other thing to note is that there's not a lot off capacity difference between a 240m class 390 and a 200m HS2 train. As such, an increase in frequency would probably be better than mixing and matching other train lengths or even messing around splitting services like the above.

Given the loss of the Eastern Arm there's probably scope for more services from London using HS2 infrastructure, although that would likely mean some local upgrades to allow extra services from HS2 tracks to Liverpool.

 

[Halifaxlad]

The exchange site is an interesting one as that I believe has been looked at as part of the options looked at by this station commission Steve rotherham set up.

Upon 400m platforms were possibly by building it over the A5053 and by using the orignal station building by demolishing the later modern extension.

Whilst I still disagree with 400m trains, if Manchester gets 400m trains then why not simply build a 2 platform underground station in Manchester and send each service through to Liverpool. You could potentially get away with having just one bidirectional platform.

Wasnt Manchester supppsed to have 3 HS2 services an hour to London ? That would Liverpool plenty of capacity regardless as to how many would use it to commute to Manchester.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It does raise an interesting question, could there be a 400m station on the outskirts of Liverpool which then allowed the two halves to then enter the city.

There's just no need for 400m trains to Liverpool full stop. In the event that two 200m trains were insufficient (remember that's nearly twice the capacity of now) then it would be better to add a third or continue the LNR to Liverpool than spend a fortune getting 400m trains in.

 

[The Ham]

There's just no need for 400m trains to Liverpool full stop. In the event that two 200m trains were insufficient (remember that's nearly twice the capacity of now) then it would be better to add a third or continue the LNR to Liverpool than spend a fortune getting 400m trains in.

The latter part of my post did also conclude that was likely to be the better option.

The one thing I would say is that whilst Liverpool is generally accepted to have a lower population and demand than Manchester, I would still question how a city of 1 million justifies only 2tph from London.

Compare this with, say Bournemouth (population of 200,000) which will have a similar London journey time (fastest 1:45 but can take 2:15 vs Liverpool with full HS2 of 1:50) which sees 55 trains a day (about 3 to 4 trains an hour).

Whilst there's a lot of places on the way to Bournemouth you've got to add up most places (Southampton 250,000, Winchester 125,000 Basingstoke 120,000) to get to close to Liverpool's population. (Whilst being closer to London would improve the attractiveness of travel from those other places to London, they also have other services to London).

 

[Bletchleyite]

Compare this with, say Bournemouth (population of 200,000) which will have a similar London journey time (fastest 1:45 but can take 2:15 vs Liverpool with full HS2 of 1:50) which sees 55 trains a day (about 3 to 4 trains an hour).

Bournemouth is on the outer reach of the London commuter belt. Generally commuter services need higher frequencies and higher capacity than intercity ones. Even if you think it's a bit far out, it's not that hard to extend a Southampton (which definitely is a commuter origin) back to Bournemouth at very low cost - not so of Liverpool other than the LNR Crewe which I do suggest extending.

If you look at mainland Europe, 1tph is a normal frequency for an IC route, some less and very few more. It's about how much capacity you need, not about what the population is.

 

[Topological]

To make Southampton and Bournemouth a fair comparison it has to be factored in that the trains stop at many places on the way, they are essentially a regular commuter service to London. There always seems to be strong demand for the other flows on that route and so it makes sense that there are more trains.

By contrast, any Liverpool HS2 offering would not be making as many stops and therefore not providing as many places with connections to Liverpool. The case for more Liverpool HS2 services would have to stand on end-to-end demand far more than the Bournemouth/Southampton does.

200m trains and splitting seems like the ultimate way forward IF there is insufficient capacity on HS2 to run 200m services.

 

[Trainbike46]

The demand from Liverpool (see the discussion on the Glasgow thread of how Liverpool has a very small hinterland of basically just what is on the Merseyrail map) is not sufficient to require them, 2x200m will be adequate (and given the more efficiently laid out HS2 units will basically be a doubling of capacity over the present 1x265m). A third London train per hour at 240m (i.e. extend the LNR Crewe) would provide all the capacity needed for a long time, plus a decent budget choice for the students etc.

There's just no need for 400m trains to Liverpool full stop. In the event that two 200m trains were insufficient (remember that's nearly twice the capacity of now) then it would be better to add a third or continue the LNR to Liverpool than spend a fortune getting 400m trains in.

These (above) are the key points; Liverpool isn't planned (and does not need) 400m trains to/from London. 2tph 200m, as planned in HS2, would be a massive increase in capacity, journey options & journey time. Adding a Chester/North Wales portion to the liverpool train that was originally planned to be a single 200m train from London would be better for the wider region, provided the electrification needed to allow it happens. Remember that from parts of Merseyside Chester is a very useful station, and then there are the benefits for North Wales on top of that

 

[Halifaxlad]

Liverpool isn't planned (and does not need) 400m trains to/from London.

Does it matter if its planned or not ?

Besides depending on how you would do it, it could be beneficial for the region!

If hypothetically we are to take it Manchester will have 400m long platform (one way or another)

Birmingham 400m long platforms are being built!

It would make sense to have 400m long platforms at Liverpool as well!

Obviously then you could have 400m services between Birmingham and Liverpool as well.

Disclaimer: Personally I think 400m is too long anyway and would rather see 300m long services instead.

If Liverpool services did go via Manchester then you could have more services to London, with minimal cost whilst freeing up another path on HS2.

If another station in Liverpool was built then you could free up capacity at Lime St, which could be used for more stopping services depending on how NPR reaches Liverpool.

The important thing to remember about investing in a new station for Liverpool is that it isn't just about London services, whatever length they may be!

 

[Krokodil]

Obviously then you could have 400m services between Birmingham and Liverpool as well.

There's no plan to have 400m long services between Manchester and Birmingham so what makes you think that Scousers are far more likely to want to visit Brum than Mancunians are?

If Liverpool services did go via Manchester

You're not serious, are you?

 

[Halifaxlad]

There's no plan to have 400m long services between Manchester and Birmingham so what makes you think that Scousers are far more likely to want to visit Brum than Mancunians are?

I thought under the previous HS2 plan there was a plan to have a high speed Birmingham - Manchester service ?

You're not serious, are you?

Why ever not ?

 

[Krokodil]

I thought under the previous HS2 plan there was a plan to have a high speed Birmingham - Manchester service ?

Yes, using single sets, not doubles.

Why ever not ?

I know that some of the London-Scotland trains crawl around the West Midlands as a consequence of tying up two seperate services, but why on earth would you route a Liverpool to London train through Manchester? It's tricky enough finding paths for all of the trains full of people who actually want to go to Manchester without sending Liverpool-London passengers on a magical mystery tour of the North West. Send the trains direct to Crewe. I can't imagine what you think it would achieve.

 

[Halifaxlad]

Yes, using single sets, not doubles.

If you look back at my earlier post you will see that I was talking about what you 'could' do!

I know that some of the London-Scotland trains crawl around the West Midlands as a consequence of tying up two seperate services, but why on earth would you route a Liverpool to London train through Manchester? It's tricky enough finding paths for all of the trains full of people who actually want to go to Manchester without sending Liverpool-London passengers on a magical mystery tour of the North West. Send the trains direct to Crewe. I can't imagine what you think it would achieve.

It would achieve tripling the number of London services via HS2, whilst providing ample capacity between Liverpool & Manchester.

If HS2 is built as previously planned with a station near to Manchester Airport then Liverpool could also have better connections to that!

 

[Trainbike46]

If you look back at my earlier post you will see that I was talking about what you 'could' do!



It would achieve tripling the number of London services via HS2, whilst providing ample capacity between Liverpool & Manchester.

If HS2 is built as previously planned with a station near to Manchester Airport then Liverpool could also have better connections to that!

Adding a massive detour for liverpool-London passengers, and increasing crowding on the Manchester-London section - better to have services that do something like Liverpool-Manchester-the North East as well as London services - which is exactly what was planned

 

[chr]

The latter part of my post did also conclude that was likely to be the better option.

The one thing I would say is that whilst Liverpool is generally accepted to have a lower population and demand than Manchester, I would still question how a city of 1 million justifies only 2tph from London.

Compare this with, say Bournemouth (population of 200,000) which will have a similar London journey time (fastest 1:45 but can take 2:15 vs Liverpool with full HS2 of 1:50) which sees 55 trains a day (about 3 to 4 trains an hour).

Whilst there's a lot of places on the way to Bournemouth you've got to add up most places (Southampton 250,000, Winchester 125,000 Basingstoke 120,000) to get to close to Liverpool's population. (Whilst being closer to London would improve the attractiveness of travel from those other places to London, they also have other services to London).

It always frustrates me that our metro area in the south is perceived to be low population and thus not worthy of significant transport investment. It's the largest urban area in the south after London, of nearly a million people (Southampton, Portsmouth + suburbs).

The Bournemouth+Poole+Christchurch council that has recently been established also has a population of over 400,000.

These aren't small metro areas. South Hampshire is 7th in the UK (just after Liverpool in fact, smaller by 10k) and BCP is 16th (ahead of Cardiff) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom

 

[Krokodil]

If you look back at my earlier post you will see that I was talking about what you 'could' do!

And you could run a twenty coach HST between St Ives and St Erth if you built the infrastructure. This would be just as poor value for money.

 

[MarkyT]

One of the HS2 services was supposed to have a Lancaster portion on the back. The other was just planned to run as a single 200m set all the way from London. I agree that it would be good if the other one was for Chester/North Wales, post electrification of course. I'm not sure about having different lengths, what happens during disruption? If the southbound portion from Chester runs late do you hold the one from Liverpool outside Crewe until it arrives? If you don't you'll have reversed formations which will cause issues on the return journey. At least with standardised length it doesn't matter if they couple up out of order, Control can just swap the rest of the diagrams over and the unit that started in Liverpool will end up in Chester instead.

JR East run mixed length Shinkansen units adding up to ~400m using E5 and E6 trains. The E5s are 253m long and the E6 149m. E5s are captive to the dedicated Shinkansen trunk HS line, while the E6, with a suitably smaller body profile, uncouples and branches off at Morioka station to form the Akita service on a former narrow gauge line converted to standard (shared with some specially constructed standard gauge units for local trains). Both E5 and E6 units can run at up to 300kph on the modern trunk line, but clearly, speed is more limited on the branch. The Akita service and another route branching from the main line further south are classified as 'Mini Shinkansen'.

 

[The Ham]

To make Southampton and Bournemouth a fair comparison it has to be factored in that the trains stop at many places on the way, they are essentially a regular commuter service to London. There always seems to be strong demand for the other flows on that route and so it makes sense that there are more trains.

By contrast, any Liverpool HS2 offering would not be making as many stops and therefore not providing as many places with connections to Liverpool. The case for more Liverpool HS2 services would have to stand on end-to-end demand far more than the Bournemouth/Southampton does.

200m trains and splitting seems like the ultimate way forward IF there is insufficient capacity on HS2 to run 200m services.

I accept that they stop at other places, but those other places typically only get you closer to the population of Liverpool AND those places have other trains as well (for example Winchester has services from Portsmouth which don't go near Bournemouth and Basingstoke has services from Salisbury as well).

Also I didn't say that they couldn't stop at other locations, the fastest trains would be comparable, however there are Bournemouth trains which take around 2:15, and so a London, Milton Keynes, Crewe, Runcorn service with a current journey time of 2:21 wouldn't be far off of that.

As long as a slower train leaves later than the previous train and arrives earlier than the next train people will still use it even if it's slower. Even if it didn't, cost comes into play. As does how it connects with other services (for example if it arrived at Crewe 5 minutes after a service to somewhere else which got to Crewe faster a chance there would be quite attractive).

A fast London/Milton Keynes service would be popular at the southern end, giving a fast service from Milton Keynes to the North West would also be fairly attractive.

Likewise, adding a further stop or two wouldn't aid the journey time but could provide better interconnectivity, making the journey more attractive for non London flows.

It always frustrates me that our metro area in the south is perceived to be low population and thus not worthy of significant transport investment. It's the largest urban area in the south after London, of nearly a million people (Southampton, Portsmouth + suburbs).

The Bournemouth+Poole+Christchurch council that has recently been established also has a population of over 400,000.

These aren't small metro areas. South Hampshire is 7th in the UK (just after Liverpool in fact, smaller by 10k) and BCP is 16th (ahead of Cardiff) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_United_Kingdom

Like most things (so the reason for HS2) the capacity constraints tend to be within London, metro areas in the south could see more frequent services to Waterloo with Crossrail 2 allowing 8tph for longer distance services having moved the metro services to the tunnels.

In theory every location with 2tph could gain a third service each hour (the problem is you then start to run up against other capacity constraints - see the inability to run 2tph all the time on XC services between Basingstoke and Southampton). You might need to start to be a bit creative with routing to get it to work - for example London - Southampton via Salisbury (if there's scope for that) or London - Weymouth via Yeovil.

Generally I think that all places should be considered for more frequent services (be that the Southern Metro area or Liverpool or even Manchester).

Take for example the fact that Basingstoke sees at least 3tph between it and Reading, given that it had a population of 120,000 and has quite a lot of services on the "mainline" (whilst the mainline services are going between other places and being a junction does mean that there's quite a bit of churn between routes which does help, there is quite a flow of people leaving the station from Reading services) whilst those services are typically 3 coaches long, it shouldn't be impossible for somewhere 10 times the size to fill (at least enough to justify running them) trains 4 times that size. Especially if they served other places.

Of course, given the popularity of the Reading - Basingstoke route I'd even suggest that going to 4tph all the time could well be justified, especially in a post Crossrail 2 world where there could be even more mainline services to connect to creating more churn with the connecting routes.