Could tbtc (who, IMHO, writes copious sense on these forums) comment if the Sheffield to Stocksbridge line, currently freight only as I understand, could be a sensible candidate? I see the new MP has mentioned it on her FB page:
Very interesting question - I'm going to start a separate thread on this because there are so many complications and so many compelling reasons... it's one I'm on the fence about but with good reasons for doing it and some particular problems in terms of making it a useable line - a real conundrum - glad you asked though
This Thameslink 2 / BML2 thing is the problem that Lewes to Uckfield faces - rather than a fairly simple reopening of a few miles of railway along an existing track bed (though probably also some upgrades of the existing route), it becomes part of a multi-billion pound project and trapped in that framework.
BML2 have certainly put the work in to make it less absurd crayoning and more reasonable proposal in recent years. However even the Sussex phase in isolation they throw in a tunnel bypassing Lewes and talk about it being a full time alternative route to London from Brighton and not just a diversionary route - necessitating more comprehensive upgrades (eg linespeed - London Bridge to Uckfield takes longer than London Bridge to Brighton) of the Uckfield line. It also raises the question of where there's room north of Croydon for those additional trains (it's not the 1 path a more focused reopening would perhaps require) - something they know is an issue hence why their proposal is multi-billion as that's what it takes to fix!
Uckfield-Lewes is another zombie that won’t die! Didn’t work as a local line so morphed into a crazy long way round Brighton diversion that has become so expensive it would be better to just quadruple BML1....
This is one problem that these kind of schemes have. Because they have spent a long period as an obsession of a relatively small number of people, they've evolved from "simple project to tackle a small local problem" into "mega-scheme that improves regional connectivity and guarantees year-round resilience".
Uckfield to Lewes has some merit. It's not particularly long, it has a commercial bus service (albeit only half hourly, so not in the same league as some places without a train line - e.g. the multitide of Arriva expresses from Ashington/Blyth into Newcastle), I could see a simple extension of the existing London Bridge service - it wouldn't need to be anything fancy - you'd ideally want electrification (which would put the costs up) but if you were doing a list of Top Fifty Lines To Consider For Re-Opening then I wouldn't object to seeing it on there.
It lacks some of the "regeneration"/ "marginal political seat"/ "post-industrial town struggling to adapt, but lots of jobs in nearby big city" aspects that tick a few boxes. There's nowhere large without a station (so it's not as attractive as seeing somewhere like Ebbw Vale that has no passenger trains) - it's more about providing a local link but without the "urgency" that some better schemes have.
However, growing in the dark, unchecked by any serious scrutiny, it's mushroomed into a billion pound scheme that attempts to rival the Brighton Main Line , requires removal of parts of Tramlink, needs a long tunnel under south London, diverts away to serve Docklands and is presumably intended to run to somewhere north of the Thames as an alternative to Thameslink (even though there's nowhere north of the Thames that will want to surrender their existing Liverpool Street service to a train to Croydon).
Same goes with a lot of these schemes. Look at any Okehampton - Tavistock thread and see how long it takes until someone mentions bringing back through Waterloo services. You could
maybe justify "SELRAP" as a modest extension of the hourly Preston - Colne DMU through to Skipton, but, oh no, it *has* to be a mega-trans-pennine scheme with bells and whistles.
People need to look at what works well (short stubby branches like Ebbw Vale, Alloa) and adjust their sights a bit - I'm not sure if the Government will actually re-open more then the Ashington line (and maybe that's more of a "Being Seen To Reward The Former Labour Voters" and "Smokescreen To Avoid People Thinking We Only Invest In The South Whilst We Go Ahead And Build HS2") - but if they do then it'll be a few short schemes - not some region wide project that will suck up the entire discretionary spending for the whole country.
As an example, I'd welcome a fast tunnelled alignment from Exeter to Plymouth that avoids Dawlish (would knock best part of half an hour off the journey time, would make trains competitive with the A38, would remove the weather risk, would free up space through Dawlish for more local trains), but I know it's too expensive to get built in the current climate so I'm not petitioning anyone for it.
If you ask Father Christmas for something simple, he might give you a short branch to somewhere like Tavistock/ Portishead - don't get greedy and waste your crayons on a scheme that rivals both the Brighton Main Line and Thameslink and involves huge tunnels through urban areas and doesn't really deliver much of benefit.
That’s remarkably sensible! One of the main reasons for reinstatement of a line is surely to give a quick reliable way through heavy rush hour traffic, as with Witney to Oxford.
Interesting - I don't know Oxford that well but I've always seen road congestion when visiting and always seen some fairly full Stagecoach double deckers - it's the kind of place where there look like large numbers of people who could be taken off the roads if we could get better trains - but I can't comment on the Witney example - I think that starting from a position of "Which Places Have Traffic Congestion" would be a good place though (something that isn't a particular problem in places like Colne!).
Skipton to Colne would be a good one as it immediately opens up a new transpennine route with the potential to reroute freight traffic.
How much freight a day are we talking about?
How are you going to path it through Leeds and up the Aire Valley from Leeds to Skipton?
And is this mainly just biomass so that we can spend a lot of resources delivering some American materials to burn (because the power station are too tight to pay for ships that use an eastern port, so expect to continue to use a western port and get the taxpayer to fund a new railway line for them)?
In the 2008 study of Uckfield - Lewes, it was calculated that a straightforward single track link between the two would cover its operating costs. Perhaps now, with increased usage the case can be made towards funding construction.
Covering operating costs ought to be a minimum threshold for such schemes - I'm not expecting them to repay the infrastructure costs any time soon but I wouldn't want to open any more lines that require operational subsidy. As above, I'm okayish with a simple Uckfield - Lewes (just not with all the bells and whistles of a mega "Brighton - Docklands via a new tunnel under Croydon" project)
Branch lines are less useful than links between bigger places that would open up new cross-country(small c) journey opportunities
This is a problem.
The word "useful" gets used a lot on here - it's a nice way of justifying things but unquantified - how do we compare the number of people who'd use a simple branch line from a post-industrial town into the nearest big city against the general unquantifiable Nice To Have increased number of long distance links (that people wouldn't use in large numbers every day, but it'd nice kind of nice to have that ability just in case)?
I could see the merit in more long distance links but a lot of the ones that we have are pretty poorly used. Between the Derby - Birmingham line and the Gospel Oak - Barking line, the "east-west" links are fairly quiet lines. Birmingham/Leicester to Peterborough/ Cambridge/ Stansted only gets an hourly Turbostar. Bedford - Bletchley only gets an hourly DMU (was a single 153/150, now a 230). St Albans to Watford is an EMU every forty five minutes.
So it's not as if you can look at the cross-country services we already have (south of Derby, north of London) as huge successes - there are various "calls" to bring back some cross country links but if the best you can hope for is an hourly 170 then there are bigger priorities we could be getting on with. However, if we lived in a world where there were no Birmingham/Leicester to Peterborough/ Cambridge/ Stansted service then I'd expect people suggesting it could justify a full length train every fifteen minutes!
(East-West may be a success one day but as it's already being started upon, I'm not using it as an example here)
