How *should* HS2 have been built?

[The Ham]

How's that calculated? I've heard others argue the opposite - what's being included in the costs?

The big costs for underground train lines are Underground stations, remove the stations (by having them on the surface or fitting then within the diameter of the tunnel) and the cost is significantly cheaper.

It's why Musk building big spaces for Tesla's to load/unload when saying that he can create a "metro" solution for less than normal rail options is going about it the wrong way.

I have wondered if we would have been better off building high-speed rail earlier. I suppose the best time would have been after the failure of the APT project in the 80s. Leaving the WCML to solder on in the state it was for another 20 years is rather astonishing looking back. I suppose a London-Birmingham-Manchester high speed line, designed in the 80s and opened by the year 2000 would have been great, but then you'd run into the current problems. Namely; approaches to city centres getting filled up with suburban trains and these TGV type trains. So you'd either have to extend, what would inevitably have been nothing more than an LGV into and through city centres or live with the congestion.

I expect this is what an earlier British high-speed rail network would have looked like if it was planned any time between the 80s to the early 2000s. So perhaps there is no time like the present to build high-speed rail

Even if there was a need to pay a lot to upgrade city centre stations now, there would have been 20 years of higher rail growth to justify the expense (which would be lower than a mega project like HS2 as well as being much lower risk).

By far the best idea - would also knock some of the cost off building the stations and would only require very short extensions of existing platforms as an 11 car Pendolino is 275m and smaller stations can use SDO.

Capacity to Birmingham and Manchester can be exactly the same as planned by having 4tph to each instead of the planned 3tph, and everywhere else would have a lot more capacity than is planned on HS2 as their trains would be 1.5x the length.

I get it as 265m for the 11 coach 390's.

However I refer you to my last post in this thread:

Existing 9+11+11 coach trains taking 5 hours would require 155 coaches

"Javelin+" with 12 coach trains taking 4 hours would require 144 coaches

"80x+" with 16 coach trains taking 4 hours would require 192 coaches

HS2 services with 16 coach trains taking 3 hours would require 144 coaches

Whilst that's the same as the "javelin+" trains they would have 480 seats compared with 1,100 for the HS2 services.

Even if we matched the speeds, so you needed less rolling stock, if you tried to add the Eastern Leg there's a good chance that Euston couldn't cope with a 33% uplift in service provision for the shorter trains to provide the same capacity.

That either means another rebuild to fit in more platforms or turning some services back at OOC or finding another location to serve (Heathrow maybe) but with the cost of that (and the inconvenience to those wanting to go to central London) or building HS East sooner.

 

[eldomtom2]

The whole argument turns on what the costs of surface construction turn out to be.

If you were in completely empty wilderness, surface construction will often turn out to be far cheaper, but the problem is England is emphatically not like that.

HS2 originally planned to use a surface alignment on the New North Main Line corridor out of London, but it turned out rebuilding bridges etc for the loading gauge requirements put the cost up so high it was cheaper to bore a tunnel out. And that was an alignment already in government hands!

Interactions with infrastructure on the surface, roads, buried services et al, imposes lots of costs, delaays and schedule complexity on the scheme.
You have to move every utility system and road along the route into prearranged culverts/corridors so that you can start earth moving, and if you find something you didn't expect it can cause huge delays. This has caused major schedule and cost problems in the past for stuff like gas pipelines as well.


This is why viaducts are considered to be faster, since all you care about it is whether stuff is in the footprint of your support piers which only form a small portion fo the route. In addition, there is normally a simpler relocation process because they only have to move the service a few metres and can do it independently of the route construction process.

Its even more extreme for tunnels, that largely pass below all other infrastructure, so you only have to care about utilties and the like at your compact access points.
Tunnel digging appears to be one of the few things in the HS2 project that has gone according to plan.

So are you arguing that the common perception of costs ballooning because of NIMBYism forcing HS2 to tunnel is inaccurate?

The big costs for underground train lines are Underground stations, remove the stations (by having them on the surface or fitting then within the diameter of the tunnel) and the cost is significantly cheaper.

That's not comparing underground lines with surface lines though.

 

[cle]

If it was re-scoped to 300m now, what would that save? 100m of platform at Curzon and OOC?

Shorter trains, but they are now doing more on the WCML (notably Manchester ones will have to fit via Wilmslow and likely Stockport) - so frequency is hamstrung.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If it was re-scoped to 300m now, what would that save? 100m of platform at Curzon and OOC?

Shorter trains, but they are now doing more on the WCML (notably Manchester ones will have to fit via Wilmslow and likely Stockport) - so frequency is hamstrung.

Without 2B and with 200m units we face decreased capacity to Manchester. Only Birmingham could take 400m sets.

 

[London Trains]

Even if we matched the speeds, so you needed less rolling stock, if you tried to add the Eastern Leg there's a good chance that Euston couldn't cope with a 33% uplift in service provision for the shorter trains to provide the same capacity.

That either means another rebuild to fit in more platforms or turning some services back at OOC or finding another location to serve (Heathrow maybe) but with the cost of that (and the inconvenience to those wanting to go to central London) or building HS East sooner.

You do realise that most of the services are going to be 200m? Only the services that will run wholly on HS2, so Birmingham and eventually Manchester (if phase 2b is built) services will be 400m, and also one service that divides at Crewe I believe.

Having 300m fixed length units makes much more sense as it is compatible with the existing network, and massively increases capacity to locations such as Liverpool, while 1200m (400m x 3tph) of train an hour can still be provided to Birmingham and Manchester by increasing their services to 4tph (300m x 4tph).

 

[Arkeeos]

You do realise that most of the services are going to be 200m? Only the services that will run wholly on HS2, so Birmingham and eventually Manchester (if phase 2b is built) services will be 400m, and also one service that divides at Crewe I believe.

Having 300m fixed length units makes much more sense as it is compatible with the existing network, and massively increases capacity to locations such as Liverpool, while 1200m (400m x 3tph) of train an hour can still be provided to Birmingham and Manchester by increasing their services to 4tph (300m x 4tph).

Based on this vector map (it could be wrong) Most of the services that were planned were 400m. at least 13/17 of the trains reaching Euston will be 400m, with trains dividing at Crewe, Carlisle and EMH, obviously the Eastern Leg is in flux
but if we ignore all of that because we don't know what's happening with it, most trains are still 400m.

 

[HSTEd]

So are you arguing that the common perception of costs ballooning because of NIMBYism forcing HS2 to tunnel is inaccurate?

Yes, the extra tunneling was a very small portion of the cost growth.

The increases in costs are because of all the moving parts and interactions in the scheme, which overwhelmingly relate to surface sections.

People are desperate for it to be the NIMBYs, but it does not appear that it is.

EDIT:

Why do we need to change the platform specifications in order to change the train lengths?
If you want 300m units to Manchester you don't have to change anything except you order some 300m sets.

 

[Sorcerer]

Is there any particular reason that 200m long trains were chosen rather than trains of an equivalent length to the Pendolinos of which even a nine car unit is longer at 217m and an eleven coach unit is 265m? I understand they'll be able to run more trains to make up for the shorter lengths but is there any more to it than that?

 

[HSTEd]

Is there any particular reason that 200m long trains were chosen rather than trains of an equivalent length to the Pendolinos of which even a nine car unit is longer at 217m and an eleven coach unit is 265m? I understand they'll be able to run more trains to make up for the shorter lengths but is there any more to it than that?

200m trains can be coupled into 400m formations and fit into HS2 platforms.
You can have 2 200m units per path or one 265m one.

 

[Nottingham59]

Is there any particular reason that 200m long trains were chosen rather than trains of an equivalent length to the Pendolinos of which even a nine car unit is longer at 217m and an eleven coach unit is 265m? I understand they'll be able to run more trains to make up for the shorter lengths but is there any more to it than that?

200m/400m is the usual length of units on high speed lines in Europe and China. Not sure if it's part of the TSI standards

 

[Sorcerer]

Interesting. I'd have expected the train length to be built more in line with current network stock since HS2 will be connected to the West Coast Main Line. That said the Frecciarossa 1000 is only 202m and I certainly didn't recognise it as being shorter than Pendolinos when I travelled on them in Italy.

 

[HSTEd]

200m/400m is the usual length of units on high speed lines in Europe and China. Not sure if it's part of the TSI standards

400m is I believe, but train sets of other lengths have been used.

In some parts of Spain they run three units in multiple and the AGV was explicitly designed with that capability.

 

[Bald Rick]

For me the cost benefit analysis never stacked up

For you, perhaps. But for the people making the decisions, they did. And that’s because, actually, they did stack up.

Several knowledgeable people have noted that tunnelling costs are often cheaper than surface lines

Well they often are when building on the surface means buying lots of expensive property. But in general, tunnelling isn’t cheap. Hence why East West Rail is not in tunnel.

This station could be 100 metres below street level and completely built from underground to minimise surface disruption and building demolition.

I know (or at least hope) this in in jest, but how do you build something ‘completely’ from underground without starting at the surface?

ISTR that the most expensive part of a new railway is the track and signalling. So perhaps a tunnel, even if more expensive than on the surface, is not a significant cost.

Nope - the most expensive part is the civil engineering to deliver a trace and formation that you can then put the track on. For a simple two track railway, the cost of modern signalling is relatively small.

Tunnelling is flippin’ expensive. Not least the cost of all the necessary vent / escape shafts, which at surface level cause just as much local disruption as building a surface line.

 

[Taunton]

For you, perhaps. But for the people making the decisions, they did. And that’s because, actually, they did stack up.

Nope - the most expensive part is the civil engineering to deliver a trace and formation that you can then put the track on. For a simple two track railway, the cost of modern signalling is relatively small.

But while the cost-benefit may well have stacked up when London to Birmingham was estimated at £18bn, it's a different matter now it's looking at the wrong side of £100bn. 5 times the cost, no variance in benefit. Which by definition is a completely different answer.

And while signalling should be cheap compared to heavy civil engineering, one of the current issues it brings is it takes for ever to get going. Quite why that should be is an interesting discussion, but in the meantime all the money borrowed for the civil engineering is having to have interest paid on it, while there is no revenue coming in from operations.

It would be interesting to compare the costs per mile of the broadly parallel M40 motorway from the Chilterns to Birmingham, built in 1987-90. Formation width wider, grading is pretty comparable. I see it took three years to build, I recall it being very quick..

 

[Arkeeos]

But while the cost-benefit may well have stacked up when London to Birmingham was estimated at £18bn, it's a different matter now it's looking at the wrong side of £100bn. 5 times the cost, no variance in benefit. Which by definition is a completely different answer.

That is highly misleading, London to Birmingham (phase 1) is budgeted at 35-44bil, and still is, It has not changed too significantly (ie doubled) since construction started. It has not increased 5 times in cost, you're getting your numbers confused, £100bil is a commonly touted number for the entire HS2 project, including the eastern leg, without the Eastern Leg it seems unlikely that HS2 will cost £100bil.

 

[Bald Rick]

But while the cost-benefit may well have stacked up when London to Birmingham was estimated at £18bn, it's a different matter now it's looking at the wrong side of £100bn. 5 times the cost, no variance in benefit. Which by definition is a completely different answer.

And while signalling should be cheap compared to heavy civil engineering, one of the current issues it brings is it takes for ever to get going.

Id be interested to know why you think Phase 1 is more than £100bn, or why you think the signalling is taking ‘forever’ to get going. For rather obvious reasons, there’s no point installing any signalling equipment on the ground until there are some tracks…

 

[JonathanH]

Id be interested to know why you think Phase 1 is more than £100bn

I'd imagine that the thought that the touted budget for HS2 is £100bn, and it is now only buying Phase 1 would give the impression that it is all being spent on the first phase, given the talk of construction inflation.

 

[The Ham]

That's not comparing underground lines with surface lines though.

If you are wishing to have a station at given point the cost of building that station is part of building the line. If you then compare the cost of (say) Crossrail at £18.8bn for 73 miles, that's £257 million per mile. Musk can easily say that he can get the tunnelling costs down to below that.

Well of course he can if every 3 miles there's a station box being built which costs £400 million.

Of course he also bends the value by using smaller tunnels and building a tube just big enough for cars, which can not carry the volume of passengers that something like Crossrail The Elizabeth Line can carry (in part because a lot of Americans don't have experience of something like that and the numbers of people that each train can carry and even if they do they can't comprehend the number of trains in an hour as that's not their experience).

You do realise that most of the services are going to be 200m? Only the services that will run wholly on HS2, so Birmingham and eventually Manchester (if phase 2b is built) services will be 400m, and also one service that divides at Crewe I believe.

Having 300m fixed length units makes much more sense as it is compatible with the existing network, and massively increases capacity to locations such as Liverpool, while 1200m (400m x 3tph) of train an hour can still be provided to Birmingham and Manchester by increasing their services to 4tph (300m x 4tph).

As others have pointed out, whilst the end points may well have 200m trains most of the services on the core would be 400m, with a few services splitting/joining on route to make that case.

 

[stuu]

If you are wishing to have a station at given point the cost of building that station is part of building the line. If you then compare the cost of (say) Crossrail at £18.8bn for 73 miles, that's £257 million per mile. Musk can easily say that he can get the tunnelling costs down to below that.

Crossrail core cost about £5bn, excluding the stations. Not a direct comparison, because of the added complexities of dealing with station sites and doing it under a city... but that works out at £192m per single track mile.

 

[NoRoute]

But while the cost-benefit may well have stacked up when London to Birmingham was estimated at £18bn, it's a different matter now it's looking at the wrong side of £100bn. 5 times the cost, no variance in benefit. Which by definition is a completely different answer.

To be fair the benefit has actually gone down, due to innovation in video conferencing technology driven through by COVID.

A significant portion of business travel where time savings are valuable has switched online.

When time really is valuable you arrange a Teams meeting from your local office, or home office, crunching your travel time down to the minute or so to boot up the laptop and dial in to the meeting. No train can compete.

 

[weeklycommuter]

The original objective of what became HS2 was to provide additional capacity and quicker journeys between the key economic centres, in the most efficient manner, to enable economic growth. Simple analysis showed this as being London - W Mids - Greater Manchester / Liverpool / North West and on to Scotland.

That is delivered by building HS1 phase 1 London Euston to Birmingham and Lichfield, phase 2a Lichfield to Crewe, phase 2b West Crewe to Manchester and the Golborne Link to join the West Coast Mainline North of Manchester. I am not clear why it was originally proposed to build phase 2b East Birmingham to Leeds with a link to the East Coast Mainline just South of York as additional capacity to Edinburgh and all of Scotland and therefore capacity relief for services to Scotland via the East Coast Mainline is provided by HS2 phase 1, 2a, 2b Manchester, the Golborne Link and the WCML. Running double sets with one set to Edinburgh and one set to Glasgow doubles capacity provided London to Scotland with a train path on the WCML.
Would it not have been more cost effective to provide the additional capacity needed London to Leeds with upgrades to the East Coast Mainline?
While HS2 phase 2b East Birmingham to Leeds could have provided additional capacity London to Leeds it was a very large amount of money just to achieve this. They can probably use all the capacity of HS2 phase 1 just running trains London Euston to Birmingham, Scotland, North Wales and the North West of England. Now they have abandoned HS2 phase 2b East so they will have to find an alternative way to provide additional capacity London to Leeds.

 

[The Planner]

It would be interesting to compare the costs per mile of the broadly parallel M40 motorway from the Chilterns to Birmingham, built in 1987-90. Formation width wider, grading is pretty comparable. I see it took three years to build, I recall it being very quick..

£293million in 1987 costs, so £806 million now and £14.4 million a mile. Other Google results suggest £30 million pounds per mile of new motorway in 2011.

The UK's last, great, expensive, short roads

Two short lengths of road are about to open at a combined cost of £1bn. How can stretches of motorway barely five miles long be so expensive?

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Bartsimho]

Just something that might fall under this topic but maybe the budget shouldn't have been disclosed ever.
I have just seen in the Times Letters section this suggestion the link is to the exact letter but the page has all letters so ignore the rest: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...xt=ADVERTISEMENT-,Lesson for HS2,-Sir, As the

Lesson for HS2​

Sir, As the former CEO of the company that successfully constructed HS1 I have never been consulted by either the Department for Transport or the leadership of HS2 about lessons learnt for delivering mega-projects, despite being told many times that meetings should be arranged. The biggest lesson is: do not disclose the budget. When I was leader of the Crossrail project, the consultants and contractors, knowing the budget, put forward proposals that when added together burst the budget by eyewatering amounts; each wanted the largest share of the cake. On HS1 we did not disclose the budget and we opened the line six weeks early and 6.4 per cent under budget.
Rob Holden
CEO, London & Continental Railways 1998 to 2009; CEO, Crossrail, 2009-11; chairman, HS1, 2011-18; Radlett, Herts

From Rob Holden as well so it's an interesting idea about when contracts have a public budget contractors push for the largest share of that driving up costs while if you never disclosed the budget you would get more realistic valuations from contractors.

 

[JonathanH]

Is it even possible not to disclose the budget given the need to release figures in the Budget, ensure that the National Audit Office can monitor the project, and generally be honest with the public about what the project is costing?

 

[stuu]

Is it even possible not to disclose the budget given the need to release figures in the Budget, ensure that the National Audit Office can monitor the project, and generally be honest with the public about what the project is costing?

I read the letter, I assume it means before tenders are called, not once contracts are let

 

[Bartsimho]

Is it even possible not to disclose the budget given the need to release figures in the Budget, ensure that the National Audit Office can monitor the project, and generally be honest with the public about what the project is costing?

It appears that HS1 managed it. Probably done by including the figures within other metrics like general railway improvement work.
Basically saying it should have been tendered the same way as HS1

 

[HSTEd]

Is it even possible not to disclose the budget given the need to release figures in the Budget, ensure that the National Audit Office can monitor the project, and generally be honest with the public about what the project is costing?

The Auditing would be after the contract is signed, which is when the price is fixed.

 

[Sweetjesus]

So, if the underground stations is a significant factor of the cost in tunneling.

If we want the bypass/spur is removed in its entirely and HS2 needs to go into Birmingham from the south and leave Birmingham to the north, I think it's possible that...

.. the current Curzon Street station could be built in similar fashion to Moor Street where it is an overground station but there is a tunnel immediately after the platform.

Looking at the map, it seems that this is certainly a possibility.

The tunnel could be built immediately below Clayton Hotel for trains leaving for the north.

The south end of the station could have another tunnel for trains leaving for the south. This tunnel can be somewhere near Coventry Street (assuming the platforms need to be 400m long).

This will require demolition of some buildings though around Coventry Street area. The station could be built as subsurface station (in LUL style) to reduce the amount of buildings needed to demolish.

 

[matacaster]

So, if the underground stations is a significant factor of the cost in tunneling.

If we want the bypass/spur is removed in its entirely and HS2 needs to go into Birmingham from the south and leave Birmingham to the north, I think it's possible that...

.. the current Curzon Street station could be built in similar fashion to Moor Street where it is an overground station but there is a tunnel immediately after the platform.

Looking at the map, it seems that this is certainly a possibility.

The tunnel could be built immediately below Clayton Hotel for trains leaving for the north.

The south end of the station could have another tunnel for trains leaving for the south. This tunnel can be somewhere near Coventry Street (assuming the platforms need to be 400m long).

This will require demolition of some buildings though around Coventry Street area. The station could be built as subsurface station (in LUL style) to reduce the amount of buildings needed to demolish.

How deep are foundations for Clayton hotel?

 

[The Planner]

So, if the underground stations is a significant factor of the cost in tunneling.

If we want the bypass/spur is removed in its entirely and HS2 needs to go into Birmingham from the south and leave Birmingham to the north, I think it's possible that...

.. the current Curzon Street station could be built in similar fashion to Moor Street where it is an overground station but there is a tunnel immediately after the platform.

Looking at the map, it seems that this is certainly a possibility.

The tunnel could be built immediately below Clayton Hotel for trains leaving for the north.

The south end of the station could have another tunnel for trains leaving for the south. This tunnel can be somewhere near Coventry Street (assuming the platforms need to be 400m long).

This will require demolition of some buildings though around Coventry Street area. The station could be built as subsurface station (in LUL style) to reduce the amount of buildings needed to demolish.

Where do the tunnels come out at either end? especially the north end. Presumably you tunnel to the Water Orton portal as removing Birmingham Interchange would be a very odd thing to do.