OAO on HS2 in theory

[FlyingPotato]

So before I get started, this is a question based on theory.

As HS2 is not being built in full, less trains are going run on it (no Leeds basically) in theory

Could you therefore have OAO running their own trains on it, with the track access costs helping to lay back the costs of building HS2. For example an OAO could be a Blackpool train running on HS2 then going to Blackpool

This is all theory and speculative, I'm just interested to hear opinions

 

[The Planner]

So before I get started, this is a question based on theory.

As HS2 is not being built in full, less trains are going run on it (no Leeds basically) in theory

Could you therefore have OAO running their own trains on it, with the track access costs helping to lay back the costs of building HS2. For example an OAO could be a Blackpool train running on HS2 then going to Blackpool

This is all theory and speculative, I'm just interested to hear opinions

The capital costs would be enormous for rolling stock as well as the fact the track access would be obscene plus any abstraction issues.

 

[DanNCL]

The capital costs would be enormous for rolling stock as well as the fact the track access would be obscene plus any abstraction issues.

As we’ve seen with Lumo the way around the abstraction issues is to throw in a single calling point underserved by the main operator on the route whilst skipping some of the major stops, for example stopping at Motherwell whilst skipping Carlisle.

The rolling stock issue isn’t unresolvable.

 

[The Planner]

As we’ve seen with Lumo the way around the abstraction issues is to throw in a single calling point underserved by the main operator on the route whilst skipping some of the major stops, for example stopping at Motherwell whilst skipping Carlisle.

The rolling stock issue isn’t unresolvable.

What stop are you going to add in north of Handsacre? As your Motherwell example is about it.There is nothing you could do south of Handsacre and I didnt suggest the rolling stock was unresolvable. However seeing as OAO are there to make a profit, they arent going to want significant inital capital costs.

 

[Sorcerer]

I think Italy proves you can have successful high-speed open access operation with Italo competing with state operator Trenitalia. But in the case of HS2 I think you'd have to have trains going onto the classic network since most of the project has been scaled back, and you'd have to go places the primary services wouldn't. I don't think HS2 being designed for up to 18tph would have trouble with capacity, not would I think there'd be much issue with rolling stock. I think the main issues would be related to the costs and market more than anything.

 

[DanNCL]

What stop are you going to add in north of Handsacre? As your Motherwell example is about it.There is nothing you could do south of Handsacre and I didnt suggest the rolling stock was unresolvable. However seeing as OAO are there to make a profit, they arent going to want significant inital capital costs.

It’s as much about where they skip as it is about where they stop. Using Lumo as an example again, they skip several major stops including York, Doncaster and Peterborough, whilst stopping every train at Morpeth. Skipping those larger intermediate stations reduces the total amount of abstraction from existing services.
Lumo only serves Newcastle and Morpeth on most of their services, only serving Motherwell and Preston (likely necessary for crewing) would be comparable.

South of Handsacre they’d need to be non stop to Old Oak Common. And probably continue to terminate there even if/when the link to Euston opens.

For an OAO to work on HS2 they’d need to frame themselves more as a competitor to air than a competitor to existing rail.

I think Italy proves you can have successful high-speed open access operation with Italo competing with state operator Trenitalia.

Spain too with two operators competing with Renfe on the Madrid-Barcelona corridor.

 

[FlyingPotato]

I could see an ouigo style happening in theory
Old Oak Common to Paisley Central for example and for fun

 

[stuu]

Italo are direct competitors, they don't have to impose some alternative stopping pattern to justify their existence. I don't see why any OAO on HS2 wouldn't be allowed to directly compete, as long as they paid the same cost for the path

 

[Sorcerer]

Spain too with two operators competing with Renfe on the Madrid-Barcelona corridor.

Oh yes, that's right, I forgot about Spain, and in fact I believe it's three operators (four if you count AVE and Avlo separate but they're both Renfe so it's really a branding thing), with Ouigo (SNCF) and Iryo (Trenitalia) competing with Renfe. I think that would be an exceptional case though comparable more to London to Manchester which sadly isn't happening. I wouldn't mind seeing such competition on HS2 but I doubt it ever will get to three. Two at a push I'd say.

Italo are direct competitors, they don't have to impose some alternative stopping pattern to justify their existence. I don't see why any OAO on HS2 wouldn't be allowed to directly compete, as long as they paid the same cost for the path

It may seem strange, but I can sort of see Virgin wanting to possibly get into the high speed rail market and use HS2 as an opportunity to relaunch their open-access operator aspirations they had a while ago for London to Liverpool, or even similar to Italo where it runs alongside many Trenitalia services between different cities. I feel like that's such a Branson thing to do.

 

[Speed43125]

Oh yes, that's right, I forgot about Spain, and in fact I believe it's three operators (four if you count AVE and Avlo separate but they're both Renfe so it's really a branding thing), with Ouigo (SNCF) and Iryo (Trenitalia) competing with Renfe. I think that would be an exceptional case though comparable more to London to Manchester which sadly isn't happening. I wouldn't mind seeing such competition on HS2 but I doubt it ever will get to three. Two at a push I'd say.

We don't live in a country that is going to throw ridiculous money on HSR that sits unused most of the time. Spain is unique in the level of infrastructure and its lack of use by the State run operator.

 

[JonathanH]

We don't live in a country that is going to throw ridiculous money on HSR that sits unused most of the time.

We do live in a country where the terminus for HSR is going to be constrained as to how many trains can run from it in a given hour. There may be pressure to try to fill HS2 with services, but Old Oak Common can only reverse a limited number of trains, relative to the original plans for Euston. Surely that alone constrains the paths available any operator other than the primary HS2 operator?

One of the paradoxes of the original Y in the franchise model was that services were going to run to destinations currently served by the West Coast, Midland and East Coast operators. It didn't appear to me to make sense that it would work for the 'classic' services on the West Coast route to be run by the HS2 operator but the 'classic' services on the other routes not to be. Moreover, the plans for HS2 effectively filled all the paths in a centrally planned way. While it seems apparent with the loss of the Y that HS2 will have fewer paths now occupied, it also seems apparent that Euston, if it is ever built, won't have capacity for 17 or 18 trains an hour, so the paths on HS2 won't be available to be filled as extra trains won't have anywhere to start from.

 

[Snow1964]

Yes any Open Access Operator that is clever is going to be able to get round the 30% abstraction test by some careful choice of station calls.

Could they make it work financially, is harder to say, but if the line is used nowhere near its theoretical capacity of 20-24tph then might be possible to get a secondhand 135mph pendolino or 140mph IET along big chunks of it, especially if start running services to say Oxford by using the (maintenance) spur and extend these to places like Cardiff or Bath/Bristol (assuming Oxford & Bristol gets electrified).

Cant see it working competing with core, but as a part route competing with overpriced (and relatively slow) cross country, or to other underserved places with token number of trains per day, then yes, because there is always a market for direct (if slower) trains by retired, students, those visiting relatives, and less mobile etc who don't like the risk or inconvenience of connections.

 

[fishwomp]

If only there had been more connections/junctions into the line..

Old Oak facing west would have enabled Heathrow to Birmingham and Manchester.

BA has 8 slots used daily for LHR-MAN (and 5 to Newcastle) - slots are traded for $50-75M each... and those flights are the first to be cancelled when it gets foggy.. so not a great solution. Given Heathrow 3rd runway is expected to cost the public purse £5-6bn for local infrastructure, and the airport the £17bn for the runway.. here is problem with a better solution.

Also, at around £17bn per mile, this makes HS2 look cheap

 

[The Planner]

Could they make it work financially, is harder to say, but if the line is used nowhere near its theoretical capacity of 20-24tph then might be possible to get a secondhand 135mph pendolino or 140mph IET along big chunks of it, especially if start running services to say Oxford by using the (maintenance) spur and extend these to places like Cardiff or Bath/Bristol (assuming Oxford & Bristol gets electrified).

That would be entertaining, trundle off the mainline of HS2 at some low speed, up the chord at some low speed, sit in the loop to reverse for a few minutes and off to Oxford.

 

[YorkRailFan]

I suspect any OAO would use the WCML once HS2 is completed. Yes it will be slower but track access charges would be far lower and destinations like Northampton could be given a better Scotland service which wouldn't be seen as abstractive.

 

[JonathanH]

I suspect any OAO would use the WCML once HS2 is completed. Yes it will be slower but track access charges would be far lower and destinations like Northampton could be given a better Scotland service which wouldn't be seen as abstractive.

In reality, are the paths going to be left available for open access passenger operators to use, or open access freight operations? It might be noted that north of Hansacre there is no additional capacity after HS2, indeed possibly less spare than currently, and a need to run the same Anglo-Scottish services as now through the northern WCML. While I appreciate it was just an example, running direct services from Northampton to Scotland doesn't seem likely.

 

[BayPaul]

With 6 platforms at OOC, that will be used for a while to turn the whole service, there should be ample room for a few tph to turn there once the main service moves to Euston.
Since OOC is in west London, and an important enough market to stop every HS2 train at, could an open access operator reasonably argue that it is a separate an non abstractive market to central London, allowing services to anywhere that you can't currently easily reach from OOC.

 

[Snow1964]

With 6 platforms at OOC, that will be used for a while to turn the whole service, there should be ample room for a few tph to turn there once the main service moves to Euston.
Since OOC is in west London, and an important enough market to stop every HS2 train at, could an open access operator reasonably argue that it is a separate an non abstractive market to central London, allowing services to anywhere that you can't currently easily reach from OOC.

Yes for instance, in theory, if an open access operator was able to use the HS1-HS2 link, terminate in the International platforms at Stratford, without calling at Old Oak, then there zero abstraction from both Old Oak and Euston, which would help keep average below 30%.

The problem is southern end of the line is not designed with lots of link spurs to other places, so not easy to serve anywhere but Old Oak and Euston.

 

[YorkRailFan]

In reality, are the paths going to be left available for open access passenger operators to use, or open access freight operations? It might be noted that north of Hansacre there is no additional capacity after HS2, indeed possibly less spare than currently, and a need to run the same Anglo-Scottish services as now through the northern WCML. While I appreciate it was just an example, running direct services from Northampton to Scotland doesn't seem likely.

Yeah I know. I was just thinking of a place that an OAO could serve which wouldn't be seen as particularly abstractive for Avanti. With paths, it could only feasibly run between London and Birmingham via say Northampton and for that, there's LNR.

 

[fishwomp]

Yes for instance, in theory, if an open access operator was able to use the HS1-HS2 link, terminate in the International platforms at Stratford, without calling at Old Oak, then there zero abstraction from both Old Oak and Euston, which would help keep average below 30%.

The problem is southern end of the line is not designed with lots of link spurs to other places, so not easy to serve anywhere but Old Oak and Euston.

I didn't think there was a HS2-HS1 connector? At OOC HS2 is seriously subterranean..

Paris or Brussels to Brum would be non-abstracting, and a cracker of a journey time vs the journey that is central Paris to Charles de Gaulle or Orly airports. There might even be ample spare platform capacity at Curzon St for security and passport control given the current expectations. Alas demand via the airlines is rather low - 2 x 737s with Ryanair - and 3 dinky planes with Air France - so this is probably not a go-er.

 

[zwk500]

With 6 platforms at OOC, that will be used for a while to turn the whole service, there should be ample room for a few tph to turn there once the main service moves to Euston.
Since OOC is in west London, and an important enough market to stop every HS2 train at, could an open access operator reasonably argue that it is a separate an non abstractive market to central London, allowing services to anywhere that you can't currently easily reach from OOC.

The service will be limited to the OOC platform capacity initially, and when it goes through to Euston AIUI the plan was for the service to rise to a point where OOC wouldn't really be able to turn anything, hence Euston having the larger number of platforms. Obviously current plans are in the middle of a washing machine, so we shall have to see what the new 'end state' actually looks like.
I highly suspect that any OAO on HS2 would need to pass the abstractive test by the same methods classic WCML and ECML ones have - identify a poorly served medium-sized market and have a slightly different calling pattern to the main services. Simply running a Manchester/Birmingham-OOC won't cut the mustard, it'd need to be something like Euston-Blackpool calling B'ham Interchange, Stafford and Warrington or something.

Yes for instance, in theory, if an open access operator was able to use the HS1-HS2 link,

I didn't think there was a HS2-HS1 connector? At OOC HS2 is seriously subterranean..

The HS1-HS2 link was dropped rather quickly. AIUI OOC has not been designed with any provision for it in the future (nor has HS1 for that matter). There are plans floating around that show designs for the link were drawn up as part of the costing exercise, but they are not the latest plans.

 

[cle]

Do we need the abstraction rules on a net new railway, especially London-Birmingham which will be self-contained. Have two brands, or more - leave it up to them to differentiate on price, experience, service... much like anything else. It's a stupid concept in today's railway anyway.

I'd love that for Manchester, Glasgow etc but paths kick in.

I would say that a non-stop Liverpool offering might be popular, given the proposed patterns. Or serving Lancaster fast (currently skipped on the fast Scotland) - and one other strategic spot (but not Preston or Carlisle) to attract faster P2P London journeys.

 

[JonathanH]

I would say that a non-stop Liverpool offering might be popular, given the proposed patterns. Or serving Lancaster fast (currently skipped on the fast Scotland) - and one other strategic spot (but not Preston or Carlisle) to attract faster P2P London journeys.

If any of those things were deemed to be desirable, why wouldn't the DfT operator run them?

What is the suggestion as to why a Open Access Operator can make better use of a path on HS2 than the DfT operator?

Is there an obligation on the part of the infrastructure operator to leave a number of paths, and slots at the London terminus, vacant for Open Access Operators?

 

[mike57]

Hull trains have proved that a route ignored by the franchised operator can be made to work, but even for them Doncaster - London is quite a bit of their custom. I would imagine once HS2 is open there will be proposals, but getting from proposals to trains running will be a stretch, not least the issue of rolling stock. Hull trains used various 'hand me downs' for years before getting new stock, but there wont be 'hand me downs' for HS2 for many years.