What form would a theoretical HS3 take?

[Ivo]

People often reference a future HS3 as a target after HS2. The usual suggestion is for Bristol/Cardiff.

Surely the market for such a route isn't strong enough to justify a new X00mph line? Bristol may be increasing to 6tph in the near future, but that is because it has such a high commuter stream to London. That aside, I wouldn't have thought it could be justified...

Anyway, even drivel. What route(s) do you think we would be looking at, and at what kind of speed?

 

[Eagle]

London to Bristol and Cardiff and perhaps Exeter, and HS2 to Birmingham to Bristol. Would be simpler to do it all at once and get a fully integrated highspeed network rather than a load of separate schemes here and there.

 

[tbtc]

Depends on what the final version of HS2 will be - one line to Scotland (i.e. up from Yorkshire, Newcastle, Edinburgh to Glasgow) or a separate east and west route to Scotland.

 

[YorkshireBear]

I think Bristol would be a good idea... id say the capital of wales and a huge commuter market could justify it.

 

[Bald Rick]

Brighton - Gatwick - Central London - link to HS2 somewhere just north of Euston. At least 30 years away though.

 

[WestRiding]

We cant even get HS2 off the ground........... hold your horses.

 

[IanBanks-Jones]

Hull-Leeds-Sheffield-Manchester-Liverpool-Belfast-Dublin

 

[Kettledrum]

Kings Cross - Stanstead - Nottingham, then link up with HS2 somewhere between Nottingham and Sheffield.

 

[Ivo]

Hull-Leeds-Sheffield-Manchester-Liverpool-Belfast-Dublin

Surely it would make more sense to go to Dublin before Belfast?

Sheffield might be a touch too far south as well.

 

[Eagle]

Surely it would make more sense to go to Dublin before Belfast?

Sheffield might be a touch too far south as well.

 

[VTPreston_Tez]

Yeah, that won't really work. I'd say York (connections with ECML) - Leeds - Manchester - Liverpool - West Wales Coast station (connect with local rail and ferry services) - Dublin - Belfast. Much less jagged and still serves the people who need it. Sheffield should be part of HS2 as a spur from Manchester and just HS2 until someone can give a route that would be good for it on HS3.

 

[IanBanks-Jones]

Okay, but crossing the Irish sea would be useful. And let's miss out Sheffield as well.

Another line between Edinburgh and Belfast, via Glasgow would also be useful, but that will probably be HS17 or so, opening in 2070 (a couple of months after HS2).

 

[The Ham]

Hull-Leeds-Sheffield-Manchester-Liverpool-Belfast-Dublin

If you are going for that route it would be more likely (to keep the line straight and minimise stops so it maximised train speeds) to be Hull, Doncaster, Manchester, Liverpool, Holyhead, Dublin.

In reality it is much more likely to involve a route between London and somewhere where there are a lot of people (especially if each train can seat 1500 people). There are very few likely candidates however a possible option could be:

London, Cambridge and then running up the Eastern half of the country to the eastern end of the Y of HS2 then possibly (maybe even allowing HS2 trains to run there too) further north, maybe even to Scotland.

I would suggest that most of the main lines in the south east would gain their capacity from cross London (tunnelled) routes taking the suburban services away from the termini (i.e. Crossrail 2) and then in due course tunnels to free up capacity on Thameslink.

 

[AndyLandy]

Whatever happens with future HSx lines, I'd like to see them eventually all go in/out of the same London terminus! If we're going to be making long distance Intercity journeys with changes in London, it would be nice to not have to factor in the best part of an hour for a cross-London interchange!

 

[Manchester77]

Could HS3 go Bristol/Cardiff and continue on through a tunnel to Ireland and up onto Dublin or would that not work?
Idk because I'm a bit crap at geography

 

[transmanche]

Could HS3 go Bristol/Cardiff and continue on through a tunnel to Ireland and up onto Dublin or would that not work?
Idk because I'm a bit crap at geography

You'd be crossing the Irish Sea at its widest point...

 

[Manchester77]

You'd be crossing the Irish Sea at its widest point...

Thank youu
Is the narrowest up at Hollyhead?

 

[Ivo]

Could HS3 go Bristol/Cardiff and continue on through a tunnel to Ireland and up onto Dublin or would that not work?
Idk because I'm a bit crap at geography

It would (allowing for transmanche's advice), but realistically the demand isn't adequate beyond Swansea. It's too far to justify a route to Dublin with no intermediate stop-off locations; in practice, the geography would make the route too expensive anyway.

 

[transmanche]

Is the narrowest up at Hollyhead?

No, the narrowest would be the North Channel.

 

[ainsworth74]

It's too far to justify a route to Dublin with no intermediate stop-off locations

That suggests that there's even a route that justifies tunnelling the under the Irish Sea!

 

[Ivo]

That suggests that there's even a route that justifies tunnelling the under the Irish Sea!

Seriously though, it would take a stupid brave man with an almost infinite pot of gold to build such a route in competition with the airways.

 

[YorkshireBear]

Seriously though, it would take a stupid brave man with an almost infinite pot of gold to build such a route in competition with the airways.

Where is Brunel when you need him?


I don't think HS will ever get to Ireland i see no point, if the north channel was the south channel then i think it would one day. Therefore Belfast, Dublin, Cardiff, Bristol, London... Europe.

Belfast may get a connection but i don't see a buisness case in a world with air travel. Now if air travel, particularly short haul, was ever no longer avaliable for whatever reason. I think we would be fast tracking HS rail links to the entire of europe.

 

[IanBanks-Jones]

Well, that's kind've the point. Jet fuel is finite and it isn't going to go down in cost. So either we look at other modes of bridging the gap (like tunnels) or develop a nuclear aeroplane. It might be ten years, or fifty, but air travel will once again be restricted to the rich and elite.

 

[tbtc]

Well, that's kind've the point. Jet fuel is finite and it isn't going to go down in cost. So either we look at other modes of bridging the gap (like tunnels) or develop a nuclear aeroplane. It might be ten years, or fifty, but air travel will once again be restricted to the rich and elite.

Or boats?

 

[IanBanks-Jones]

Not many boats, especially those which use renewable fuels tend to be capable of carrying hundreds of passengers at 150mph plus though.

 

[sprinterguy]

I would certainly advocate HS3 as a route to Bristol and South Wales. From London, phase 1 of the route running along roughly the same corridor as the present GWML Paddington to South Wales route, crossing the Severn estuary either by way of a new Severn tunnel or along the top of a possible Severn barrage. The high speed line would connect into the "classic" South Wales main line between Severn Tunnel Junction and Newport.

There would additionally be a junction from the high speed line connecting into the GWML just east of Bristol Parkway. HS3 trains to Bristol would approach the city via Bristol Parkway and the existing line. Trains to and from the South West would also be routed this way, as it is likely to be no slower than the present route via the Berks and Hants, or perhaps faster than it. The B&H would be reduced to a regional route with trains going no further west than Exeter, or perhaps Paignton, with the London - South West Intercity traffic diverted onto HS3.

There would be one intermediate station on HS3, a parkway station somewhere in a triangle bounded by Swindon, Didcot and Oxford at it's corners.

A phase 2 of HS3 could take the high speed line down to Exeter and then into Devon via a new alignment that avoids the Dawlish sea wall and travels more directly to Plymouth, joining the present main line to the east of Plymouth.

If there was to be a Phase 3, then it would extend the original South Wales thrust of the line deeper into Wales, to Swansea.

 

[brianthegiant]

Stansted and Gatwick will both stand out as having comparatively poor rail connections post HS2. Whether these bottlenecks are best served by additional HS lines I'm not 100% sure. But I think we'll continue to see more airport locations also becoming nodes on the high speed network, partly to enable modal shift but partly for political reasons as a fix for the ongoing runway capacity problem.

I also think sharing the NLL for the HS2-HS1 connections will be a bottleneck in future, since there are only paths for 3 TPH.

I suppose the logical approach is to continue extending the HS network as a backbone to the classic network, so that eg ~85% of the UK population are within a 60 minute rail journey of a HS station. (similar to the analysis used to plan mobile networks). Then rail becomes a favorable option for more people to get into Europe.

On this basis connecting Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh & Glasgow would be top priorities.

 

[Kali]

While as a resident of the South-West I don't have any issues with the idea of higher-speed rail links - although the above route would still be quite a drive away for me - how much time would it lop off journeys, and is there need for the extra capacity? there's very little freight left down here. There is most definitely freight in the Bristol area, but Bristol-London journey times aren't spectacularily long so my thoughts end up looking at new formations as adding capacity rather than cutting time, and I don't know how necessary that is yet?

A new alignment would save time past Tiv PW, but then that would also speed up conventional services too. There definitely needs to be some investment in the SW but I'm not really sure this is the best place to spend it yet.

 

[Holly]

Well, that's kind've the point. Jet fuel is finite and it isn't going to go down in cost. So either we look at other modes of bridging the gap (like tunnels) or develop a nuclear aeroplane. It might be ten years, or fifty, but air travel will once again be restricted to the rich and elite.

Hydrogen powered aircraft will be with us before nuclear. Hydrogen fuel is easily made from electricity. Electricity needs to be cheap at this far off future point in time.
As to the fixed Irish sea crossing, when it happens, one day, it will be a combination of causeways, bridges and tunnels. First there is hugely (5 metres) rising sea level to deal with as the WAIS collapses; that involves and will be the mother of the invention of major innovations in civil engineering. Figure a 50 to 80 year timescale.

 

[Nym]

Hydrogen powered aircraft will be with us before nuclear. Hydrogen fuel is easily made from electricity. Electricity needs to be cheap at this far off future point in time.
As to the fixed Irish sea crossing, when it happens, one day, it will be a combination of causeways, bridges and tunnels. First there is hugely (5 metres) rising sea level to deal with as the WAIS collapses; that involves and will be the mother of the invention of major innovations in civil engineering. Figure a 50 to 80 year timescale.

Or we could just merrily send a TBM on it's way, since most of the capital expenditure is the machine, not that expensive for the tunnel rings compared with the cost of viaducts and causeways...

Either way, I think we should run it with cascaded Class 323s