In this part of our series on HS2, we look at options for serving Heathrow Airport, how this might be affected by franchising, the London terminus and decisions made concerning a potential HS1-HS2 link.
Access to Heathrow Airport and implications for HS2 service options
Midlands and Northern stakeholders expressed a desire to be able to reach Heathrow via HS2 in order to open up fast access to this major international hub. The Heathrow Hub campaign has argued, so far without success, for the main HS2 line to be routed via the airport on its way to London. Heathrow Hub has also argued that use of the HS2 main line within London could allow some European rail expresses to start and terminate at Heathrow rather than at St Pancras. It has alternatively argued for widening the GWML to six tracks as far as Iver, with people movers serving a new hub station there and with European rail expresses reaching the airport that way.
Proposed direct HS2 link to Heathrow
The Government, HS2 and Heathrow
The Labour Government commissioned a report in March 2010 from Lord Mawhinney (a former Conservative Transport Secretary). He covered four topics:
- High Speed to Heathrow
- A London High Speed terminus
- Airline slot allocation
- A link to HS1 and mainland Europe
This was rather more than he was asked to do.
Lord Mawhinney’s mandate was renewed by the Coalition Government in May 2010, despite this change of government and a change of policy at that time concerning the third runway at Heathrow. He reported in July 2010 and, in relation to Heathrow, recommended that:
- In the early stages of a high speed rail network, there is no compelling case for a direct high speed rail link to Heathrow. An Old Oak Common interchange is adequate.
- Changing the route of the main high speed line to run via Heathrow, at an extra £2-4bn, should not be taken forward.
- Rail/air through ticketing should be an integral part of any new high speed rail link to Heathrow
- With the high speed line from Old Oak Common to Birmingham, appropriate junction engineering works should be included to allow an eventual airport link. A direct line would only be in prospect after the high speed network had been extended at least to Manchester and Leeds
- A station at Heathrow Central Terminal Area be favoured for maximum connectivity
The report’s conclusions were adopted by the Coalition Government, who also said that Heathrow Airport should make a funding contribution towards the spur railway.
HS2 Ltd proposed a spur from near Denham, generally alongside the M25, to a terminal near Heathrow T5 (see above map). In one future option, that could have been extended towards the South West Main Line as part of a Southern Rail Access for Heathrow. Such a scheme would offer high speed cross-country intercity trains from places such as Southampton. The high speed spur would have had two junctions with the HS2 main line, one towards the Midlands and North, and one towards London. The latter would clearly have had an onward link in mind with HS1, discussed below.
Plan to get 4tph to Heathrow using only 2tph slots
As we shall see, the HS2-HS1 link has been cancelled, making the London-Heathrow spur partly irrelevant for the next couple of decades. The Heathrow-northbound spur was then questionable, though both still had potential relevance for any decision on an extra South East airport runway. On Government instructions in January 2013, planning for the spurs and Heathrow rail link was deferred until after the Airport Commission’s announcement which was due in 2015. High speed passengers to and from Heathrow will have to travel via Old Oak Common – as proposed by Lord Mawhinney.
In terms of service planning, the HS2 main line is seen as having slots for 18tph each way, running at consistent speeds to maximise hourly capacity. 18tph is equivalent to a train every 3.3 minutes, or every 3 minutes with a ‘white space’ every half-hour to allow a recovery and punctuality margin. Of those, HS2 Ltd had foreseen 16tph between London and the Midlands/North/Scotland, and slots for 2tph between Heathrow and the Midlands/North/Scotland. That in turn would have allowed up to 2tph on the Heathrow-London curve, with a Heathrow arrival from the Continent using the same HS2 main line slot as a Heathrow departure for the North, and vice versa.
No future provision for Heathrow-London link
The forecast passenger volume to and from Heathrow was itself quite low. This was in contrast to any high speed cross-country linkage which had been backed in 2010 in a report by the pro High Speed Greengauge21 organisation. Only 2tph were considered justifiable, making the whole High Speed spur poor value for money. In May 2013, after the shelving of the HS2-Heathrow link, Greengauge 21 suggested using NNML and the HS2 spur from the London direction, for other rail services to reach Heathrow. However, that is no longer an option. Whilst the alignment might be useful to note as a possible future corridor for orbital London & Home Counties travel and/or for London-avoiding trains, the spurs are not being safeguarded. The Commons Select Committee has explicitly directed the Promoter not to use the Bill powers to implement passive provision for the Heathrow spurs. The Government accepted this. The decision releases two additional slots per hour for internal UK high speed travel to and from London, which may be much more worthwhile commercially.
It is unlikely that any High Speed spurs will be revived in the foreseeable future unless the Scottish Government insist on a link to allow Scotland-Heathrow High Speed trains as an environmental alternative to planes. These are not in the High Speed Scotland and Northern England Broad Options recently published (March 2016) by the DfT.
Franchising and open access
As a corollary to the abandonment of the slots into Heathrow, might those two (or more) HS2 slots per hour become available for open access trains? No one has so far mentioned the availability of HS2 to accommodate open access services, but legally the possibility must exist. High speed line capacity will not be used fully in Phase 1. Indeed no one has so far indicated how the HS2 services might be structured within or separately from the existing WCML franchise as a commercial operating package, or as a ‘super-express’ element of the established West Coast and East Coast franchises.
Nor has pricing for route access and train paths been debated much, neither for ‘captive’ services between the main city-centre hubs nor for through expresses continuing onto the classic network. These are rather fundamental questions which are still open for large-scale debate. HS2 Ltd has proposed a draft group of HS2 Phase 1 services, along with indicative WCML replacement services, while the Government has proposed HS pricing should have parity with WCML, but that is as far as it goes at present.
The latest DfT demand case analyses for HS2 were published in November 2015, and show the proposed Phase 1 service patterns. These do not include the Watford-Euston DC trains, which TfL aims to run at 4tph in future years.
Indicative plan of the services on the WCML and HS2 following phase 1, as presented by HS2 Ltd to the Commons Select Committee
Future Phase 1 services
Broadly the current WCML intercity frequencies are retained and transferred to HS2 (with Liverpool rising to 2tph, at present in peaks only), except for the hourly North Wales diesel service retained on WCML (of course, North Wales is arguing for line electrification). With an approximate 50 minute run time between London and Birmingham and 3tph, an HS2 ‘captive’ train ought to be able to ‘cycle’ every 140 minutes, 160 minutes at worst. HS2 is planning on a standard 25 minute turnround at Euston except for the longest distance trains. This layover seems excessive for a Birmingham shuttle, but would point to Train 1 resuming at Euston as Train 9 160 minutes later, so 8 trains on that service.
As HS2 is proposing a Phase 1 order for 16 ‘captives’, this also points to the bulk of Birmingham trains being planned with the ability for expansion to double-length (400m) for higher capacity, with higher running costs but no more train slots and more seats per train. Consequently HS2 train operating costs per seat mile might not be so startlingly different to now, though energy consumption will be significantly higher. Of course, you then have to fill those seats…
It is the re-growth of WCML services where the revised train frequencies arise: 2tph retained ‘intershire’ services (our phrase) from Manchester, another two retained from Birmingham, an extra train from Crewe plus two hourly spare paths. The outer and inner commuter services from Northampton and from Milton Keynes or closer in would maintain their frequency (6tph Northampton, 8tph Milton Keynes and closer) and these would move to 12-car trains over time.
Plus ça change…
The regrowth of services on existing lines amounts to a ‘reborn’ WCML passenger service structure remarkably similar to now, with just a few more intermediate stops and lavish provision at Milton Keynes. The Watford outbound offer is unclear, while the Phase 2 Luton/Bedford and Stevenage equivalents aren’t discussed. There is nothing to be seen in the way of new WCML service origins outside London (Super Voyager or bi-mode from Hereford/Shrewsbury, anyone? Yet bi-modes are now being considered for HS1, for St Pancras-Hastings).
There is no variation offered for the WCML London destination, no stop at Willesden Junction for the Old Oak Common development lands from intermediate commuting towns in the absence of WCML-Crossrail (similar to the GE stop at Stratford for Canary Wharf), let alone any Javelin-style commuter trains to Stratford via Camden Junction and HS1. The more one looks, the less the WCML capacity to/from London amounts to ‘new’ connectivity. There are however additional regional passenger services and extra freight paths that can then be operated, which are discussed in the DfT November 2015 documents.
Status quo, or more Midlands commuting?
Many intermediate places will, of course, still expect their direct services to London and other places. It’s the need to maintain these that eats up the available paths. The understanding is that Network Rail’s WCML development team currently consider HS2 will only free up passenger train slots on WCML for, at best, an additional 2tph, though there will be more capacity on trains at the intermediate stops.
It is worth noting that, if we had expected the ‘classic’ London commuter frequencies to increase and/or do more diverse things in London, this doesn’t appear in HS2 Ltd’s thinking to date. The Northamptons and inners are shown as static in trains per hour (though with greater capacity) – so we didn’t need HS2 for those. The implication of the service pattern is that HS2 fundamentally enables priority for future passenger growth on WCML ‘intershire’ services – which could be translated as more longer distance commuting to London, and even from London in a contra-flow direction (except such contra-flow isn’t obvious from the Watford stops). At this stage, the DfT has not intervened and proposed any changes to HS2’s ideas, and has gone as far as republishing them in its November 2015 update to the strategic case for HS2.
New costs
How much such services will reward the combined capital and operational expenditure for a revised WCML plus HS2 Phase 1 is an unanswered question. To require roundly £20bn for capital expenditure for the Phase 1 line and trains at 2011 prices leads to an annual capital interest charge of £600m (equivalent at, say, a public sector 3% pa borrowing) before any capital payback. As with Eurotunnel, the capitalised interest before the Phase 1 line opened would also be large, at crudely £2¾-3bn, with a further £80-90m interest chargeable annually. If, as Treasury seems willing to contemplate, the private sector were invited to finance HS2, consider a (low) 12% annual charge with capital interest around £2.4bn just for HS2 Phase 1, before any repayment of the original capital. The figures would be higher too when expressed in 2026 prices.
Taking additional WCML operating costs as a nominal £25 per train mile (also 2011 prices) for an amalgam of continuing 11-car Pendolino and 12-car 110mph Desiro equivalents, and some high-level mileage estimates adds a further £300m to operating expenditure. This leads to an additional £1bn of revenue required annually just to break even on HS2 Phase 1 capital interest and extra WCML operational expenditure on a wholly public sector basis, and over £3bn p.a. or more if private sector were financing the HS2 element. This also assumes that HS2 pays its way on operating expenditure, though it might not do so initially.
To achieve a repayment of £20bn HS2 capital investment in say 20-30 years on a mortgage-type basis, one would be looking to an excess of half a billion pounds in revenue per year as a static repayment over 27 years. This is for HS2 Phase 1 only, again on a wholly public sector basis.
If you were looking for economic growth as your payback, then sums can be different. They are ultimately a decision for HM Treasury about the balance of financial merit. Here we return to the paradox discussed in Part 1, that a scheme may enable much new housing and commercial development, with such projects increasingly seen as being justified by unlocking new economic growth rather than just about transport links (see the National Infrastructure Commission arguments about HS3, for example), but the DfT transport assessment rules don’t incorporate that directly. Most recently, it has been reported that Transport Minister Robert Goodwill has said that HS2 will remain in public ownership until there is “certainty” on operation and passenger numbers.
What is the foreseeable demand in the London area?
The above leads to the obvious question, about what the volume of demand will really be. An important supplementary question, particularly as it affects rail planning in the London area, is what sort of demand is it? When this is established one needs to ask, what should HS2 and a revised WCML really be offering in the nature of future service structures to and possibly through the London area?
You end up with a circular argument if you aren’t careful, with rail schemes which project present demand trends self-defining their solutions even though we are looking at several decades of dynamic demand, population and jobs growth, where there may be more than one way to define the optimum end state in say 2040 or 2050 or later. Why a London terminus at all is a question at one end of the spectrum, why not a new terminus is another. Meanwhile the rail industry has already considered, and sidelined, one through running option for some WCML commuter services (Crossrail 1 – WCML link), and others may be feasible over several decades. Let’s start with why a terminus at all.
Why the likelihood of an HS2 terminus?
This is best explained by consideration of the alternatives and their present state of maturity, including the former HS2-HS1 scheme. A distinction should be drawn between HS ‘captive’ services, ‘classic compatible’ services with the capability for sharing tracks with conventional UK trains, and the foreseen WCML service offerings, where conventional inner and outer commuter services and new ‘intershire’ services will be the main groupings.
Travel volume points to the London urban area as by far and away the biggest single source of intercity rail travel demand in the south of Britain, though there is also much that is generated by the Home Counties, not least south and east of London. The scope for through links with European mainland railways is also material, even if ‘Brexit’ type attitudes, UK border policies and the Channel Tunnel safety rules are administrative and political obstacles to the business case for through continental services extending further within Britain than the London area (where a line to Heathrow at least has some rationale).
It needn’t have been like that. The original London-Folkestone ‘King’s Cross Bill’ promoted in the late 1980s allowed through running with a tunnel via South London arriving just east of King’s Cross terminus with a through station offering links to existing main lines. This ‘HS0’ would have been able to accommodate through intercity and London & Home Counties regional trains, and also with direct City and Victoria trains rejoining the Southern network near Peckham Rye. It would have been relatively easy to reach North and NW London, though line capacity problems would have arisen in due course with the growth in commuting volumes.
Pantomime season
This part of the Bill was quashed in October 1991 in an announcement at the Conservative Party conference at Blackpool, even though it was navigating the House of Commons’ procedures at that stage. The announcement followed strong lobbying from East London interests and Arup who had designed a route via Thames Gateway. There was also electoral nervousness by the Major government about the Bill’s impact on marginal Conservative constituencies in SE London ahead of the 1992 General Election. The changes led to BR Chairman Sir Bob Reid 2’s famous “Pantomime” comment.
Willy Rushton’s ‘Pantomime’ cartoon Original owned by the author
A revised Channel Tunnel Rail Link
The revised Channel Tunnel Rail Link scheme – still at that time called the ‘Union Railway’ project – used the original BR route through most of Kent, but then diverted via Ebbsfleet and the route we now know. Most of the argued-for local regeneration stations in the Thames Gateway were not built. So only in its margins was it initially a regeneration railway.
Even Stratford International was an afterthought given powers under a Transport & Works Order after further strong local lobbying. Reputedly, the Environment Secretary Michael Heseltine failed to ensure that continental trains were required to stop there. They never have called. It has also been claimed that Heseltine wanted HS1 to terminate at Stratford.
The biggest change in principle of all was that the line ended not at a through station but at buffers, at St Pancras rather than Stratford. The story is that Union Railways, led by John Prideaux, had designed a new through station in the then vacant railway lands north of Kings Cross/St Pancras, pointing towards the WCML. But the BR Board decided to adopt a link into St Pancras, and to allocate St Pancras’s refurbishment costs to Union Railways. (Shades of Euston, as we shall see.) The then Transport Secretary, John MacGregor, announced on 22 March 1993 that the Government preferred a lower cost option terminating at St Pancras (with the line then expected to be on the surface from west of Dalston), rather than continuing underground from Stratford towards the former BR proposed interchange station at King’s Cross low level.
HS2-HS1 – the poor value link that died
It was almost inevitable that any HS2 scheme would be expected to provide a link to HS1. In north London the two routes were tantalisingly close and the two London termini closer still.
HS2 Ltd had no intention of offering expresses to serve domestic travellers from north of London to Stratford and Ebbsfleet. This was even though East and South East London, and East Anglia and Kent, are fast growing catchments with 8.6m people, which is 16% of England’s population and comparable to Greater London’s catchment as a whole.
This left the desire by Midlands and Northern cities for direct European rail expresses. A policy requirement for a link to HS1 was therefore willed upon HS2 Ltd, on political instructions. There are shades here of the Section 40 requirement for Regional and Night Eurostar services imposed on British Rail with the original Channel Tunnel Act 1987.
With the available railway geography at Old Oak Common, this mandatory new link required a new through railway if journey times were not to be glacial. This emerged in the original HS2 scheme as a compromised £900m HS2-HS1 link: a new single-track tunnel between Old Oak Common and Camden Roundhouse, mostly paralleling the main HS2 Euston tunnels, then via a slightly upgraded existing North London link (between the WCML and the North London Line) whose current running speeds are 15-20mph in places.
The mothballed HS1 link
The final version of the St Pancras HS1 line, the one that actually got built, created a low speed single track chord (capable of being upgraded to double track) to join the HS1 London tunnel portal with the North London Line (NLL) east of Camden Road station. This has remained mothballed since its creation.
This mothballed line connecting HS1 to the NLL was not the ideal connector for HS2 to connect to HS1 as major works would be required if it were to become a corridor with frequent services in addition to local passenger services on the NLL and through freight trains.
The proposed HS2-HS1 route
European-bound expresses would leave HS2 and emerge at the eastern portal of the HS2-HS1 tunnel. They would then share tracks both with through freight bound for UK ports and with the North London Line which by then would have an even more frequent service than today. All this traffic would pass through Camden Road station and finally diverge via the mothballed link to reach HS1 at its tunnel portal. The overall alignment is shown below and beneath that is the detailed corridor on the surface section through Camden.
HS2-HS1 outline of proposed link in 2010
Camden Local Map showing HS2-HS1 surface section
Base local map reproduced from HS2 material under Open Government scheme
HS2-HS1 operational issues
HS2-HS1 was not a minor scheme. If it was desired to allow full ‘GC’ European gauge trains, the NLL would also need rebuilding for these larger loading gauge trains or with an additional track alongside the NLL. TfL was directly concerned that the combined impact of even infrequent European passenger trains would knock out additional NLL Overground capacity, then already growing fast in volume.
The fact that the service on the HS2-HS1 link would be infrequent did little to placate TfL. Even if a slot were used only once every few hours, it would have to be protected on an hourly basis in each direction. TfL also estimated that only one NLL path an hour was realistic to be allocated to HS2, even if it was attempted to ‘flight’ European trains in groups to match the single track’s capacity.
The same problem of reduced capacity throughout the day (regardless of the level of actual use by high speed trains) arose for UK freight flows. Freight had a further potential problem because not only was this a section of the main UK railfreight network, as it is currently structured, the Camden Road-Roundhouse-Camden Junction section is available as a supplementary holding loop to manage the punctuality of en-route freight trains. Although the main location for a holding area for cross London freight routes is Wembley yard the additional Camden facility would be missed if lost.
Alternative alignments and longer tunnels were investigated in order to avoid the operationally problematic NLL section. These offered little in the form of operational benefit for HS2 Ltd. Also absent was any net environmental benefit for the local community.
The financial case against HS2-HS1
Capacity, gauge widening and environmental mitigation works were pointing to well over £1bn costs for HS2-HS1, for possibly only a few trains a day in early decades of operation, though HS2 thought costs would be lower. The business case for direct European expresses was very poor, as assessed by HS2 Ltd, even on their costs.
Low cost jet fares could be contrasted against long journey times by rail, with poor train and train crew utilisation, border delays into the UK, and trains which might need 500-600 paying passengers to justify their commercial existence. This wasn’t a good marketplace to be in, equivalent to one train having to compete against a frequency of three jets at 150-200 passengers per flight, and also (UK border rules) no intra-UK flows permitted on such trains.
Eventually the Government bit the bullet following Sir David Higgins’ HS2 Plus review (March 2014), and accepted that spending such scale of money wasn’t worth it. The link has been deleted from the HS2 Phase 1 Bill, through Additional Provision 3 (AP3). The Commons Select Committee has said (paras 252-254) that:
“252… The House’s instructions to the Committee included a specific instruction not to consider petitions on whether there should be such a link.
253. The economics of cross-continental rail travel and modal shift from aircraft use are complex. The question of a continuous fixed link between HS1 and HS2 was outside our remit. We do not comment on it save to express a view that the success of and need for a national high-speed network is not necessarily contingent on a fixed link to the international network. Journey patterns are complicated.
254. Quick and comfortable ways to get between HS1 and HS2 will nevertheless be needed. Euston and St Pancras are some 800m apart. A tunnel between them could run under roads parallel with Euston Road, arriving in the northern part of St Pancras. The coherent design plan we have suggested as an imperative for Euston should include convenient ways to get between HS1 and HS2.”
So the immediately available and lowest cost HS2-HS1 link may be a heated, covered footpath, with porters assisting, between Euston and St Pancras International. The Government has ruled out powered links such as a travolator-style tunnel because of concerns over vibration damage to instrumentation at the Francis Crick Institute. Crossrail 2 would provide the first opportunity for such a powered link (although it has to circumnavigate that damage risk as well). At least train passengers could connect tolerably well, between all European and Midlands, Northern and Scottish intercity trains, at close-by stations.
HS2-HS1 not quite dead yet
HS2-HS1 isn’t absolutely dead as a long term possibility, in some form, but it’s clear that any future link beyond Old Oak Common will have to enable London & Home Counties travel in order to start to make a decent business case, with any European rail expresses as a bolt-on extra where selected slots are preserved for their use.
A JRC report entitled East and South East London Partnership report on HS2-HS1 and Stratford International written and published by the author in October 2012 looked at opportunities for improved London & South East commuter corridors. It highlighted that there could be a viable case for the HS2-HS1 link in the future. Greengauge 21 looked at the issue from a rather different context, including joining UK high speed services rather than standard commuter trains in order to try to justify a link between HS2 and HS1 in their May 2013 Travel market demand and the HS1 – HS2 link report. Again it was joined-up near-London domestic services which had a potentially worthwhile case – not through continental trains.
So, why have a London terminus?
So we can now answer the first question, about why a London terminus at all? The answer is, because decisions taken in the aftermath of the King’s Cross Bill took a narrow view about:
- The possible scope for onwards through trains, north and west of London, as opposed to interchange at London’s Northern main line termini
- The underlying business case requirement set out in several recent studies, for London & Home Counties travel to be the predominant infrastructure user for a new cross-London railway of benefit for through high speed trains (whether those trains were domestic or international in purpose)
This is clearly demonstrated by looking at the financial reality after construction of HS1. The Javelin domestic services underpin the infrastructure costs of HS1. Southeastern, in effect, is being subsidised by the UK Government to avoid what would otherwise be state-aid on the Continental main line. What the Javelin services might imply also for HS2 usage, is discussed in Part 3.
Only a UK Govt (all favours) that has been quite so behind the curve on High Speed Railways and integrated transport solutions would be so against LHR being on the route. It’s not like our major European rivals (Paris CDG, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Zurich [to a lesser extent]) don’t all have exactly the same type of integrated high speed interchange from plane to train as was originally proposed.
To me – rank stupidity to not build it.
When discussing future modal shift to rail, and especially high speed rail, it is clear that at some point in future time airlines will have to start paying fuel duty on their kerosine, either because governments want the tax take or because there needs to be a mechanism for CO2 reduction. As such, through services might eventually be required.
@Jonathan Roberts
Thanks for that.
So, I might as well as this one: why the HS2 line doesn’t sit under Euston in two platform tunnels (like the Thameslink ones at St Pancras) and then continue underground to somewhere useful with lots of space for terminating platforms, say Gatwick Airport?
This would mean not really having to rebuild Euston and provide a useful fast line to Gatwick (and perhaps even Brighton, eventually).
You could easily fit lots of platforms at Gatwick, or in the cheap (compared to Zone 1 London) Sussex countryside. Or you could have a terminating loop going around the airport.
I would suggest that you could have two London HS2 Z1 stations, with a second under Victoria (or even Canary Wharf).
The cost of having terminating platforms in Central London when you use the space and money to provide a better southern end to HS2 seems obvious to me.
I’m guessing you can now tell me where I’ve gone wrong.
Oh Briantist don’t,
Jonathan Roberts was one of the main proponents of just that (together with Lord Berkeley – “the railway Lord”). A lot of effort went into it.
I expect the answer is along the lines of “well they didn’t want a London station underground and nothing we could say or do could make them change their minds”. Although there would have been all sorts of issues I suspect they were basically solvable. Whether or not they were solvable at a price worth paying is another matter. I think it was more a case of if you are trying to promote a super-duper hi-tech new railway most people won’t be impressed by arriving in a deep cavern. Imagine arriving from France on Eurostar only to be dumped out at a glorified tube station.
There’s either a muddle about dates or some rewriting of history in the section on Mawhinney. The UK General Election was held in May 2010 and resulted in a Coalition government. The Labour party formed Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.
[Muddle has been unmuddled. PoP]
I was surprised to learn that the Crick has a budget of 130mn pa and will employ 1500 ppl (o/w 1250 ‘scientists’. Seems a bit “dog in the manger” for them to be setting regional transport policy at the margin. If their instruments are so delicate I would have thought a city centre site is not for them. (overweight BoastMasters, construction traffic, etc etc. … But looking at the list of backers I can see why the government folded so readily.
@Jonathan Roberts – an excellent article. The visionaries and advocates of through regional trains to the Continent would be well advised to study the numbers! Even before cheap air travel took off, the UK Border organisation got its “Britannia Insula Est ” act together and in the days when the Overnight stock was being ordered, BR believed that Brum was about the outside limit for rail to compete with air on the Paris market; for places beyond, air travel was always going to be faster despite airport delays – and then, as you remark, one train has to compete loadingwise with five or six aircraft in terms of frequency.
[As a small footnote, the remaining overnight sleepers greatly interested the Palace a few years ago when I reviewed the Royal Train for them, but the high cost of security additions didn’t appeal greatly.]
On Paris CDG, Amsterdam Schipol, etc: I thought Graham H put the point very well on Part I about the need to be careful with Continental comparisons.
And Alison W is absolutely right about taxing kerosene, though I don’t believe the airlines will feel the pain; it will be passed to passengers. Demand for expense account travel is amazingly elastic.
If Mr A NcDote’s story about the fall in domestic first class travel after the Westminster Parliament’s expenses scandal (possibly extended by a similar restriction on Whitehall Departments) is true, perhaps a reversal of that policy would prop up the ‘voodoo economics’ of HS2.
@Pedantic of Purley
“Oh Briantist don’t,”
Sorry, I thought we might as well get it over with.
“Imagine arriving from France on Eurostar only to be dumped out at a glorified tube station.”
OK, but I’m not coming from Paris or Brussels. I’m coming in from Birmingham or Manchester. The current ones, Birmingham New Street is basically underground isn’t it?
It wouldn’t have to be a “tube station”, it certainly could have The Spanish Solution platforms to help with speedy passenger boarding and alighting.
PoP at 18:06 “Imagine arriving from France on Eurostar only to be dumped out at a glorified tube station.” Imagine arriving at Waterloo International and finding that the quickest way to Bank is the Unmentionable Line???
Perhaps more pertinently, there is a sizable market in day trips to Paris & Brussels; connecting services to the originating station matter, at both ends of the day. International services loading passengers at Old Oak would be a fitting conclusion to the Eurostar saga.
My crystal ball suggests that recent events in Brussels will increase the demand for train trips in the short term & potentially longer term. Other balls are available.
Re Alison et al.
Duty or Tax on aviation kerosene (or whole host of other items such as spare parts) is precluded by article 24 of the 1944 Chicago Convention (the legal framework for international civil aviation) that created the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) so more chance of porcine airways flight 101 taxiing to the end of 27R than duty being paid…
Re Briantist /PoP
All the underground London HS stations would have to have been 4 (or 6) platform to deal with the dwell times at which point it soon ceases to be just 2 tunnels and the cost goes through the roof.
It would also increase the number of trains required as the journey time through London would be comparatively very slow again pushing up costs.
Interested in 18TPH on HS2. If this is possible, then why not 18TPH on at least the WCML fast tracks compared with the 12 paths that run. Today. It might need all the trains on the fast tracks to have the same performance, but over time at trains are replaced, this is doable, and whatever signalling is fitted to HS2 (some version of ETCS) will, in all probability, be applied to WCML too.
Paris has a bypass railway, so you can take through TGV trains from Lyon/Marseille directly to Lille in the North, and through Eurostar services to the South of France.
It’s a handy link, but I wonder how much it would be used if it didn’t serve CDG and Disneyland?
I find it odd that people have been complaining about the short walk between the two stations at New Street and Curzon Street in Birmingham, yet an 800-metre walk from Euston to St. Pancras is just fine and dandy for folk with luggage and / or kids planning a trip from Birmingham to Paris.
The actual flying can often be less than 25% of your total travel time. Though I’ll grant that it does provide a lot of aerobic exercise, whether you wanted it or not.
[Snipped once again for drifting off topic. You might want to check your alignment :). LBM]
“The Government has ruled out powered links such as a travolator-style tunnel because of concerns over vibration damage to instrumentation at the Francis Crick Institute”
https://www.crick.ac.uk/the-new-building/location/map/
Would it really be that damaging, considering the noise and vibration elsewhere in the area? Couldn’t the travolator be built under the British Library, or some other route to avoid the Institute?
“Glorified tube station”. Stuttgart is currently in the middle of trying out that very concept in order to facilitate high speed connections from north, west and south as a massive upgrade on its existing terminus. It will be very interesting to see what the internal ambiance of the new station there is like. I suspect it will be far more comparable with Canary Wharf than with say Oxford Circus. Even then we must remember Graham H’s wise advice not to get carried away with continental comparisons. Stuttgart is a big city on the route between several other big cities in whichever direction you care to travel.
Operating costs might be different, for a variety of reasons. For example, according to HS2 Ltd, the Birmingham – London service requires 7 captive trains in the off-peak, and 14 in the peak. The Manchester – London phase 2 service requires 10 captive trains in the off-peak, and 19 in the peak.
Altogether, in phase 2, there would be £580 million of captive trainsets sitting in sidings for most of the day. Who would be covering their costs?
Do we have a link to that government ‘ruling out’ of a travelator link between Euston and St Pancras? On the face of it, it seems rather bizarre. I would surmise that ‘vibration problems’ are far more likely to arise in the construction phase of any link than during operation, when all manner of clever design features can eliminate such issues. If said government has also protected the proposed route of CR2, linking the same stations, what magic formula are they proposing to make that monster project vibrationless?
I suspect it was just a ploy to get the Francis Crick Institute off HS2’s back while the Bill is going through parliament. Once that is done, let’s hope common sense comes back out of hiding.
‘
Re Mikey C,
A very big Travolator style tunnel will probably be built under the Crick being – The Euston-St Pancras CR2 Station with 2 adjacent worksites in the same block as the Crick site, one become a station entrance. It is easy enough to build vibration isolated rooms /floors (often in older buildings) for the highest resolution electron microscopes and I can think of at least 4 universities in England that have done so.
You do realise how deep the basement is under the British Library? It has similarities with an iceberg.
As NGH said it would require 4 or more platforms.
Remember it’s a 400m train not 120m tube train.
Over a 1000 passengers, quite a few with lots of luggage all trying to disembark from end carriage doorways rather than multiple sliding doors.
With just over 3 minutes between trains people will still be getting their belongings together and queueing to get off the train as the next one is arriving, You’d need 8 platforms just to give a dwell time of just over 12 minutes, which is not exactly generous for such heavy loadings. Considering the distance required between each tunnel, such a complex would bury under a considerable part of Central London, the interchange time would be immense.
Such a station would cost so much that it induce permanent attacks of the vapours in anyone trying to submit for spending review.
@Old Buccaneer
You are of course right on Govt change dates in 2010, I’ve proposed a textual change to the editors. Thanks.
@Briantist
ngh has the essence of the issue. Comstructability in the event of no major excavation from the surface to open out the required space, would be challenging (not impossible, but costly). Multi-platforms and passageways underground, along with loading and unloading times while handling long distance trains, main-line sizes of flows and also waiting passengers, also push operability to a significant level and would influence the number of platforms required in each direction. Better to focus on distinct types of services, eg commuter operations closer to Crossrail/Thameslink style. More to be said in a later Part of the series. Another factor was also very relevant at the time of ‘Euston Cross’: the HS2-HS1 link got cancelled, so why should an alternative project seek to incur such costs and then be considered unaffordable in comparison to HS2’s scheme?
Re Fandroid,
At a guess the Crick building engineers didn’t assume substantially more vibration than currently so it probably has just a bit more than the minimum level of vibration isolation to do this to keep costs down. They would want paying to have to upgrade it which they will probably have to do anyway with CR2. Easy way to cut HS2s costs by saying no link.
@Fandroid
A “Translator link” might might be useful for when Parisians need to talk to Glaswegians!
@ngh
I hadn’t realised it was THAT deep. Maybe we need some sort of aerial travelator link OVER the British Library…
Re: ngh @18:58
Actually art 24 says country B can’t charge fuel duty on the fuel imported in country A’s aircraft (unless it’s unloaded).
Here: http://www.icao.int/publications/pages/doc7300.aspx
I recommend the English text: the multilingual text (“mu” button) is in English French Spanish and Russian.
Full text:
Customs duty
a) Aircraft on a flight to, from, or across the territory of another contracting State shall be admitted temporarily free of duty, subject to the customs regulations of the State. Fuel, lubricating oils, spare parts, regular equipment and aircraft stores on board an aircraft of a contracting State, on arrival in the territory of another contracting State and retained on board on leaving the territory of that State shall be exempt from customs duty, inspection fees or similar national or local duties and charges. This exemption shall not apply to any quantities or articles unloaded, except in accordance with the customs regulations of the State, which may require that they shall be kept under customs supervision.
b) Spare parts and equipment imported into the territory of a contracting State for incorporation in or use on an aircraft of another contracting State engaged in international air navigation shall be admitted free of customs duty, subject to compliance with the regulations of the State concerned, which may provide that the articles shall be kept under customs supervision and control.
A question for Jonathan Roberts & Graham H (but not exclusively):
There is evidence in both parts of this article that irrationality plays a big part in the “promotion” of large scale schemes like HS1 and HS2. Are there also cases where the sensible option has triumphed?
I’m not being funny but I think it would require much persuasion for HS2 passengers (perhaps with aggressive signage) to use an 800m walkway to make an HS1 connection with luggage as opposed to packing onto the tube instead, whether it is sensible or not to do so in timing terms. In fact, that extra load in peak time might well turn the northern line platforms into Bethnal Green II, which would be much less satisfactory than PoP’s glorified tube station!
Having said that though, if you were going to build an underground terminating station somewhere else then surely you might as well abandon Euston completely – OOC would serve the CityofL base adequately would it not? Heathrow is served by the express and CR, and the central line runs to Bank (I don’t know what capacity is like on the western section but if people are planning things like Park Royal interchange and a West Ruislip curve to Uxbridge it inclines me to say it’s not too bad.) and the Bakerloo serves the West End. I’m sure Victoria or another southern terminus would benefit more. It would kill off HS2-HS1 for good though.
@Bakerludicrous
I agree totally, the sensible plan would be to abandon Euston, which isn’t even a convenient destination anyway, and build phase 1 to OOC with provision for extension in tunnel to a suitable brownfield site in South or East Central London and beyond.
[New route suggestions (crayoning) snipped. LBM]
Old Oak Common is predicted to handle 1/3 of the HS2 passengers, as it is the most convenient place to interchange for west and east London destinations via Crossrail. Euston-St Pancras-King’s Cross serves north and south London. Removing 1/3rd of the HS2 passengers at Old Oak Common makes managing the passenger numbers at Euston far easier, as the number of people able to arrive there in the peak period is set to increase dramatically. That is one of the justifications for the WCML-Crossrail link as that would reduce the number of people needing to change at Euston even more, even once the reconstruction of the station is complete and there are no platform capacity issues for Tring stoppers.
Mikey C – because it’s absolutely impossible for Glaswegians to speak French, isn’t it?
Is this a home for very old stereotypes?
I think a bit of realism is called for. Unless there is a last-minute parliamentary upset (most unlikely), HS2 will be built, and will terminate at Euston. It is good to understand how this has come about, and what alternatives were considered. But now is not the time, and here is not the place, for discussing imaginary alternative plans.
History is OK (including the history of ideas). Feasible plans for the present and future are OK. But might-have-beens are not really what we are about, and we’ve had enough of them in the last few comments.
@ Anonymous at 21:58 (with a sense of humour bypass)
My jest (as it was) was about French people arriving at St Pancras, speaking English but not being able to understand the accent of the Glaswegians arriving at Euston. I assume the majority of Glaswegians are (sadly) just as bad in speaking French as Londoners!
@NotATrainspotter
I assume that most of the seats will be reserved in advance as otherwise wouldn’t a problem with boarding at Old Oak Common instead of Euston be that all the (decent) seats had already been nabbed at Euston?
@Alex McKenna – cheaper to rebuild Euston. The British Library alone cost £0.5bn 20 years ago-and it’s hardly their fault that a generation later someone decided to plonk an international rail terminal and a high speed terminus next door.
@Alex McKenna
Suggestions to demolish or move the Francis Crick Institute or the British Library are way beyond the scope of this article and this site. The Institute and the British Library have a legal right to remain to remain where they are, so HS2 and other transport schemes have to work around it.
Note that LondonReconnections is not an urban renewal or city rebuilding discussion site, but a transport magazine that discusses all the factors that transport touches. We fully respect the law and rights of building owners, as well as legal processes for building and for changing uses. So suggestions to knock down major buildings for transport schemes are not tolerated here.
Any further such suggestions will be removed without warning. LBM
Mikey C that kind of ‘jest’ is always a distraction from the discussion!
Although I am interested as to why you chose Glaswegians rather than Scousers, Brummies, etc etc etc
[We will not pursue this matter any further. Your point is made. . Malcolm]
Alex says “Cheaper to demolish and rebuild the Francis Crick Institute somewhere more sensible. “. I am tempted to ask “cheaper than what?”. But hindsight is a wonderful thing, when decisions about the British Library were made, railways were still in decline, and it will have seemed a good use for a central site. The Francis Crick Institute was somewhat later, granted, but again it is doing important work and centrality will have seemed important.
Planning authorities have to balance conflicting requirements; we should not be surprised when sometimes they get it “wrong” (from the point of view of people interested in transport, such as those here).
@Notatrainspotter – Now repeat after me, “HS2 will not increase the number of people arriving at Euston dramatically”.. The service physically cannot deliver more than 18000 pax/hr even if all the trains are full; a more typical peak intercity load factor is around 70%, so 14-15000/hr. And 1/3 of those may have got off at OOC, so 10 000/hr. Some of those will leave on foot,taxi and by bus – perhaps 1-2000. That leaves 8000 to use the 6 (7 with CR2) existing tube lines. Around 1000 per line/hr. With most of these lines running at 36 tph, that’s perhaps another 3-4% added to the peak demand at Euston – a year’s growth.. Dramatic? I think not.
Re Francis Crick Institute & British Library
There are three main options now in the area for E-W railways underground: (1) go south of the BL (i.e. along Euston Road or further south); (2) go between them – this is what Crossrail 2 is now planning to do; or (3) go north of the FCI, where you also have to avoid piling for KX Lands buildings so you have to tunnel east-north-eastwards under the Regents Canal corridor. That’s a useful range of options.
Euston and St Pancras are in fact only about 500m apart directly compared to the 800m via Euston Road. My scheme for a partially covered link would have travolators but they need not be for the full length of the route, crucially not for the section passing the Crick Institute for those vibration reasons. Interchanging passengers and others heading between Euston and the huge developments around the Kings Cross area would cross the public square immediately to the south of the Institute. Porters, trolleys golf carts for the less able (perhaps Google automated powered ones!) could be made available. for service across the entire connected ‘railport’ complex. http://www.townend.me/files/kxlink.pdf
[Please, no discussion (from anyone) of the “exact” distance between Euston and St Pancras, each of which is such a large blob that many answers are possible, and none of them is any more “correct” than any other. Malcolm]
The thing with HS2 and the Heathrow Question is the short sightedness that Heathrow is only an airport. I’ve recently warmed to the idea of Heathrow instead of OOC being the main West London interchange is because Heathrow has better links to the south and west of London. [Remainder of comment snipped as it is entirely might-have-beens (and far-fetched ones at that). Please see my advice above. Malcolm]
Another interesting article that has nicely set out the decision making (and arm twisting) that has got us to the present mess. Us Brits seem to have an outstanding knack to take the most short sighted and ultimately hightest cost and sub optimal decisions possible. We also manage to leave the important issues, such as who runs what and how and at what cost and with what market “protections”, carefully to one side hoping no one notices the enormous money swallowing hole that is likely to result from the eventual decisions on these topics. The outline numbers set out by JR make horrific reading and they must have real implications for the remaining rail network given the DfT’s (non capital) budget is not protected. Something has to give.
As you might be able to tell I am still not seeing very much upside to HS2 at all. I simply cannot imagine, even at “current” WCML (ridiculously expensive) [1] fares, how the proposed HS2 trains can ever run full when the “old” network is offering something nearly as frequent albeit a bit slower. Unless half of London’s economic activity shifts to Brum and Manchester there simply can’t be the growth in journeys that’s anticipated. It’s not a tube line or people travelling from Highbury and Islington to Hackney and Stratford on the Overground.
One small practical question re Old Oak Common HS2 station. Given the perfectly sensible remarks about the passenger handling issues arising from an subterranean terminal or through station in Central London how many platforms will there be at OOC? I assume there must be more than 2 for HS2 services if we are talking about circa 300 people per train getting on or off at OOC every 3 minutes.
[1] and, yes, I know people can get cheap tickets if they are sufficiently organised to be able to book 12 weeks ahead. I’m never that organised and don’t like being tied to particular train times on a frequent service. Just accept that my comments are based on how I view things!
Unless plans have recently changed, OOC will have 4 platform faces on HS2, 2 in each direction.
Re Malcolm,
I have seen plans with 6 HS2 platforms at OOC as well (+8 GWML/Crossrail platforms) but not sure what the current plan is…
The Heathrow link will probably be extended into a Greater London bypass if through traffic is stimulated enough.
@WW: If you ask me, part of the “evil plot” regarding HS2 is more or less like freeing up the southern part of WCML for more local services. It strikes me that the MK-South Croydon service is to be 2tph and being an essential service to stations like Kings Langley. I expect that more long distance services would be diverted to HS2 if the demand on that part of WCML continues to increase.
@Jordan D: It’s not like our major European rivals (Paris CDG, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Zurich [to a lesser extent]) don’t all have exactly the same type of integrated high speed interchange
On the other hand, at all of them the airport is on the way somewhere else and is served by trains that are on the way elsewhere. None built a dead-end high speed spur to an airport. But a Heathrow spur can only serve trains on the way to not very big places like Southampton.
@PoP: I think it was more a case of if you are trying to promote a super-duper hi-tech new railway most people won’t be impressed by arriving in a deep cavern. Imagine arriving from France on Eurostar only to be dumped out at a glorified tube station
Ironically Arup’s recent
HS3Northern Powerhouse RailHigh Speed North report proposes a cavern high speed station underneath the HS2 station at Manchester Piccadilly. But it is probably easier to build something like that in a ‘regenerating’ part of Manchester than under the Euston Road.@ngh: The ICAO are meeting later this year to consider an international agreement on CO2 emissions from aviation, which has given them a temporary respite from the EU’s intention to impose a carbon price on them. A carbon price on flights to, from and within the EU would have a similar effect to a tax on aviation fuel.
@Fandroid: If said government has also protected the proposed route of CR2, linking the same stations, what magic formula are they proposing to make that monster project vibrationless
The CR2 link would be much deeper, though, since it would be the platforms themselves – with a link to the surface to each of Euston and St Pancras at either end of the platforms. I wouldn’t see the CR2 station as necessarily providing a viable link between the stations, any more than going via the Crossrail 1 platforms will provide the quickest route between Liverpool Street and Moorgate, say. Floating slab track could also be provided as on Crossrail where it passes the Barbican and West End recording studios. Not that that the depth would help the Crick during construction work, but I expect TfL will have to make some expensive promises to them when the CR2 Bill comes to Parliament.
“I think a bit of realism is called for. Unless there is a last-minute parliamentary upset (most unlikely), HS2 will be built, and will terminate at Euston.” – Malcolm
That’s your opinion but I respectfully suggest that until funding is in place (with the Treasury clearly wanting private sector funding which has not yet been sourced), HS2 is politically far from assured.
Likewise the battles over Euston continue and, at least in the short term upon opening phase 1, OOC might have to serve as the London terminal, although quite how it will achieve that with as few as 4 platforms is a bit of a mystery.
Indeed, four platform faces suggest that once Euston is open 1/3 of passengers will need to alight or board at OOC (presumably journeys between OOC and Eus will be barred) in under 6 minutes. I am sceptical whether that can be reliably achieved.
@Kate: “Indeed, four platform faces suggest that once Euston is open 1/3 of passengers will need to alight or board at OOC (presumably journeys between OOC and Eus will be barred) in under 6 minutes. I am sceptical whether that can be reliably achieved.”
Simple: Make a fenced waiting area spanning the platform length and thus minimize distance between boarding passengers and the arriving train without breaching H&S measures. (vice versa for alighting passengers, and trains can go before the platform is clear)
Chinese HSR trains can dwell for less than 3 minutes at stations with this measure, some of which are even more constrainted than OOC probably.
@Malcolm: Unless plans have recently changed, OOC will have 4 platform faces on HS2, 2 in each direction.
When did that change (if it did)? The original Environmental Impact Statement has 6 high speed platforms and 8 on the GWML, which would make Kate’s concerns moot.
Re the British Library as an iceberg – reliable sources tell me that at certain points in the middle floors of the basement one can hear deep-level tube trains passing nearby on the same level.
Maximising revenue is all about running non-stop between big concentrations of demand. Euston is an excellent location: close enough to end destinations with lots of distribution options. The real question is why stop at OOC when Euston could probably handle all the traffic.
Ian J, I agree – six platform faces at OOC is realistic
My “4 platform faces” was from memory. Apparently faulty memory; 6 sounds correct.
@Kate 0520
It’s quite right to say that until funding is assured then HS2 itself is far from guaranteed, but I think Malcolm’s point is that if HS2 is to be built at all (within a reasonable stretch of the current timetable) then HS2 will be built on the route currently in the Bill and terminate at Euston (plus or minus a major Parliamentary upset). This may well be technically sub-optimal and preclude all sorts of otherwise desirable approaches, but the prospect of the additional delay and cost of getting a further Bill through Parliament, particularly if it affects the route within London, will put off all but the most determined of private funders.
@Richard M, 5 April 2016 at 08:07
“The real question is why stop at OOC when Euston could probably handle all the traffic.”
For a very large spread out city like London I’d say having two stops makes a lot of sense as each offers a completely different set of connections and OOC provides a much quicker route between the new line and Heathrow airport and the Thames Valley along the GWML than Euston ever could. In Tokyo, in addition to the central station, almost all Shinkansen trains stop at a similar peripheral hub on their way in or out of the city at either Shinagawa on the JR Central network, or at Ueno on JR East.
Ian J,
Somewhere on the internet I remember reading a letter from Michèle Dix to the Francis Crick Institute. They were requesting changes to Euston – St Pancras station which, I think, involved making it deeper still.
Michèle Dix is a very diplomatic lady and I am sure the words were more properly expressed but the sentiment was “Look we have already made changes to accommodate you. We can’t can’t keep making changes. Get over it”.
I think that Heathrow would better wait to be served for when a London-Bristol high speed line gets built to relieve the GWML.
Does putting HS2 underground allow re-use of the NNML in west London for any transport purpose? I’d like to see the evidence.
@Briantist I suspect rebuilding Euston is seen as a feature rather than a bug – it’s not a widely loved station. And like it or not, the visible impact of an expensive public project like this will affect how it’s perceived. The whole channel tunnel project got a lot more popular once people could see the flashy rebuilt St Pancras, even though Waterloo had been perfectly functional and not significantly slower once you include the check-in time.
@Old Buccaneer Do you mean “are there cases where an expensive megaproject didn’t get built”? Yes, lots. These large projects are almost always economically irrational, even those such as the Chunnel that we now regard as successful.
@WW we already see that dynamic playing out on that very route – Chiltern offers much cheaper (but slightly slower) tickets. But the Virgin trains are still heavily loaded.
@Graham H I just can’t make sense of the idea that a 400m train every 3 minutes is not going to be a significant number of people. Even at the lower density of intercity trains that’s got to be a tube-trainload equivalent? Assuming they spread themselves evenly over the three lines (Victoria and two Northern branches – in practice probably one or the other will be hit harder) that’s a trainload every 9 minutes for each line, so about 7tph extra required – not the end of the world but pretty substantial. What am I missing?
Re lmm
And CR2 by the time HS2 phase 2 opens and the services are at 3minute headways (Not forgetting the subsurface lines too which should get some improved access.
Re Bel Eben
NNML – some of the recent drawings show Crossrail turnback using NNML alignment at which point it would be relatively easy to come up with scheme to extend further westwards?
“It’s quite right to say that until funding is assured then HS2 itself is far from guaranteed, but I think Malcolm’s point is that if HS2 is to be built at all (within a reasonable stretch of the current timetable) then HS2 will be built on the route currently in the Bill and terminate at Euston (plus or minus a major Parliamentary upset).”
I agree that the route for phase 1 between OOC and Birmingham is now pretty tied down IF it does get built at all, but I don’t think Euston is locked in yet. I assume Jonathan will be covering Euston in a future part, though.
Likewise, given the time before construction will start for phase 2, there is plenty of scope for changes to the route. And there’s always a huge political risk of de-scoping any large project until it gets beyond the point of no return. We saw that will electrification.
lmm: I agree that a rebuilt Euston should be “nice when it’s finished”, though it may not be possible to make it as impressive as St Pancras or Waterloo International. There are doubtless many reasons for the increasing perception of Eurostar as a success, impossible to untangle whether the move from Waterloo to STP is a factor (or, if it is, whether it’s a plus or a minus, and what part if any the impressiveness of the architecture plays).
There is also little doubt that keeping Euston users happy (or even resigned rather than furious) through the long building works is going to be a big challenge.
“18tph is equivalent to a train every 3.3 minutes, or every 3 minutes with a ‘white space’ every half-hour to allow a recovery and punctuality margin. ”
That can’t be right – running trains at shorter intervals / more frequently can’t create “white space” – unless you mean running at 20tph with two empty train paths?
Kate: The route to Euston is as much a part of the current bill as any other part of phase 1. Also certain aspects of the Euston rebuild (e.g. number of platforms). There may still be some wriggle room for some details, though I suspect only small ones. But you are correct that more about Euston is planned for future articles.
@Imm I think it’s also worth bearing in mind that a high proportion of the additional passengers will be encumbered. Apart from taking up more room and taking more time boarding/alighting, an encumbered user will be more likely to be unfamiliar with station layouts and hence reduce passenger flows as they stop in awkward places to ponder where to go next.
To what extend Euston is changed from a station the average traveller would not want to spend any more time at than the bare minimum to a destination in its own right remains to be seen, but I suspect the number of non-travelling station users may increase dramatically, so perhaps factoring in projected HS2 passenger numbers alone is not enough when considering the knock-on demand for local transport.
Martin Smith: Running trains at 3 minute intervals with two empty paths is (one way of providing) 18 tph. The abbreviation tph stands for “trains per hour”, and it carries no implication about the evenness or otherwise of the gaps between the trains.
(As an aside, we have seen the rather misleading use of this terminology, when a service with alternate intervals of 10 minutes and 50 minutes is described as “2 tph”. But I doubt if users promised 18 tph will be too concerned whether the intervals in minutes are 3.3 or 3-with-occasional-6).
Great article, thanks.
Regarding Heathrow, if one considers that it’s Government policy to promote English decentralisation from London, and the development of strong, self-contained economies in the West Midlands and the north of England, then the fact that Heathrow won’t have an HS2 station but Manchester and Birmingham airports will (plus the likelihood that HS3 will provide fast links to Manchester Airport) looks less like short-sighted penny-pinching and possibly even a crafty piece of regional development policy if you were feeling charitable.
Of course the combination of an Old Oak Common hub, Crossrail, Western Access to Heathrow and AirTrack (connecting into Waterloo) will make rail access to Heathrow much easier, but not sufficiently so that it will detriment Birmingham and Manchester, and indeed if you live/work in central or west London, it may prove to be a faster and more pleasant experience to fly via Birmingham.
Also, it’s arguable that the international aspect of the HS1/HS2 link is a red herring. Sure, it would be nice to take a single train from Manchester to Paris, but the reality is that security requirements are unlikely to make that possible. As for Europeans taking Eurostar to fly through Heathrow, that seems like a niche market.
However, it might be very useful to be able to extend certain Eurostar trains through to Old Oak Common for easy interchange to the north and west (and even Heathrow), and extending HS2 services through to Ebbsfleet (where there’s loads of space to terminate trains) would extend HS2’s benefits to Kent and South-East London.
Richard M 5 April 2016 at 08:07
” why stop at OOC when Euston could probably handle all the traffic.”
Why stop at
Motherwell
Durham
Wakefield Westgate
Stockport
Runcorn
Chesterfield
Newport
Bath
Reading
I’m not sure that the question posed by Richard M was actually meant to be taken seriously. But even if it was, reference to the enormous development planned all around Old Oak Common, anchored by the HS2/XR links (without even considering their interchange, or new stations on the NLL and WLL) seems strangely absent from responses so far.
And as this is LR, I suppose I shouldn’t mention the development potential for the lands immediately surrounding Birmingham Interchange, Birmingham Curzon, Toton, Meadowhall… (except perhaps to observe that this also appears to have been overlooked in the debate above).
[Correct, discussion of the development potential of stations beyond London is beyond the remit of LR. LBM]
HS1-HS2 link might be desirable for occasional transfers of stock, such as out of (UK) gauge French engineering trains as used on the HS1 (though with our own network we might start using our own engineering trains) – this needn’t be pathed if it’s run on a very occasional basis. Can this be arranged by modifying existing tracks, slewing and lowering alignments where necessary?
(DPWH:) “HS1-HS2 link might be desirable for occasional transfers of stock, such as out of (UK) gauge French engineering trains as used on the HS1 (though with our own network we might start using our own engineering trains) – this needn’t be pathed if it’s run on a very occasional basis. Can this be arranged by modifying existing tracks, slewing and lowering alignments where necessary?”
Absolutely, if you’ve found a few hundred million quid down the back of a sofa.
Dwell Times (assuming 1000 people on a train):
With a 12 carriage train with 2 doors per carriage.
Euston: 700 Disembarkations and Embarkations per Train, plus a cleaning cycle. A ~15m turnaround should be achievable on 6 platforms (as there is 20 minutes between arrivals at any given platform).
OOC – From The North: ~300 disembarkations, 0 embarkation
OOC – To The North: 0 disembarkations, ~300 embarkations
–> between 10 and 15 people per carriage door to get off, OR on.
This is a few minutes at worst – the train can get going again even as onboarding people are sorting themselves out. I agree that per-carriage herding pens for people getting onto the train, corresponding to their booked seat carriage, will also help with turnaround. If the platform is designed well, it will work like a football stadium – able to clear amazingly quickly.
I agree that these people will likely be encumbered which will slow them down, and there will always be those that remain seated until the train has stopped before they even consider getting their suitcase and getting off.
Has portion working been considered – one unit detached at OOC in bound and attached outbound? Approach speeds would have to be slower outbound to allow the Euston portion to enter the already-occupied OOC platform, and coupling/uncoupling also takes time, but it may nevertheless be quicker than the dwell time needed for an OOC stop. An added advantage would be that OOC passengers would not find all the best seats taken when they board.
The French manage to couple two TGVs together, and IEPs are designed to do so as well, so running at high speed with two separate units is not impossible. If boty units are streamlined, lack of a through gangway might be an issue, but as the entire Euston-OOC distance is in tunnel the aerodynamic considerations are different from those in the open air (the streamlined front ends of the 1935 stock were not repeated) so a bluff gangwayed “country” end of the Euston portion may not be such an issue.
I think that the 1/3 of passengers getting off/on at Old Oak Common might be a bit conservative. Thinking of the optimal situations to get on/off at either station:
At OOC:
Working in the City – easy Crossrail link to the city; Frequent Central line service
Working in the West End: The Bakerloo goes right through there
Going to Heathrow – express trains stop there as will CR.
At Euston:
Making southern connections – Victoria line will get you down there quickly as will the Bank branch of the Northern line to London Bridge
Eurostar connections
For Gatwick (see southern connections)
However, considering that going to Gatwick from anywhere would require – change at Euston onto the tube; then at LB another train to Gatwick onwards… I suspect suitors would choose to drive, except the ultra long distance airport passengers – where it might just be easier to fly to Gatwick from, say, Glasgow at a similar price I’d think.
We’ll see. I think the majority of peak passengers will alight at OOC – it all seems like Euston, with enormous rebuilding costs involved and for most of those it’s designed to serve an inconvenience; was subject to MP’s desire for it to be close to the Eurostar. And if that was the case then it would have probably been a better idea to route it somewhere else like King’s Cross/ to St Pancras (no travolator needed there) maybe via the Hitchin lines – and, you’d note, ability to run through Thameslink services for the only people that benefit from Euston – Southern connections!
I just can’t see the service being attractive to current season ticket holders. From Birmingham – a less convenient terminus, no northern connections [on HS2], greater expense, and I don’t think the time difference is that much anyway. I’m probably missing something but I rode a Pendolino for the first time to Birmingham last Saturday and I think I was there in 1h15 – is getting there in 15 minutes less really an issue for regular commuters when it’s considered that many people work on the train anyway. They’d probably prefer it if every seat had a table and a socket to make it easier to work to be honest. Then again, maybe the government is planning to sweeten the HS2 pill by making the Virgin Trains pill more bitter. Who knows?
@DPWH it may well be useful to have /some/ rail route for such things, but it doesn’t need to be a direct one. If stock had to go via (say) Redhill or even Derby to avoid the tunnels it wouldn’t be a problem for such occasional use.
The HS2 case for Birmingham is pretty poor – a minor time saving that most people won’t care about. Indeed this is why many people suggest that HS2 is built from the North, down – useful cross-Pennine links, etc, in place earlier, etc.
Another issue is that we can’t really talk about Heathrow without knowing the result of the Government’s Great Delay To Help Zac Goldsmith regarding airport expansion.
I just realised that running 18tph through the East Coast mainline might pose an operational problem. Oh well, serves me right for crayoning!
@lmm @1111: I was thinking more about irrationality as it relates to HS2 London impact.
Is the spur to Curzon St there more for operational convenience than anything else, then?
HS2 is primarily about adding capacity (which happens to be high speed). The biggest capacity constraints are at the southern end hence starting construction there first…
See part 1.
Is there any demand for Eurostar services terminating at Heathrow? From Lille you can get to Paris CDG in under an hour; or Brussels BRU in 1h15m; both of which have lower Air Passenger Duty and lower Passenger Service Charges than Heathrow. There’s no need to check-in 30 minutes in advance for TGVs, no passport control, no baggage screening.
I can envisage some demand for Eurostar services direct from London to Paris’s main airport; but none vice versa. Based on existing timings to Disneyland, a London-to-CDG journey would take 2h30m; or Ashford-to-CDG in 1h45m. But with the check-in time on top, most people will prefer a connecting flight instead.
So if we have “a ‘reborn’ WCML passenger service structure remarkably similar to now”
and
“HS2 will only free up passenger train slots on WCML for, at best, an additional 2tph”
but also (previous article)
“50% growth in freight train movements expected on the West Coast Main Line (WCML) – largely inter-modal freight”
does this mean many more slots will be freed up, but they will be occupied by freight, or does it mean there are sufficient slots in the existing timetable that aren’t being used?
(@David:) “does this mean many more slots will be freed up, but they will be occupied by freight, or does it mean there are sufficient slots in the existing timetable that aren’t being used?”
The Indicative-services-after-phase-1 diagram doesn’t explain how freight would be accommodated.
According to the diagram, some Fast line paths at Kilsby would be ‘released’, because the number of used paths is shown as just seven. But the released capacity would, it seems, be released into disuse.
DLR extension to Euston & KingsX via City Thameslink, Fleet Street and Aldwych has been ruled out by TfL of course, but seems logical it might be re-visited?
@lmm – please do the maths, as per my post… BTW, when I last looked, Euston had the following tube lines: Northern x 2, Victoria, H&C, Circle, Met (Euston Square is slated to be linked to the new terminus) , and (assuming that the station is linked with KXStP) the Piccadilly. By the time 18tph hit it, it will also have CR2; I make that quite a larger number than your three… I might also have added that HS2 won’t achieve 18tph fully filled trains on day 1 -maybe after about 20years after phase 1 opens, so even the modest increase will take place so slowly as to be imperceptible day-to-day. It’s absolutely essential not to let one’s mind be blown by the shinyness of the HS2 (or any other) project.
Old Oak Common provides more connections than have already been listed here. Assuming the Reading semi-fasts stop there (and why not?) there will be a reasonable number of people interchanging from that town and also Slough. With phase 1 only, there would be little time gain over the existing direct services to Birmingham, but even the connection to the Trent Valley main line will start to give advantages for those passengers heading further up the WCML. The Crewe extension adds to the advantage, and the full phase 2 suddenly opens up destinations in the East Midlands, Yorkshire and the North-East. In effect, for those passengers, it becomes a London by-pass.
It’s also possible that passengers from the south west main line will be happy to take a relatively short trundle on the Overground to OOC from Clapham Junction, rather than have the fun of the rather smaller gauge Tube from Waterloo to Euston. Remember that the step-free route from Waterloo (via Green Park) is a bit more arcane than the direct one from Clapham Junction to OOC.
Clapham Junction itself provides access to a massive area of South London and Southern England, including Gatwick Airport.
If we’re including Piccadilly line in Euston’s onward transport options (by virtue of proximity/link to KXStP), then Thameslink should also be added to the list. And given the current progress in driverless vehicle technology, that could give a range of options for easy transfers between Euston and St Pancras
As for Old Oak Common, given the wide range of long distance services that it will eventually entertain (I expect that all GW services will call there), its proximity to Heathrow and easy connection to Heathrow by Crossrail 1, it is not too great a stretch of the imagination to consider it as a Heathrow terminal.
@ Fandroid – won’t those SWML people just jump on CR2 at Clapham Junction (or even at their local stn) to be whisked to Euston’s front door to catch HS2?
Looking at the TfL website earlier there is seeming disagreement about what, if anything, will be provided at OOC in respect of Overground connectivity. I thought we’d got to a tentative position of two stations being built (in, to my mind, stupid locations) and EU funding had been secured to progress the case for these stations.
@ Graham H – I can detect your many years of Govt / BRB experience of “throwing cold (factual) water” on “exciting ideas” coming to the forth here. 😉
Re the concept of a glorified tube station, one particularly glorified tube station that seems to work very well and seems to be very well regarded is Antwerpen Centraal, with both terminating and through platforms, both underground (and a wedding cake on top to boot).
PS As a product of the Dear Green Place, I can vouch it is even possible to speak in Glaswegian Franglais, for example: “Il fait fenetre!” (It’s windae!)
There’s a tradeoff with intermediate stops. You delay everybody not getting off, making the journey time less attractive by about 5 mins, but improve access for a different group who find the stop more convenient.
Maybe OOC is good enough, but I have my doubts. Destinations tend to be very concentrated: that’s why it’s rare to have intermediate stops approaching major termini in London and Paris. Country end it’s a different matter, especially if the intermediate stop comes with a big car park.
Old Oak looks pretty marginal to me; maybe it demonstrates that jny time isn’t quite that important. Or maybe just that the sponsor was keen on it.
Anyway, the through market to HS1 or Heathrow (or just about anywhere other than central London) is much too small to do anything other than terminate.
I don’t know why anyone thinks there will be commuters. It will largely be people going to meetings, personal business and leisure.
@Alex
Not on this website. We have a series of articles on the DLR extension studies (https://www.londonreconnections.com/2009/dlr-horizon-2020-a-summary/), but since then there has been large passenger growth on the DLR as a whole, as well as realisation that if one were to tunnel new lines in central London, it would be much more cost effective to do so at a larger tunnel diameter for mainline gauge trains. Hence the Crossrail series of lines, and no new tube lines, in the central zone.
@WW. The missing ingredient in my head is a comparative timeline showing realistic programmes for HS2 and CR2. I suspect that HS2 will reach Crewe a long time before CR2 connects Euston and Clapham Junction. Remember how much tunnelling the latter involves, and then think of the long timescale for CR1 which has less tunnelling and is less complicated. If all comes to pass, you are right. It will be a snip to whisk oneself from Clapham Junction to Euston. I’m not sure that I will be around to witness it!
……..and if you consider Euston Cross as one station, then you have a direct connection to both Gatwick and Luton without a further change, so why muck about at OOC and Clapham Junction?
Similarly, whether XR2 to Euston or the WLL to OOC will be the most direct way from Clapham Junction will depend on whether the slow trundle on the latter makes up for the greater distance on the former – and the relative convenience of the interchanges, including the chance of getting a decent seat at OOC. For people already on XR2 before Clapham Junction, the choice will be fairly clear cut.
Bakerludicrous, Sykobee: I cannot fathom where the persistent claims of 15 or 20 minute savings in train journey duration come from. With the exception of one service per day (weekdays only, London-bound only but nonetheless and inevitably a favourite citation of HS2 opponents) the current journey time between Euston and Birmingham New St is 84 mins with perhaps some minor variation. HS2 claims routine Euston-Curzon at 49 mins, less if non-stop to/from OOC. For central Birmingham that’s a reduction of 35 mins or 40% (more for the journeys involving the redevelopments at OOC and Birmingham Eastside). Personally I regard that as significant in both absolute and relative terms.
(Also bear in mind for other forums than LR the triangle junction in the West Midlands and its use by trains approximately halving central Birmingham-Leeds/Manchester journey times.)
@fandroid – yes/no – by the time HS2 gets to Crewe(whenever that is but as you, say, probably well before CR2 reaches Euston) , it will then have 3 Brums, 4 Manchesters and 2-3 something else at the southern end; total 10 tph. 18 tph appear only once you start getting trains from the eastern side of the island, and no one knows when that will be …
(@Caspar Lucas:) “Bakerludicrous, Sykobee: I cannot fathom where the persistent claims of 15 or 20 minute savings in train journey duration come from. With the exception of one service per day (weekdays only, London-bound only but nonetheless and inevitably a favourite citation of HS2 opponents) the current journey time between Euston and Birmingham New St is 84 mins with perhaps some minor variation. HS2 claims routine Euston-Curzon at 49 mins, less if non-stop to/from OOC.”
Unless you’re H G Wells, the transit time between New Street and Curzon Street is non-zero.
@Bel Eben
“Unless you’re H G Wells, the transit time between New Street and Curzon Street is non-zero.”
For city centre to city centre journeys, the transit time is irrelevant. Half the population will be nearer Curzon Street than New Street, and the trams will pass both. Passengers making inter-station connections to or from New Street will have to walk further, but passengers making inter-station connections to or from Moor Street will have less far to walk.
@ Fandroid – well I thought HS2 Phase 1 is supposed to open in 2026 and CR2, in theory, 2030. This is based on powers and funding being put together over the next 3 years to allow a construction start in 2020 and a 10 year construction period for CR2. Clearly nothing is committed yet and money remains the biggest issue that needs solving for both projects.
@Caspar Lucas: That would make sense because that was the very service I must have returned on (and what I timed)! Excuse my naivety – that’s the first time I’ve ever used the line.
Could someone comment on the load factor of the Pendos in peak flow? I can’t help but think that WCML capacity would be better exploited. For example, at the next franchising opportunity, making all passenger services the responsibility of Virgin Trains/the operator and all services making use of the 125mph line speed [obviously with the exception of suburban stoppers]. With a good 80 min journey time between Birmingham and London, and circa 130 mins from Manchester/Liverpool to Euston, running a more frequent service *with a more optimium working environment* which includes tables for all seats in standard class, plug sockets and free wifi, would actually satisfy nearly as many people as HS2 would. Yes, your train would get there later, but if you can sit down and be productive while you’re on there then many offices would see no difference. That would represent commuters (in terms of their season ticket – I’d imagine one for HS2 would be eyewatering) with value for money and the Treasury with value for money too. Obviously if trains are full now then ripping out seats would not be a good idea, however, but maybe the removal of first class and the higher train frequencies would alleviate this. A slight change of alignment for the WCML to Old Oak Common would also be beneficial.
It’d also save Euston from an immense amount of building work.
I take the WCML Virgin Pendolinos a couple times a year between Manchester & London, peak and off-peak, and the peak trains are solidly full to standing, with the off-peaks >80% full.
Bakerludicrous “with a more optimium (sic) working environment” – but not everyone wants to work when they travel, indeed not everyone on the new services will be there for work reasons. Sometimes you just want to get from A to B (or, um, L to-or-from B).
Each time I read about OOC I’m reminded that many ex-Euston long-distance services used to stop at Watford for the same reasons. And now they don’t. Might not OOC just become a white elephant?
AlisonW asks “Might not OOC just become a white elephant?”
It might. Anything might happen. But the comparison with Watford Junction (WFJ) is not exact. Watford does not have “exciting” plans for a big development area round it, OOC does. WFJ is rather further out. WFJ does not have frequent fast trains to Heathrow (it did once have a coach link). WFJ does not have a shiny new Crossrail planned to call at it and link it to Wharfland. WFJ does not have the prospect of trains to Bristol, south Wales and the West calling. Even if one or two of these things go a bit pear-shaped, the rest will probably carry the day.
Re Bakerludicrous
“Could someone comment on the load factor of the Pendos in peak flow? I can’t help but think that WCML capacity would be better exploited. For example, at the next franchising opportunity, making all passenger services the responsibility of Virgin Trains/the operator and all services making use of the 125mph line speed [obviously with the exception of suburban stoppers]”
Load factor – assuming 100% is fully seated then often 120%+
Virgin have already reduced the amount of 1st class on them to make more standard class.
You get more seats with airline style seating rather than tables.
But you get significantly more passengers on a 12 car London-Midland 350 (one of the later 110mph variants) on the fasts than a Pendolino despite the Pendolino being longer and if an 8car 350 turns up people can’t board. If you want ultimate capacity get /run more 350s with Airline seating. For max speeds above 110mph you have to have the end third of the leading car as staff access only crumple zone so 110mph stock (no tilt) which is lighter and with better acceleration is probably the answer (and far cheaper by circa £1m per car!) if looking for ultimate capacity.
(A 12car using 345 length Aventra body shells would be the same length as 11car pendolino so might be a better choice for even more capacity)
Graham H, you have to remember that increased demand on the Tube will naturally use all of the increased capacity provided by various programmes. As these programmes are developed, the ability to increase capacity further is diminished. By 2033, when Euston will also take on the bulk of the MML and ECML long distance passengers, all of the Tube lines will be running at the maximum capacity possible and they will still be full to bursting. The HS2 trains will carry more people but so will the new WCML services. Even if the number of paths per hour stayed roughly the same it could well be the case that each one will be run with a 10 car IEP equivalent fitted with high-density seating, so there will be even more people getting off the trains at Euston than there are today with the long distance Pendolinos. The same issue will exist at St Pancras and King’s Cross. Even a relatively small capacity relief from sending Tring stoppers onto Crossrail could make the difference between another Tube or Crossrail line needing to be routed via Euston-St Pancras-King’s Cross or not.
Although discussion of Euston will be in Part 3 of this article, there is no possibility that Euston will not be the London terminus of HS2 and that it will be built. Ideas such as terminating at Old Oak Common, even temporarily, have been rejected as they just do not stack up operationally. The particular problem with the OOC terminating idea is that it would tie together HS2 and Crossrail in such a way that if one failed, it would bring down the other. If the Victoria line failed for several hours it might be inconvenient but it would still be possible for people arriving at Euston to make other arrangements, whether by a different route on the Tube, by bus or by taxi. If HS2 terminated at Old Oak Common and Crossrail stopped, there would be no practical way to move the HS2 loads of people to where they need to go. At best, a handful could be wedged onto the already-full GWML trains into Paddington but then that would overload the onward links available there as well. Realistically, if Crossrail were disrupted in such a way that it would take hours to recover, the decision would probably have to be made to not allow any more HS2 trains south of Birmingham as otherwise OOC would become dangerously overcrowded.
Watford Junction stops were removed to gain another path each hour and make ICWC services a couple of minutes quicker to make it look as if the umpteen billions spent on the WCML upgrade seem slightly more worth it.
These won’t be issues for OOC.
– unless none stop, paths would be reduced by having some trains stop, but not all
– the journey time reductions are pretty binary as London-Birmingham is an all-or-nothing scheme with no half-assing easy to do. They are also massive enough that a stop at OOC (which would make end-to-end journeys better for Docklands, parts of the West End, West London, etc) can be absorbed
– the station at OOC, and the accompanying regeneration is a key part of HS2’s public perception in London. It would be perceived badly to water it down. Whereas the WCML upgrade could reduce service for Watford and its catchment area as it was about places beyond Watford, Northants rather than Watford, Herts.
“the station at OOC, and the accompanying regeneration is a key part of HS2’s public perception in London”
I am very sceptical of that claim. I doubt most of the general public has a any perception that OOC is part of HS2
The problem Watford Junction has is that it has only 1 platform for each of the fast lines, so that fast line trains stopping there block the line. Milton Keynes has two platforms for each fast line, so that one train can arrive into a platform as another leaves (like London Bridge will have for Charing Cross trains once rebuilt). Old Oak Common, it seems, goes even further with three platforms per line.
On the public perception side, I think the significance of OOC is more in that it offers a Heathrow connection, since a lot of the public discussion of HS2 seems to circulate around the idea of displacing aviation and making airport connections (arguably not really than important in the scheme of things, but a big part of the politics of the scheme early on when the current government were in their environmentalist phase). OOC is a bit of a gesture towards Heathrow without having to go to the expense of diverting the line too far or building an unviable spur. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t worthwhile in providing the Crossrail connection to the City and Canary Wharf, and that it won’t stimulate a lot of development in the area.
@ngh: For max speeds above 110mph you have to have the end third of the leading car as staff access only crumple zone so 110mph stock (no tilt) which is lighter and with better acceleration is probably the answer (and far cheaper by circa £1m per car!) if looking for ultimate capacity
On the other hand the end third of the leading car doesn’t need to be next to the platform if it doesn’t have passengers in it, so the train could perhaps be longer, subject to signal positions etc (I’m thinking of the White Rose Eurostars to York that hung off the end of the platforms at King’s Cross). Or maybe adopting European TSIs would remove the crumple zone requirement as passengers right up to the front of ICEs etc seems normal practice on the Continent?
Re NotaSpotter
“At best, a handful could be wedged onto the already-full GWML trains into Paddington but then that would overload the onward links available there as well. ”
Crossrail turnback is being moved to OOC in 2026 so either 10 (if HEx is killed off and CR replaces) or 14 starting from OOC.
Having an extra stop at OOC on HEx will degrade it competitiveness as a route into from Heathrow into Paddington especially as some CRs would no longer be starting there empty.
Re Ian J,
Have a look at the newer ICEs (Siemens Velaro) which do have the 1/3 “crumple zone”. All of the Velaro family trains (also new Eurostar, Spain, Russia) all have the 1/3 crumple zone
Ian J
There are three platforms for the fast lines at Milton Keynes. Platforms, 4, 5, 6. This you can have one train arriving as another departs or divert a stopping train to allow another to pass, but only in one direction at a time. It is routinely used southbound, but in my experience used less frequently NB.
The speed at which the high speed specification takes 1/3rd of the leading coach out of use for passengers is 190km/h or nearly 119mph. Thus, if someone wants to make one there is a tiny bit of wriggle room above 110mph. Is 8% worth having?…..probably if it doesnt harm acceleration or headways.
@Notatrainspotter – I never said that there wouldn’t be growing demand for end-distribution capacity at Euston – of course, there will and, of course, it will be under strain, as the thread on this site on peak tube implies. My complaint was merely that the use of words such as dramatic in relation to the opening of HS2 in this context was, politely, rubbish. Longer term, secular changes in demand levels throughout London will have a much greater effect on tube loadings but, like rising damp, the change will be slow and not related at all to a single event,and the opening of HS2 will be no more than the equivalent of a year’s secular growth – and it will be spread itself over many years.
The crumple zone was just a compromise when we were still working on the basis of a 100mph limit for passengers in the lead vehicle (after a bad incident involving some cows and a diesel-propelled push-pull set). If you can demonstrate adequate protection, you can have passengers up front. It has to be safe for staff too.
@notapsotter
“The particular problem with the OOC terminating idea is that it would tie together HS2 and Crossrail in such a way that if one failed, it would bring down the other.”
@ngh, in reply to notaspotter
“Crossrail turnback is being moved to OOC in 2026 so either 10 or 14 starting from OOC.”
Notaspotter was discussing what would happen if service on Crossrail were suspended, in which case there would not be ANY trains starting at OOC. If HS2 continues to Euston, that’s not a problem – you simply tell everyone for central London to stay on the train or even, in extremis, pass OOC non-stop. That is not an option if OOC is the terminus.
Re Timbeau,
2 potential different situations with problems to the east of west of OOC – If turn back was still at Paddington the limited number of CR services to the West could get taken out by issues on the GWML leaving no OOC service, but with the turnback at OOC gives some resilience to issues further west of OOC. If the problem is east of OOC then it is indeed gameover.
Sykobee
the Government’s Great Delay To Help Zac Goldsmith regarding airport expansion.
Not just Zac … IIRC all three serious candidates for London Mayor are set to do everything in their power to stop Heathrow expansion?
David
does this mean many more slots will be freed up, but they will be occupied by freight, or ….
IIRC, they are redoubling the quadruple track up the “Midland” all or almost all the way to Kettering, that was removed in the 80’s & I think quite a bit of freight will use those lines?
WW/timbeau/fandroid
What’s the odds on CR2 opening sooner?
Assuming Osborne stays in post, I would not be at all surprised to see shovels & TBM’s in the ground before the end of this parliament ….
@Malcolm @AlisonW
Quite. The closest comparison with Old Oak Common is not Watford Junction, but Stratford in the east – the extent and typology of the sites are very similar, and the scale of their proposed transport connections and planned regeneration is within the same ballpark. It remains to be seen whether OOC can attract the same level of investment without the driver of an Olympic games or a Westfield shopping centre, however.
(@NotATrainspotter:) “Graham H, you have to remember that increased demand on the Tube will naturally use all of the increased capacity provided by various programmes. As these programmes are developed, the ability to increase capacity further is diminished. By 2033, when Euston will also take on the bulk of the MML and ECML long distance passengers, all of the Tube lines will be running at the maximum capacity possible and they will still be full to bursting. The HS2 trains will carry more people but so will the new WCML services. Even if the number of paths per hour stayed roughly the same it could well be the case that each one will be run with a 10 car IEP equivalent fitted with high-density seating, so there will be even more people getting off the trains at Euston than there are today with the long distance Pendolinos. The same issue will exist at St Pancras and King’s Cross. Even a relatively small capacity relief from sending Tring stoppers onto Crossrail could make the difference between another Tube or Crossrail line needing to be routed via Euston-St Pancras-King’s Cross or not.”
A concatenation of speculation. Euston is not particularly busy, compared to termini like Liverpool Street and Waterloo.
Please could we all ensure that discussion on this matter of whether, when and why Euston might require drastic relief remains civil. As it’s the future, there is no underlying truth to be discovered, just different views, all of which can be respected.
[This comment is of marginal relevance to transport. Left unsnipped because we cannot be everyone’s editor, but it came very close to being chopped entirely. It is making a valid point, but one that we would have preferred to see made in one or two short sentences. Would all commenters please remember the virtues of conciseness, particularly when straying near the boundary of a topic. Malcolm]
@mackree, Indeed my one criticism of the Old Oak Plans is the lack of shopping. The problem is New Town like planning authority completely caved to the surrounding local authorities and promised that retail will be locally based and not compete with other centres. So we have a ‘new high street’ that looks a bit weak and disjointed to me.
At the end of the day considering the housing crises, the residential component will fill up whether it has a decent shopping centre or not, with fast links to the West End, or Westfield it’s not that much of bind if the local centre is filled with coffee shops and drycleaners and maybe one decent sized supermarket. But if you want to attract office occupiers to new locations it seems good retail and leisure offer is going to be a major part of your pitch. The reason companies are relocating away from old fashioned business parks is that staff hate them, with nowhere to hang out at luch or after work, no decent shops to do last minute shopping after work or chores etc.
Thats why Stratford has managed to attract such large new occupiers (much to my surprise,as I thought it was Central London or Wharf for these people). Stratford has the really wonderful park, a great (or terribly crowded) shopping mall with nearly everything you will want. Plus lots of restaurants are starting open outside the Mall and will no doubt fill the ground floors of those new office towers. Also there are all the new cultural and educational facilities to give the area some buzz.
So Far Old Oak looks like it is going to get a 500,000 sq ft science museum expansion, which is a start. But it needs to beef up it’s retail. It does not need to be as large as the Westfields, but a medium size mall of 500,000 sq ft would allow a decent Marks & Spencer and Debenhams and say a large Sainsburys or Waitrose and a similar amount of space for leisure and secondary retail. Nothing to outre but similar to the offer of Victoria Street.
Old Oak Common already has a Westfield, sort of – it’s only one stop away on the WLL, with phase 2 now under construction.
One further benefit of the intermediate stop at Old Oak Common is contingency – if Euston ever suffers a closure, Old Oak Common could act as the terminus for a reduced service.
Re Steve L and Rational Plan,
And Westfield is being expanded as central line users found out in February:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-35636249.
The Park Royal area adjacent to OOC is also being redeveloped so see what happens there.
HS2 Heathrow link = £2m [I think you mean billion. Malcolm]
Rename OOC as Heathrow Gateway = nil
Seriously, backed by CR services to Heathrow a presentational change might be sufficient.
@NGH and Steve, yes and that’s fine for residential but by the time you add a a few minutes walk, then travel time then a quick pop to Westfield consumes at least 20 minutes of your time before you even enter a shop, it cuts into your lunch time.
Office occupiers want those facilities on their doorstop. They want an exciting urban experience, otherwise it’s just a glossy business park and will only attract the rents that those places get. But it won’t be for another 10 years that any non residential building will begin in earnest and there is plenty of scope to tweak the plans.
Re RP,
Agree that office uses will want those but they will probably end up with a lesser set of shops as you won’t get top end duplication.
Re Malcolm,
or m = millard
@ngl, SteveL, Rational Plan: Westfield is still about 2.5km from the proposed location of OOC though, and despite the proposed transport links, such a distance may affect the investment and increased land value capture that results as it falls between the two stools of being too close for an alternative market yet too far for convenience. OOC should aim to be the ‘Stratford of the West’ (if that doesn’t sound like an unflattering ambition!) and should be very wary of becoming an Ilford.
@Malcolm: Apologies if my post has caused a digression in the comments, although I think it’s a worthwhile side-topic, because, as we’ve seen with the Bakerloo Line extension and the northern end of CR2, it’s becoming clear that transport investment in London is driven by unlocking land for housing, sometimes even above and beyond the demands of rail logistics and predicted passenger flows.
The Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC) lay out their aspirations for the area here:
https://www.london.gov.uk/about-us/organisations-we-work/old-oak-and-park-royal-development-corporation-opdc
I even see there is a transport study group workshop tonight (6 April) if anyone wants to go along!
However a new stadium for the Super Hoops doesn’t seem to be on the cards…
marckee 6 April 2016 at 14:40
‘Stratford of the West’ (if that doesn’t sound like an unflattering ambition!)
Cheeky.
Olympic Stratford, centre of world attention.
(@Greg Tingey:) “IIRC, they are redoubling the quadruple track up the “Midland” all or almost all the way to Kettering, that was removed in the 80’s & I think quite a bit of freight will use those lines?”
Requadrupling and gauge clearance on the Midland Main Line has the potential to increase north – south freight throughput, yes.
HS2 has the potential to increase north – south freight throughput, how?
I suspect the role of HS2 with regard to north-south freight could be more like keeping off the pressure to decrease the number of paths it is granted on the WCML (and such pressure would of course be made more likely by the MML improvements mentioned). As a general point, extra north-south tracks (however provided) mean extra total north-south capacity, even if the particular added traffic doesn’t run along the added tracks. This applies to all kinds of traffic.
Without wishing to add to the digressions on spacial planning at Old Oak, I commend those who doubt to read the OPDC’s Draft Local Plan. Reynolds 953 provides a link. I’m not sure if it will attract shoppers from Birmingham, but you never know. A shopping site with the connectivity that Old Oak will have could draw in a surprising number of people, leaving Westfield as a mere local centre, somewhere down the branch line.
@ Greg 0906 – I think it will need a heroic effort to get CR2 spades in the ground before April 2020. There are very significant issues such as the route now being uncertain, massive scope for political squabbling and a loss of momentum and what the construction impacts will be in places like Wimbledon. There is significant disquiet about the potential for large scale demolition in Wimbledon which could easily lead to significant objections against the TWAO application. Obviously there will be a lot of effort to avoid this but there are no guarantees.
As we’ve veered into OOC it was interesting to see it featuring on BBC London evening news as an exemplar of combined transport, housing and business development. The “high street” concept was referred to by the CEO of the Development Corporation when she was interviewed. Ironically Shepherds Bush was cited as somewhere that had received *significant* transport investment whereas I’d argue it got about the bare minimum – a bus station where there used to be a stand anyway. The Central Line got a new surface building but nothing else and certainly not the promised step free access. The Overground station is borderline too small and built with narrow platforms and Wood Lane doesn’t seem terribly useful but may be more useful for Westfield Phase 2 which will nudge up against it. Even the sum total of spend pales into insignificance with what is likely to happen at Old Oak Common.
And while people are arguing about doomsday scenarios if there was some form of rail disruption affecting services to the east of OOC it seems odd that there is an apparent assumption there won’t be road access nor taxis nor bus or coach access to the locality. The area will have all these facilities which would at least afford the opportunity to get people away from the area or to alternative rail connections in the event of disruption.
Stratford as a destination is a huge success, but Stratford International station rather less so, at least in my perception. How many journeys does it attract? Even assuming OOC becomes twice the destination that Stratford is, that doesn’t necessarily make it worth stopping high-speed services there.
@Greg: IIRC all three serious candidates for London Mayor are set to do everything in their power to stop Heathrow expansion
Leaving aside the minefield of who the third serious candidate might be, I suspect the key phrase here is “in their power”… Each of the leading candidates would have more actual power over airport policy if they lost and stayed in Parliament than they would do as Mayor. I wouldn’t expect them to point this out during the election campaign, though.
north-south freight throughput
The freight demand is more east-west and southwest-north, though, isn’t it? I.e. the main foreseeable* future demand is between container ports on the east and south coasts (plus maybe the Channel Tunnel) and distribution centres in the north and Midlands. In Greg’s example of the Midland Main Line, the idea is/was that the freight would divert off at Bedford to Bletchley and then across to Oxford and down to Southampton – so it would not use the WCML at all (and getting across the line without conflict would finally provide a use for the 1950s white elephant flyover). Similarly there is potential to remove Felixstowe-Midlands freight away from the London area entirely and send it cross-country, which would benefit both the WCML and the North London Line.
What this means is that freight demand really needs thinking about in its own terms and not just as an add-on to discussions over HS2.
* and the problem with building freight infrastructure is that demand is much less foreseeable than passenger demand – none of the rail freight companies seem to have expected demand for coal transport to fall off a cliff, for example.
@WW: significant objections against the TWAO application
Maybe I should ask this on the Crossrail 2 article, but do you know if the intention for Crossrail is to go through the TWAO process or to have a hybrid bill like HS2? In one sense this would just replace an exhaustingly long public enquiry with an exhaustingly long Select Committee process, but it would mean the timetable and final outcome was less in doubt.
Stratford would seem a better example than Shepherds Bush of transport investment driving development, but I suppose Shepherds Bush is more familiar to the BBC, who wouldn’t have got so much money for Television Centre without Wood Lane tube station on the doorstep.
I agree about road access to OOC but part of the issue here would be that the road network is basically full already at peak times – squeezing rail replacement buses onto the A40 would not be much fun. But then there is a whole question about what kind of future local transport network OOC might need which is probably off topic for now.
I think the main problem with trying to connect to Heathrow is that as a matter of principle you shouldn’t try to take on the competition where they are strongest. Do you see Tesco opening a supermarket right next door to an existing Sainsbury’s which will be equally (in)convenient for everyone or do they choose a site on the other side of town which will be more convenient for half the town’s residents and albeit less convenient for the other half?
@IanJ – “What this means is that freight demand really needs thinking about in its own terms and not just as an add-on to discussions over HS2.” You’re absolutely right and a rational look at freight might come up with some surprising – and cheaper – alternatives to building HS2on terms of capacity (and I don’t mean Greengauge21 either). But enough of the Faeber-Castell Polychromos before the the clouds part to reveal the Great Snipperin the sky….
You are also right to say that freight forecasting is a thoroughly unreliable black art. All the modelling I have seen both here and overseas, simply reflects the propensity of industrial development to generate traffic,but the whole thing is horribly vulnerable to quite small and unpredictable changes in the markets and production technology. Coal is the classic case, where even small shifts in the mix of coals required by power stations could and did lead to rearrangement of flows throughout the country. Administering Freight facilities grants was a nightmare.
@DWPH – you know the economic theory about the ice cream sellers on the beach,no? In the towns round our way, the supermarkets all tend to congregate in a distinctive Supermarket Quarter.
ngh
“m = milliard” errr … NO
There’s a strict International Standard for these:[We do not need discussion of whether that Standard extends to jocular interjections. Malcolm]
@DPWH. Ignoring the temptation to comment about supermarkets, I have utterly lost your point about Heathrow access. Can you explain please.
Re Greg (and Malcolm),
I was joking (as Malcolm recognised) but I forgot the 😉
Many big firms, central banks and governments still use m, mm, mmm for thousand, million, billion, for their accountancy (note use of lower case m) and the French and German traditionally used Md for milliard (billion or 10^9). Where it gets entertaining is where the base unit for accounting purposes is million so billion is just “m” in the accounts (I have had clients where this has been the case). All of this is of course extra-SI but covered by other standards.
Re Graham,
Freight indeed plenty of current (cheaper) schemes without crayonism too – the electric spine inc. EWR reopening Bicester – Bletchley (the later is in Grip 4/5 at the moment) on the MML Syston Jn -Corby-Kettering MML section getting re-doubled and the MML routes gauge cleared to W10/12 (Which is going well and is effectively getting the MML electrification civils work out of the way now).
Off topic of HS2 but in answer to @WW 00:30 / @Ian J 03:19
Hybrid Bill is the preferred route for CR2 – the recent NIC report ‘Transport for a World City’ says the aim should be to submit the Hybrid Bill in Autumn 2019, the first step to the railway opening in 2033 (see page 4 of the recent report: http://bit.ly/1XeYENq). This recommendation is subject to “resolution” of four areas:
“l Identify proposals to phase costs and increase affordability
l Develop a strategy to unlock significant housing growth
l Deliver a funding plan in which London contributes its fair share to the project
l Maximise private sector involvement in the development and funding of stations and their surrounding areas”
@ngh – very much what I meant!
@ Anon – thanks for confirming the preferred legislative route for securing CR2 powers. I also note the NIC’s 4 conditions or what I’d term “areas of potential conflict and difficulty”. On the assumptions powers are achieved then there is going to be a heck of a lot of construction traffic impact across London as a result of building CR2 / HS2 / housing plus general London development. When you see what London has been through (congestion, noise, pollution) in recent years I wonder if someone is going to say “enough! we have to do this differently”?
Re WW,
Indeed and CR2 are looking at some worksite spoil extraction via tunnels to reduce traffic/congestion hence the need to get on with the tunnels as early as possible (comparatively earlier than on CR to make it work).
@lmm
“Stratford International station rather less so, at least in my perception. How many journeys does it attract? Even assuming OOC becomes twice the destination that Stratford is, that doesn’t necessarily make it worth stopping high-speed services there.”
It’s very hand for those of us living in the East VIllage (plus the International Quarter, and half-erected now 42-story Manhattan Loft Gardens) to get to St Pancras in 7 minutes.
The HS station is very busy when West Ham are playing their association football at the Olympics Stadium.
Probably best to live here to know how busy a place is, rather than on the odd visit, of course.
Re DPWH,
“I think the main problem with trying to connect to Heathrow is that as a matter of principle you shouldn’t try to take on the competition where they are strongest.”
Indeed I suspect better local connections to the GWML and OOC rather than a direct HS2 connection is the way to go especially as we don’t know what the future holds for Heathrow and Heathrow now has a big potential problem it had forgotten about:
The Celtic Tiger has awoken from its slumber is now on the prowl again and has dusted off some old plans which are going to give Heathrow some real headaches: the second runway at Dublin Airport is now on again today now that passenger numbers have recovered and hit the required trigger level of existing use (and had planning permission etc from before the bust but had been on ice since 2007) . All the airlines are supportive including IAG (BA/Iberia /Aer Lingus) who want to turn it into a hub for Europe – Northern America. Landing charges etc. are 1/3 of Heathrow level and RoI has just reduced it aviation duty. There are also direct flights to 22 UK destinations from Dublin which is 3 times the Heathrow level.
And the cost on the 2nd runway is less than half a cheap Zone 1 crossrail station or half the cost of the future the Bank rebuild…
(Dublin North America transfer flight passenger numbers from the UK are already 1/5 of the total passengers flying to North America from Heathrow)
Dublin then becomes a very cheap alternative hub to Heathrow with connectively from the rest of the UK to Heathrow becoming less important and journey time from London to elsewhere in the UK more important for HS2.
Stratford International is the prototype place for the evergreen bit of repartee: “Why didn’t they build the station nearer to the village?” : “They thought it would be more useful if it was near the railway line”. But it would be so much more useful (except to East Villagers and the others Briantist mentions) if they had dug the tunnel such that the hole could have been adjacent to Stratford Stratford station. (Could have made the platform numbers even worse!). Doubtless there’s something in the way. But I have used it several times for the Kent-Suffolk journey that Graham almost mentioned, and it does work. And yes, there are quite a few other users; I haven’t surveyed them for why.
@ Ngh 1638 – I believe Dublin has one other key advantage. You can clear US immigration and customs in Ireland before boarding your flight thus saving time and hassle at the other end. I expect that is an attraction for passengers and airlines and will grow in importance if Dublin becomes a larger hub.
@ ngh 7 April 2016 at 13:00 “Indeed and CR2 are looking at some worksite spoil extraction via tunnels to reduce traffic/congestion” I believe since Chelsea/Hackney all plans have linked Victoria with the Thames by tunnel to allow river removal of spoil.
@Malcolm
“Stratford International is the prototype (sic) place for the evergreen bit of repartee”
First said of Dent on the Settle & Carlisle, I believe. The station is 5 miles east of the village and 600 feet higher. “International” seems to be one of those suffixes like “Road” or “Junction” or “Parkway” which translate as “nowhere near”.
@ngh (and at the risk of a snip as off topic)
London is the biggest city in Europe (pace Istanbul) and will always generate many times more traffic to North America than the rest of the UK put together. There is no question of Dublin being a hub for London based to interchange for North America. To the extent that it diverts traffic from elsewhere in the UK to Dublin instead of Heathrow, it will have no impact on the local surface transport demand to/from Heathrow though it would have a limited impact on HS2 demand to Heathrow. However, even if every North American bound passenger from elsewhere in the UK flew via Dublin, Dublin would never be able to offer the range and frequency of flights that Heathrow can offer. The net impact, therefore, is likely to be margainal.
To put it into perspective, London has nearly twice the population of the entire Republic of Ireland. Dublin’s population is about the same as that of Sheffield.
Re Taz,
CR2 – The Chelsea spoil extraction option is still available, indeed the super sewer tunnelling team are going to use it very soon! The spoil extraction for CR1 stations was effectively via the surface usually road will it got to rail or barge terminals, CR2 are looking at / hoping that some station spoil will go via tunnels e.g. Balham, Clapham Jn, Dalston Jn, Angel, with station boxes etc constructed post running tunnels but that needs early completion of tunnels to those stations
Re WW, Quinlet, timbeau
RoI pre-clearance is indeed important to a growing number of passengers – I received a rant from a friend stuck in the JFK queue earlier this morning!
BA run a City – Shannon (refuel and pre clearance) – JFK business class service using A318s for this very purpose (At least 2 LR readers I know use this service!) City is also looking to expand aggressively.
I’m not arguing that Heathrow won’t still be a huge hub with most Londoners still using it rather than other Airports but others in the UK are less likely to use it especially if it gets more expensive post R3/T6 hence no HS2 connection is probably the answer and focusing on local connections like the western rail link and CR replacing HEx is probably more important. Heathrow will not have a such a monopolistic position as currently.
Heathrow are looking to expand with a very expensive extra runway and terminal which will need a huge amount of finance with a big hike in airport fees to pay for thus, pushing up fares. This will be difficult to raise the finance on even before the competition get more competitive…
Scotland are halving APD which will just encourage more people to use Dublin / CDG / Schiphol etc as the transfer cost has fallen. (the last long haul it did was via Schiphol as the price was silly not to)
Heathrow US destinations will soon be upto 25 and Dublin going from 15 to 18 so not that far behind and IAG and Delta have already said they will increase further (along with frequency and plane size) when the runway is completed.
The new Dublin runway is 1/60th of the official Heathrow scheme estimated cost (Dublin already have the terminal capacity including security lanes built) and the number of passengers using Dublin is 1/3rd of the Heathrow total so the extra runway cost passed on to passengers (directly or indirectly) will be about 1/20th of the Heathrow cost per passenger.
Hence whether Heathrow can get a viable funding model (assuming government approval) remains to be seen if other cities and countries price aggressively hence London should be wary about investing too much in Heathrow connectivity without keeping its options open with less than expected Heathrow growth.
@Malcolm
Just for the record – it’s exactly 250m of walking distance from the Hitchcock Lane (eastern, car park) exit of the HS1 station via Westfield (coming in next to Primark) to the gateline at the Stratford station.
Which is the exact same distance from that same gateline to the first seat on a Jubilee line train on Platforms 13, 14 and 15.
The north end of Platform 11 at Statford is physically less than 100m from the HS station box.
While the discussions about Heathrow’s future are all well and good, it is worth bearing in mind that almost all (something like 85-90%, IIRC) of the passengers using the station to/from the north* would have been entering/leaving the airport site on the ground – including a sizeable number taking Crossrail into Central London (and many more taking Crossrail to destinations served by changing at OOC), as well as people using it as a Parkway station from the M25. The proposed station at Heathrow would have been more aptly called West London/Surrey/Thames Valley Interchange.
With limited ‘free’ paths on HS2 meaning competition for them between Heathrow trains, HS1 trains, and the current plan of using those paths to serve more places in the North, there needs to be significant benefits to justify serving Heathrow from the north with trains. And that’s before we look at the expense of building the spur!
*As opposed to to/from London, though the case there was also rather marginal, given the long way around via Ruislip and the limited number of paths on HS2 for such trains – it was mostly seen as a place to terminate ex-HS1 trains to save them changing at Old Oak. The Greengauge-21 case for the HS1-HS2 link had such a spur, accessed via surface tracks on the NNML alignment to allow more trains (including to Oxford/Aylesbury) to run via the link than just a 2tph-max service between HS1 and HS2.
@ quinlet – Shannon actually does a bit of hubbing for flights between London and N America as transatlantic flights from London City stop there to refuel and IIRC passengers clear US immigration and customs as well. The runway at London City isn’t long enough for planes fully fuelled for a transatlantic flights. BA runs these flights as business-class only.
Bel Aben et al, I do not dispute that there are serious capacity issues across the network. The decision to send the Tring stoppers onto Crossrail would be done because 1. it is a feasible idea and 2. it would do some good in adding capacity in what will always remain a vital part of the London tube and rail network. It would relieve Euston in the way that Crossrail 1 is helping to relieve Liverpool Street and Crossrail 2 is helping to relieve Waterloo and Liverpool Street again, albeit without the need for a Hybrid Bill and tens of billions of pounds to build a new line across London. By providing a reasonably effective way to relieve capacity into Euston, it frees up resources for other lines to be planned which would have more of an effect on the many other Tube capacity problems.
The comments about released capacity on the WCML after HS2 opens are interesting but it would also be useful to remember that HS2 makes it far easier to make relatively major infrastructure changes to the north-south lines once it is open. At the moment, a blockade at Watford Junction will disrupt almost every north-south line as people will shift to alternative routes. Glasgow passengers will load onto Edinburgh ECML services, Liverpool and Manchester passengers will head east to Leeds for ECML services, Birmingham passengers will crowd onto Chiltern trains and some folk will head to the MML stations. Once HS2 opens, it will significantly reduce the number of people affected by engineering work, such as at Watford Junction. The rump WCML InterCity services from the North could terminate at Milton Keynes without any real issues, since no passengers to London would ever use them in preference to HS2 services. If Rugby and Coventry passengers headed to Birmingham Interchange, the number of people needing to be served through the blockade would be minimal, and with careful planning possibly able to be accommodated in single line running through the works site. Similar stories would apply on the other lines.
What this means is that major works to improve capacity on the London ends of the main lines will be far easier and cheaper to manage, so many more of these schemes will happen. The GWML main lines will be signalled for 20tph, made possible because of the grade-separation at Heathrow Junction and then the two platform faces per direction at Reading plus the grade-separation beyond. If the major mainline stops served by fast trains were rebuilt to have two platforms per direction, the total number of trains that could run could increase up to the limit posed by a single pair of tracks and express speeds with a consistent stopping pattern.
@Reynolds 953
The reason the BA flights from City Airport to New York stop at Shannon is to refuel. The US immigration clearance is seen as just a bonus and the stop would not happen if the refuel wasn’t needed. But that doesn’t make Shannon any form of a hub – a hub is where interchange takes place on an organised and structured basis. Dublin may become one, Shannon won’t.
@Not a trainspotter – you’ve made a lot of statements about what future passengers *will* do but where’s the evidence? Are there studies that show what preferences passengers may have when faced with a choice of HS2 and conventional services? You seem very certain that the WCML will be less busy but surely it could remain very busy with commuter traffic plus people making inter regional journeys? My suggestion has as much weight as any other option at this point in time. I don’t see commuters being remotely happy about their journeys being delayed because the WCML has been turned into a building site. I simply don’t believe that HS2 will be priced at the same level as other services to the same destination. I think we may well have 4 competing operators to Birmingham – HS2, WC mainline (Virgin), WC slower (London Midland) and Chiltern. We already have price and quality differentiation between three operators and I doubt passengers would wish to lose their options regardless of the massive financial pressures sitting behind the HS2 project. I just think it is far too early for anyone to be talking with high levels of certainty about the future of rail transport post HS2. A great many things will no doubt come into play and we need to be open to a range of possibilities (positive and negative).
Briantist (in Gigabit internet heaven) 8 April 2016 at 13:35
“The north end of Platform 11 at StRatford is physically less than 100m from the HS station box.”
True. But the shuttle bus took such a roundabout route.
Perhaps Stratford Uninternational needs to be better integrated into Stratford station? How could this be done? Make the interchange appear easier on maps? Renumber the Uninternational platforms to Nos 18, 19, etc? A Jubilee Line Extension Extension with a loop to actually utilise the never-to-be-used-for-their-original-purpose “International” platforms? Crazy crayons at the ready. Meanwhile, HS2 relevance, yes, OOC-Willesden needs to try to avoid similar disjuncture from the outset.
Hopes once were that a “fixed link” between Stratford Station and Stratford International station would be a travelator. Long gone.
So now there are two routes. The short walk through the lower ground floor of the shops, as described above by Briantist, if you can cope with the crowds and know your way. The other is to catch the DLR, which I recommend if you have bags or are tired.
Several things. The US is looking to expand pre clearance to several European airports, with Heathrow being one of them. I read it on airliner.net a while ago. But I think it requires dedicated terminal space an no mixing of passengers, once cleared into that part you can’t go back out. It would be straightforward at T5 as either Sat B or C could be designated, C is quieter and not as large so would be easiest. This of course would suit BA fine but I expect the other American airlines would object so something expensive would have to be done at T2 and T3. So it may take a while.
I think we can all agree only the Bakerloo has scope for expansion, everywhere else is full to bursting. So no extensions, even if we had free money and infinite engineers on hand.
Stratford will have to stay as it is, the links are adequate as of now and I think the extension of the DLR to Stratford International was justified at the time as providing a fixed link between the two and discharging the legal requirement left over from when the International Station was built.
I just wish they had gone with one of the options at the original consultation and extended one further stop up the Eastern side of the Lea Valley. At least then it would have been fairly easy to extend up the valley at some future point. I’m not sure it’s possible now, with all the development that’s occurred.
Walthamstow Writer, the business case for HS2 is based on it being the primary north-south InterCity operator. In essence, the scheme is nothing more than an extra pair of tracks reserved for exclusive use by ICWC, which just happen to support significantly higher speeds. That many of the remaining WCML trains will continue to follow roughly the same route as they do now is pretty much irrelevant. The point of the WCML Manchester to London service is to make it easier to do journeys like Milton Keynes to Stockport, not to compete with the HS2 operator. The terms of competition will be set by HM Government, who are stumping up the cash to build the line in the first place as standard state borrowing. The ICWC franchise specification would be set to make it impossible for a bidder to try to use it to compete with HS2, by forcing it to call at intermediate stops and provide seats at those stations.
The point I was making is that by putting the longest distance flows on a new line, the disruption caused by relatively major construction works is minimised. Even if ICWC did compete with HS2, that would be the case because during engineering works people would use HS2 services to get past the problem. The remaining WCML services would be much easier to manage during disruption since only a small number of passengers would be affected. If you’re travelling from Stockport to Milton Keynes you wouldn’t be affected by engineering works at Watford. If you’re going from Rugby to Euston you’ll be just as good getting a bus or train back to Birmingham Interchange and then HS2 down to London.
@ Kate – HS2 recently gained a 10/1 majority at its 3rd reading in this parliament and gained a similar majority in the last thus has the benefit of receiving major support in succeeding parliamentary terms.
As to whether it will be built I suggest you check on HS2 specific sites or even DFT site where you will find applications for stages of building HS2 are now being sought for contracts running into billions of pounds re site clearance, tunnelling etc in order that everything will be in place for when Royal Assent is received likely at the end of the year.
The bill will soon have its 2nd reading in the Lords but that house does not have powers to make any major alterations to the bill.
As for OOC then Canary Wharf rather than Stratford is a better comparison as I remember visiting Canary Wharf in its early days and was often the only person using the sole coffee shop that then existed. It’s likely that OOC will take 10-20 years to develop fully .
As to complaints about needing to change stations between HS1 and HS2 well passengers have been doing this ever since more than one station was located along Euston Road and HS2 is simply WCML2 with elements of MML 2 and ECML 2 once full stage 2 is built.
It’s GWR passengers who have always lost out as Brunel wanted a station near to where Baker Street now is but was forced by local NIMBYs back to present site.
As for Stratford International the documentary Britains New Railway explained how when they looked at cutting at Stratford somebody thought it would be a good site to build a station . And thanks to this idea London won the 2012 Olympics on the basis that better transport links for games would be in place. In fact it seems Olympic officials were taken through completed tunnels from Stratford to Kings Cross just before track laying to show link to central London was already in place.
One feature of SI is a coffee shop above the tracks which offers excellent views of passing and stopping trains below !
As for HS1-HS2 link the one proposed using NNL was more about getting support for HS1 by talking about through trains for the north than putting in place a proper long term solution . The fact it has been dismissed actually makes sense given if it were successful it would need a replacement !
I have read that there is in fact a connection from St Pancras International to nearby ECML but this has never been used no doubt liked to border security rather than trains arriving off ECML then leaving via HS1 and vice versa.
Perhaps we should forget HS1-2 link for now and look at link from HS1 to ECML which could include tunnels to overcome Welwyn bottleneck and allow Javelin type trains to run from say Leeds to Ashford International to build a market for future through Eurostar trains.
What is still patently unclear, as far as I can tell, is what’s happening to the LO stopping service between WFJ and EUS on the DC lines?
And that really needs to be answered very clearly indeed!
lipkinasl
IIRC the proposal is to go to every 15 minutes, rather than 20 as at present.
I think this was pencilled in for a tt-change in 2017 or 2018, but can’t be certain.
(@NotATrainspotter:) “In essence, the scheme is nothing more than an extra pair of tracks reserved for exclusive use by ICWC, which just happen to support significantly higher speeds.”
“Nothing more”, or much less? ICWC trains could not have exclusive use of HS2, unless its eastern leg was not built.
And they would not be able to use HS2 as an “extra pair of tracks” to reach ICWC destinations such as Milton Keynes, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Tamworth (etc). [Nobody said they would. Malcolm]
(@NotATrainspotter:) “The point of the WCML Manchester to London service is to make it easier to do journeys like Milton Keynes to Stockport, not to compete with the HS2 operator.”
How HS2 would ‘make it easier to do journeys like Milton Keynes to Stockport’ is a bit of a mystery. [Another “misunderstanding” of the post (in spite of quoting it). Malcolm]
There are already through trains from Milton Keynes to Stockport.
But the empty paths north of Milton Keynes suggests that demand for more such trains, is not there.
(@NotATrainspotter:) “The remaining WCML services would be much easier to manage during disruption since only a small number of passengers would be affected. If you’re travelling from Stockport to Milton Keynes you wouldn’t be affected by engineering works at Watford. “
Anyone travelling from Stockport to Milton Keynes shouldn’t be affected by engineering works at Watford anyway.
All of that journey takes place north of a Watford blockade.
[Would all commenters please note when responding to another’s post, they should respond to what the commentor actually said (or obviously intended), rather than to a feigned misunderstanding of it. This is not a debating chamber where rhetorical tricks are appreciated. Malcolm]
(@NotATrainspotter:) “What this means is that major works to improve capacity on the London ends of the main lines will be far easier and cheaper to manage, so many more of these schemes will happen.”
Neither HS2 Ltd nor Network Rail have made such a claim. I’d say there’s no evidence for it.
(@NotATrainspotter:) “The GWML main lines will be signalled for 20tph, made possible because of the grade-separation at Heathrow Junction and then the two platform faces per direction at Reading plus the grade-separation beyond. “
The GWML main lines are already signalled for 20 trains per hour.
(@NotATrainspotter:) “The point I was making is that by putting the longest distance flows on a new line, the disruption caused by relatively major construction works is minimised.”
The disruption to whom is “minimised”? Most travel (link to Bel Eben’s own site) on the West Coast Main Line is short distance commuting.
[Link modified by Malcolm to make its destination clearer].
Bel Eben 10 April 2016 at 10:33
“There are already through trains from Milton Keynes to Stockport.”
1/3 of the current service.
With big city and longer distance passengers removed to HS2, more trains could stop at Milton Keynes, as shown in the indicative timetable above.
@ notatrainspotter – I’ll try again. All I was attempting to say was that you are making a number of firm statements as to what will happen, how the market will work / be “controlled” and how passengers will make travel choices. I am simply suggesting that what eventually happens could be quite different which will force different policy choices. Given the proposed post HS2 Phase 1 timetable structure and the apparent “fact” that the WCML will still be full of trains I don’t see how you can realistically say “a small number of passengers” would be affected if the route into London was temporarily severed at Watford (or elsewhere). The implication is that those residual services will be empty or close to empty and yet we already know that those trains (i.e mean London Midland’s trains) are far from empty any day of the week. I just don’t see how you can speak with such apparent certainty about future demand for rail and how people will make their travel choices. Do you have recourse to information that the rest of us do not? I’m just suggesting that the future is uncertain.
I’m afraid ECML/HS1 through workings are a non-starter, and it’s nothing to do with capacity on the ECML (they would presumably take over paths currently used by trains terminating at Kings Cross) But there are some misunderstandings here
@Melvyn
“I have read that there is in fact a connection from St Pancras International to nearby ECML but this has never been used
There is but only to the low-level (Thamelink) platforms. Recently completed but not yet in use because the Thameslink core won’t have the capacity until the Bermonsey diveunder is completed.
The only way from the ECML to the high level platforms would be by using the separate link to the North London Line and reversing at Camden Road (and if I’ve read the track layout correctly the route from the North London Line into StP does not have direct access to the domestic HS1 platforms!)
“The ECML had a pair of canal tunnels built to the station intended for Thameslink (and opening paths for King’s Cross) from King’s Lynn/Cambs Great Northern services”
The proposed timetable has the Cambridge stoppers running through Thameslink. The non-stop flyers (which continue to Lynn) will still run to Kings Cross. There was a proposal to use Class 800s (IEPs – or whatever name they now have which I can’t be bothered to look up as it will be different again next year) but I think better uses have now been found for them.
@timbeau
My Quail shows a single-track link from the ECML via a spur off the North London Incline link, directly into/out of St Pancras, but as currently connected with pointwork, only to/from the genuine international platforms. So not much of a through service potential even if you de-Eurostarred St.P platforms 5 & 6 and reversed there. Irrespective of that, ‘Brexiting’ 5 & 6 might be handy if you needed more terminal platforms for SE Javelins in due course, which the more frequent operator on HS1 might require in due course – or through running via some currently non-existent tunnel…
(@Alan Griffiths:) “With big city and longer distance passengers removed to HS2, more trains could stop at Milton Keynes, as shown in the indicative timetable above.”
HS2 does not affect the number of trains that could stop at Milton Keynes.
But northbound demand from there is much lower (link to Bel Eben’s own site), so the operator’s decision is to run trains through without stopping.
Bel Eben: the operator’s decision now, with fast line paths in demand for through trains, is to stop few of them at Milton Keynes. HS2, while it does not affect the number of trains that could stop at Milton Keynes, may well affect the number of trains that actually do stop there.
In fact, as WW points out, we cannot know all the details of the services that will be provided on the WCML after HS2 is open. There are still too many unknowns; the best we can do is make informed guesses.
“The disruption to whom is “minimised”? Most travel … on the West Coast Main Line is short distance commuting.”
A some disingenuous statement IMO which is true if talking about total traffic (slow and fast lines combined) but untrue for the fast lines which were the context in which the statement was made. (And Birmingham is not ‘short distance’)
@timbeau – Oh right – I thought Cambridge would be seen as having merit for fast Thameslink through services.
I thought the 700’s were IEPs, tbh.
I’m fairly sure UKBA also have rules in place that basically make through European running impossible, amongst other things.
@bakerludicrous
IEPs are classes 800/801
Class 700 are the suburban style units to be used on Thameslink – neither fish nor fowl, they are trying to be suitable both for
– outer-suburban BML and MML commuters, at least on the stopping services
– and for metro operations on what, if we had joined-up transport in London, would be marketed as part of a Crossrail network.
But Brighton, like Cambridge, will continue to have more salubrious accommodation for the fast services to Victoria / Kings Cross, if not quite up to this standard
http://www.semgonline.com/misc/pics/mm_b-belle-3051.jpg
http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/features/around_cambridge/cambridge10-c.jpg
– such is progress
@Melvyn, 10 April 2016 at 00:01
“It’s GWR passengers who have always lost out as Brunel wanted a station near to where Baker Street now is but was forced by local NIMBYs back to present site.”
The GWR had some very serious early discussions with the London and Birmingham Railway with a view to running from Willesden via the Primrose Hill tunnel corridor into Euston, instead of building their own completely separate terminal and approach route more to the west of central London for which they were having great difficulties negotiating with landowners. David Hodgkins wrote a very interesting paper on this episode of GWR history here: http://www.rchs.org.uk/trial/J207_40%20Why%20Paddington.pdf
I think post HS2 there could be merit in looking once again at routing the GWR main line into Euston to gain better direct walking distance connections with many other surface rail routes including Thameslink and International rail services at St Pancras. With a number of outer suburban WCML services rerouted via OOC to Crossrail and the remaining classic service at Euston becoming much more ‘regional’ is character (with consequent reduction in typical terminal layover times), I believe sufficient platform capacity for the long distance GWR service could be found at Euston with the six tracks in the corridor providing sufficient route capacity on it’s approaches, although ideally The ‘DC’ pair would need it’s tight South Hampstead tunnel clearances improved to accomodate OHLE and thus become more useful for general traffic. This might be achieved by re-boring the tubes sequentially, one at a time, with the current rather sparse timetable accommodated by single line working in the unaffected tunnel. That idea also raises the intriguing possibility of re-boring the tubes to GC clearance, thus creating, with corresponding work on other structures and building a link at OOC, a fairly slow, but double track and continental gauge capable route between HS2 and HS1 that could also be used by domestic trains. Assuming OG trains continued to use the route with the existing intermediate station locations, the wider GC platform clearances could be handled by a small special fleet of OG trains equipped with extending stepboards. Other domestic services passing but not stopping at these stations would require no modifications. Paddington station, once vacated by long distance GWR services, could accommodate longer distance Chiltern Railways trains diverted from Marylebone, and those services would gain a convenient Crossrail and Heathrow airport connection with an additional stop at OOC. With the expresses gone from Marylebone, that station and it’s approaches could concentrate on the Aylesbury route and additional local services on the Wembley Stadium route out to South Ruislip and beyond. That could also allow an easier franchise split with the remaining Marylebone services and the station itself in it’s entirety being transferred to a TfL run concession.
James Cropper, a director of the LBR at the time GWR running to Euston was being considered, said: ‘It would no doubt be a considerable source of profit to us besides the advantage we derive from making our station the starting point for all roads North and West.’ This shows he understood there were potential agglomeration benefits of centralising a number of long distance services at a single major terminal. I think the argument is just as, if not more compelling today. I believe that in Euston’s high speed future, the station’s accommodation of long distance GWR services and it’s incorporation into a broader complex of loosely connected major terminals along the Euston Road could bring many benefits for all interconnecting passengers and for GWR passengers in particular, just like those of HS2, a choice of London station, each with it’s own distinct set of connecting routes to various parts of the vast sprawling city and the broader south east of England.
@MT – That’s an awful lot of cost and disruption to achieve not very much. It’s not as if the Euston Road is any closer to central London timewise than Paddington will be post-CrossRail. The principal beneficiaries would be those from the GWML travelling from/to places that don’t have direct connexions to the Midlands/East coast – eg Bath to Peterborough. Not that many of those, and E-W will reduce their number still further. No much help to GWML passengers going to East Anglia from LST. And no increase in London terminal capacity either, which is the real issue (maybe a very small number of paths released by diverting the Tring starters) .
(@Kate:) “A some disingenuous statement IMO which is true if talking about total traffic (slow and fast lines combined) but untrue for the fast lines which were the context in which the statement was made. (And Birmingham is not ‘short distance’)”
Historically, one of the difficulties of maintaining the southern West Coast Main Line has been the ‘legacy’ track spacing. Maintenance of the relief lines has tended to disrupt the fast lines, and vice versa.
Since the Chiltern route is ‘faster’ today than the West Coast route was in the 1980s, one might argue that the disruption arising from a ‘Watford blockade’ ought not to be particularly large, for someone wanting to travel between Birmingham and London. It might be somewhat larger, for someone wanting to travel between, say, Milton Keynes and London.
Information on how many fast line journeys are short distance, is kept under wraps by the Department for Transport, London Midland, and VTWC.
@Mark Townend
You are essentially arguing for a London Hauptbahnhof, You then suggest other changes of railway usage which may or may not have justification.
Just considering the proposition of an Hbf, Network Rail wants capacity for at least 28 tph in and out of Euston, post 2026, and argues it needs 13 platforms for that. You might or might not agree with that apparently low rate of platform utilisation. I would suggest [based on my own analysis] that 11 is enough with the future service mix (and perhaps just 9 if WCML-Crossrail 1 were being built, but it isn’t).
However 13 is what NR is saying. The other 11 Euston platforms out of 24 are HS2’s. Where are you putting the Padders?
Bel Eben says “Historically, one of the difficulties of maintaining the southern West Coast Main Line has been the ‘legacy’ track spacing. Maintenance of the relief lines has tended to disrupt the fast lines, and vice versa.”
I think this applies to most 4-track lines, particularly now with modern safety requirements. Which does show up as a point in favour of the intended siting of the planned superfast lines, well clear of any such disruption.
But it is time we moved away from discussion of what might happen to trains further north. London Reconnections is about London, and our main focus must generally remain south of the Chilterns.
I agree with Graham that any change to terminal arrangements in London which does not increase total terminating capacity is unlikely to be worthwhile. I also notice the dreaded word “reboring” in Mark’s scheme. On the whole, reboring holes which are already there is a warning sign of a Bad Idea.
@Malcolm:
Re-boring does happen though, such as the Farnworth Tunnel project.
Anomnibus
Special case – they had a spare bore to use, whilst doing it.
Dosen’t generally work, though
@Anomnibus: At £20.8m for a 270m twin track tunnel, Farnworth comes out at £77k per metre, compared with up to £25k per route metre of twin tunnel quoted by HS2. On the other hand, you save the cost of building new portals, so for a short tunnel like Farnsworth (or the Crossrail tunnel in North Woolwich) it might still make financial sense. (Although I can imagine Network Rail’s engineers at Farnsworth kicking themselves that they didn’t just open out the tunnel into a cutting, given all the trouble they had).
Counter-intuitively, the first thing you do when reboring a tunnel is to fill it with concrete to give the TBM something to work with, which does suggest that just having a hole in place is less useful than having the pre-existing portals and good access to them.
Re-boring tunnels was also put forward in the JRC ‘Euston Express‘ concept.
According to the Department for Transport and HS2 Ltd, the high speed line needs to reach Euston, to provide better access to central London.
But in August 2014, the Department announced that a feasibility study would ‘look at how passengers from key towns such as Tring, Hemel Hempstead, Harrow and Watford could save up to 15 minutes on their journeys via a new link between Crossrail Old Oak Common and the West Coast Main Line… It would mean passengers would no longer have to change at Euston,’
So, in DfT World, changing at Euston is an ‘advantage’ for HS2 passengers headed for central London, but a ‘disadvantage’ for WCML commuters headed for central London.
Re Ian J,
“Although I can imagine Network Rail’s engineers at Farnsworth kicking themselves that they didn’t just open out the tunnel into a cutting, given all the trouble they had.”
With the A666 dual carriage way on top (the main Manchester Bolton road that becomes the M61 a few hundred metres away) I find that unlikely.
The question remains why the Victorian engineers went for tunnel(s) rather than cuttings originally maybe they knew something…
Filled with foam concrete to support the existing tunnel while it was chopped through (as the engineers weren’t expected to be conducive) which the boring machine goes through liked a knife through butter
@Bel Eben, 11 April 2016 at 09:48
“So, in DfT World, changing at Euston is an ‘advantage’ for HS2 passengers headed for central London, but a ‘disadvantage’ for WCML commuters headed for central London.”
Terminating HS2 at Euston will be a great advantage for a large proportion of central London passengers compared to terminating at Old Oak alone, which would be a very long and expensive taxi ride to the city or west end. Euston and nearby St Pancras/ Kings Cross provides a wide range of connections to many parts of London and the South East and this will only improve with schemes such as Crossrail 2. Most regular commuters on the WCML suburbans will not be travelling to the Euston area itself so will interchange for the city, west end or docklands today. Crossrail would take many of these passengers to their workplaces directly without change. and the many central London stations served en route will provide a similar range of connections to other parts of London and the south east as are available from Euston for arriving HS2 passengers. Whilst I think HS2 services making two calls in the London is a very good idea, it is clearly not practical to have them serve a Crossrail type tunnel right across the city with ‘many’ stations, not least because the station caverns to accomodate the trains would have to be huge. That is also an argument against ‘Euston Cross’ ideas for a large through HS station under Euston/St Pancrs where each platform of the massive undergound complex would be approximately equivalent in earth moved to a complete Crossrail station.
I think that GW express services should continue to call at Paddington. There are advantages I suggest in having a single terminus for all long-distance trains from a particular operator on a particular route. Capacity at Paddington should be less of a problem once Crossrail takes away the suburbans.
Euston might be a more suitable terminus for if/when a London-Bristol GWHSL is built, those High Speed services go into Euston. More capacity could be gained by extending the ECHSL from Toton down to King’s Cross/St Pancras, giving two HS N-S routes, with greater capacity overall.
Re DPWH,
Given the potential for lots of the GWML to achieve 140mph (225kph) running speeds with ETCS within the next decade I’m not sure we’ll see a GW HS line.
6 tracking from OOC to Reading (or even just to Stockley Bridge Jn) would solve any capacity issues at the London end.
The biggest issues that HS could solve are down towards Exeter and further south-west where the current line speeds are far slower than to Bristol or Cardiff but there aren’t really enough passengers or freight to make it pay so I suspect line speed upgrades might be the order of the day.
Are we at CrayCon 1 yet?* Or just 5?
Not sure that post-HS2 hypothesising is adding much to the debate, and I’m a little unclear about where the additional platform capacity at Euston/St Pancras/King’s Cross/anywhere else are meant to be located…
*With apologies to anyone who hasn’t seen War Games.
@ngh
“Given the potential for lots of the GWML to achieve 140mph (225kph) running speeds with ETCS within the next decade I’m not sure we’ll see a GW HS line”
Or, arguably, that the blessed Isambard gave us one 180 years ago
(He is said to have designed it for 100mph running, although given the primitive signalling it is perhaps as well that the motive power wasn’t quite up to the job at first!)
And the brakes? Er! Did they have brakes?
@timbeau: So were the 800s shelved? Are they being replaced by an augmented 700 order? Unfortunately the fact that GTR covers so many fleets makes it vague (for someone with less developed railway knowledge certainly) as to what’s going on. Some of the 700’s must be going to GN because they’re releasing half their 365’s to FGW. I’ve never had the pleasure of travelling on their older rolling stock, but I hear it’s ageing – Moorgate is a problem, apparently?
I did a little search, and the idea of class 800s on the King’s Cross to Cambridge route was mentioned in the 2010 Foster report Annex A p.22 as a 125mph capable train that would (slightly) increase line capacity on the ECML. I would imagine that this has been shelved as having poor value (relative to other projects). The Thameslink Class 700s are likely to feel like a metro train and the Class 800 IEPs are an intercity train, so they are not comparable.
The Wikipedia Thameslink and Great Northern article shows the current stock operating on those two routes. The Thameslink trains are being replaced by the new Class 700 units, thus potentially releasing 29 x Class 387/1 and 32 x Class 377s. We know the Class 387s are going to Great Western, so I would imagine the Class 377s released allow the Class 365s to be cascaded.
The Class 313 units on the Moorgate route are to be replaced but the contract hasn’t been signed yet.
@Edgepedia
“The Class 313 units on the Moorgate route are to be replaced but the contract hasn’t been signed yet”
yes it has
http://www.railtechnologymagazine.com/Rail-News/gtr-orders-new-fleet-of-siemens-class-700-variants-for-great-northern
@bakerludicrous
“So were the 800s shelved?”
On the contrary – here’s the first one
http://thelincolnite.co.uk/2016/03/virgin-trains-unveils-new-azuma-fleet-for-east-coast/
Great Western will get them even sooner
http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/-hitachi-super-express-trains-uk/
http://www.railtechnologymagazine.com/Rail-News/third-pre-series-iep-class-800-arrives-in-hitachis-london-depot-from-japan
Transpennine has ordered some too
http://www.railtechnologymagazine.com/Rail-News/transpennine-and-hitachi-sign-deal-for-19-bi-mode-at300s
@ Timbeau – I think Hull Trains are also joining the “Class 800” club as ORR has granted them train paths for a further decade from 2019.
http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/passenger/single-view/view/bi-mode-order-planned-as-hull-trains-gets-10-year-access-agreement.html
Plenty of work to keep that plant at Newton Aycliffe busy.
Re Bakerludicrous, edgepedia, timbeau…
The 800s to King’s Lynn died before the TSGN management contract invitation to tender was issued.
Some GN services (6tph in the peak) transfer to thameslink thus dramatically reducing the number of non 700s required.
The TL 377/2s will return to southern along with southern gaining 4x 377/5s and the remaining 377/5s will go to GN along with the remaining 19x 365s that aren’t going to GWR .
The initial transfer of the first batch of 10 387s to FGW has been delayed so the entry into service of the 700s will see the speedy transfer of 377/5s to GN soon.
@timbeau
“The Class 313 units on the Moorgate route are to be replaced but the contract hasn’t been signed yet”
That article mentions that Siemens are “chosen” and that “… the contract will be finalised next year.”
Sorry, I was unclear with “signed”.
@ngh
“Some GN services (6tph in the peak) transfer to thameslink thus dramatically reducing the number of non 700s required.”
Thanks, I had forgotten this; I was trying to do the maths last night and its wasn’t working out.
I had remembered that 25 x Class 377s are due to go Southeastern.
@edgepedia
Apologies – I had taken the reference to an “order” to mean a contract is already in place. There may be details to be finalised, which may or may not mean a(nother) contract is still to be signed. Or it may be that Siemens are merely “preferred bidder”. It’s all rather vague.
Moorgate stock – 702?
Deal was later finalised with a new ROSCO (partnership of 2 UK pension funds) providing the funding in Feb:
https://www.siemens.co.uk/en/news_press/index/news_archive/2016/gtr-strikes-200m-plus-deal-for-new-train-fleet-serving-city-of-london.htm
Ah, okay. So new Thameslink suburbans will be Class 700; and all other GN services will still be served by 365’s, 377 hand me downs, and Moorgate GN suburbans by 6-car 700s?
There are a few references above to being able to interchange at Old Oak Common with the Central and Bakerloo lines. According to the current plans, although those tube lines serve the periphery of the site, they are definitely not going to be convenient interchanges with either HS2 or Crossrail.
What is the relevance to HS2 of the stock which will be used for Thameslink?
Re Kate,
A slight distraction by bakerludicrous but it does effect the number of fast (i.e. operated by 125+mph stock) when Phase 2 opens i.e. King Lynn – KGX was possibility but now isn’t. Phase 2 effects on StPancras and King Cross haven’t really been discussed that much (so far)…
HS2 proceeding may well have had an effect on the stock choice and tender spec at the DfT end.
Thanks ngh for that explanation of how we got to Kings Cross. But notwithstanding, I think we’d best concentrate mainly on the effects of the phase 1 (and 2a) plans on London.
If HS2 is being seen as an air-replacement service for some destinations at least, there should be no need for those destinations to be served by more than 1tph direct. Nobody would expect a air-shuttle to operate more frequently than hourly.
So say 2tph could be provided from OOC to a destination but just 1tph of that continuing to Euston. That suggests HS1 and Heathrow links could offer service diversity as well as reducing the number of platforms needed at Euston.
It is also somewhat surprising that while Heathrow is mentioned, City Airport is overlooked. With an HS1 link serving Stratford, it would be a relatively easy taxi ride from Stratford International to City Airport which offers flights to Europe.
Re Kate,
An increased service frequency would be needed to be competitive with air on London – Scotland routes to help compensate for HS2 journey still being slower as previously discussed.
(Hourly Air shuttle frequency – as a side note the both Heathrow and City have more than 1 flight per hour to Dublin and the frequency on all London Airports to Dublin is equivalent to 3.5fph (62 flights per day / airport operating hours) almost TfL overground like!)
Frequency is irrelevant for flying and, to an increasing extent, long distance trains. As tickets are increasingly only valid for one service, the fact that there is another one within an hour (or within fifteen minutes) becomes irrelevant. You are tied to that one service, and have to allow enough margin to turn up at the departure station in time to catch it. Frequency is only relevant to the question of capacity (and, to some extent choice – the difference between 1 tph and 2tph effectively meaning a potential extra 30 minutes time on the journey because of the need to depart 30 minutes later. arrive 30 minutes earlier to make the same appointment.
What timbeau says is true for the majority of people. Yet there are some who do often pay walk-up fares, both on trains and on aircraft. Not many, but they are generally the (comparatively) rich folk, whose money is naturally chased by suppliers (of everything), and whose preferences therefore have influence way above their (comparatively) small number.
(I know that walk-up fares are occasionally also paid by normal people when there is an emergency, but that is rare).
ngh
But air is NOT “faster” … the travel time IN THE AIRCRAFT is faster, but you still have to get to-from the airport (same as you have to get to-from a railway station – but often a longer time to/from an airport ) and then you have:
The airport check-in & fake “security” procedures …
Now, then, what’s the REAL travel-time?
@Malcolm – the “walk-up” point may be more subtle than that. The issue for many businessmen is that meetings, like wars, start when you will, but finish in their own time. Easy enough, therefore, to book ahead for your arrival, but by being constrained to depart at a specific time is a nuisance and a potential waste of time. This,notoriously, is the principal reason why the evening peak is so much more spread out than the morning one.
With air travel, the hassle and travel time is such that that day’s trip is probably all you could reasonably plan to do anyway, (and there may not be much choice about flight times – except on the busiest routes most carriers offer a morning/late morning/midafternoon/early evening slate of departures if you are lucky)*. You build your day around this. With most train travel, you don’t need to – if it weren’t for the artificial constraint of tickets tied to specific trains. For example, London to Manchester, it’s perfectly feasible to do a morning’s work in London, travel to Manchester over lunch and then do a further slug of business in the afternoon and get home again in the early evening -but you do need some flexibility in the precise timings for travel. VT have moved a little in that direction with their banded departures booking arrangements.
_______________________________________________________________________
* Of course, evil employers may well ignore the time constraints of air travel. I recall being sent on several occasions to S Africa for the day (to Joburg, nearly all the flights are overnight,because of the altitude of the airport, and so it’s “perfectly” feasible to send someone there after work on day 1, get them to work there on day 2 and expect them back at their desk first thing on day 3…) It does,however,illustrate the tyranny of air timetables and their lack of choice.
Greg: Even allowing for check-in, security and so on, the total air travel time is still less that the train for certain journeys. As usual, it depends on exactly where you are starting from and going to. From somewhere near Inverness Airport to somewhere near Gatwick, train hasn’t a hope of competing. But such origin-destination pairs are rare, and it is reasonable to simplify comparisons to journeys from one city-centre to another – in many such cases rail can win for the reasons you give.
As an aside, the words “faster” and “slower” are sometimes misleading in contexts like these. The highest instantaneous speed reached on some part of the journey is irrelevant, what is usually meant by “faster” is indeed “taking less total time (for the journey in question).
Re Greg (and Malcolm),
Indeed currently faster for certain air journeys and improvements are being made to public transport access for example at Heathrow (Crossrail) and Edinburgh (multiple schemes) airports which will improve some air journey times for people between the two for example. If you can’t decrease the rail journey time directly you can reduce it indirectly by reducing the waiting time between services.
Indeed frequency can be a factor. To take an example, I was recently at an event which finished at 5pm. Ten minutes from the station. Train to London takes less than two hours. Driving takes more than three.
There was a train to London at 1705, and another at 2110.
So those going by train were still waiting for one when the motorists had already got home, and eventually got back to Kings Cross more than six hours after the end of the event, and after the last Tube had gone.
@Malcolm
” the total air travel time is still less that the train for certain journeys. As usual, it depends on exactly where you are starting from and going to. From somewhere near Inverness Airport to somewhere near Gatwick***, train hasn’t a hope of competing. But such origin-destination pairs are rare ”
Not really *that* rare. When I lived in Brighton and was working in Plymouth, it was so much quicker to fly from Gatwick to Plymouth Airport. Until they closed it….
It’s a good five hours on the train, but with only hand luggage it’s 30 minutes on the train and perhaps and hour in the air. Much better before a day of work.
**** I did make it back from Inverness to home in Brighton less than two hours once, changing at Manchester and by train from Gatwick
We don’t need to argue about my claim the “such origin-destination pairs are rare”. I might be quite wrong, and I would be hard-pressed to find proper evidence for it. But as an aside, anecdotal evidence from one person (or even from quite a lot of people) cannot logically refute a general claim of that kind. As is famously demonstrated by “smoking is harmless, my grandad smoked like a chimney to the age of 103”.
(Two hours! The change at Manchester must have been pretty slick).
@Briantist A little disingenuous to compare the distance from a seat on the Jubilee line to the furthest gateline with the distance from after you’ve already walked a significant distance from a HS1 train to the nearest gateline. The walk from the north end of Stratford to the Jubilee line is at the upper limit of what’s acceptable in my book – one reason I’m very skeptical about OOC as an “interchange” when many lines are a 400m walk apart. Euston-StP has a similar problem but at least there are frequent buses there.
In a similar vein, Adonis was railing in this week’s RAIL against the Long March from Crossrail to other lines – making unfavourable comparisons with the cross-platform interchanges built in to the Victoria Line. He says that during his time as SoS for Transport he tried to improve this, but the project was already too far developed by then to be able to make a difference.
Correction – it wasn’t RAIL, it was the Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/12/crossrail-interchanges-not-good-enough-lord-adonis
Imm 12.17: You are assuming that OOC is meant to be an interchange. I am dubious as to whether that is the case (with the exception of HS2/Crossrail) – rather, the Old Oak and Park Royal regeneration will create a very large destination/origin area, which will need distributed entry/exit points for access to the transport network.
If all the links formed a convenient interchange then I would have thought that the flipside would be that they would not serve enough of the development zone to make the development worthwhile. See also Canary Wharf?
@ Timbeau – another ludicrous statement from Lord Adonis. Crossrail connects at all sorts of places. The thing Adonis doesn’t tell us, from his vast knowledge of construction and railway engineering, is how on earth you tunnel a NR profile line under London and make the trains & platforms short and give multiple cross platform interchanges. His remarks are *so* stupid when put against having a scheme we can afford to build that they are barely worth remarking about. And to think he’s “responsible” for CR2 – I look forward to the cross platform interchange with the Victoria Line at Seven Sisters and with the Overground at Dalston Junction not to mention the multiple cross platform interchanges at Euston and Kings Cross. Sometimes people should keep their mouths shut. (grump)
@WW, Timbeau I am too young to have been around when the Victoria Line was constructed, but were there lengthy closures of existing lines/stations when the Vic Line tunnels and platforms were constructed and integrated to provide cross-platform interchange? It would seem inevitable, I would think.
Marckee: I was around, though maybe not paying enough attention. I don’t think the closures, which did indeed happen, were unnecessarily long, but nor were they negligible. One difference from now is that some parts of the system (e.g. the Northern City Line (which was cut short to Drayton Park for quite a time) were fairly lightly used.
O seem to recall reading that the stepplate junctions at Finsbury Park to divert the s/b Piccadilly through what had been one of the NCL platforms were excavated round the existing tunnel segments, with trains still running through them, and the segments then removed and track slewed in during a relatively short closure.
(@timbeau:) “Frequency is irrelevant for flying and, to an increasing extent, long distance trains. As tickets are increasingly only valid for one service, the fact that there is another one within an hour (or within fifteen minutes) becomes irrelevant. You are tied to that one service, and have to allow enough margin to turn up at the departure station in time to catch it. “
Which defeats the supposed advantage of high speed rail, for all those holding tickets valid only for one service.
This shows how it was done at Finsbury Park, presumably something similar was done at Oxford Circus and Highbury? I’m not sure the second and third photos in that are something which could be done now!
@Bel Eben
Frequency does have value for those with inflexible tickets because however far in advance they have to book they have a wider choice of departure times against which they can match their requirements. There are also long distance off peak and super off peak products available from many operators that offer substantial discounts from full anytime fares (abut 50% usually) that area available during certain periods of the day on any train. There again frequency counts. It is also possible that operators may wish to offer special cheap ‘standby’ fares closer to time of departure which valid on only one train. I don’t understand whether you are taking a position against high speed rail in general or a supposed but unknown fares regime on HS2 specifically.
A problem with cross platform is whilst it can be achieved fairly easily in concept with two lines, as soon as you introduce a third at a deep interchange you are going to have to make compromises on which lines connect more easily with which others. Then you’ve got directional choice for the easy cross platform. At Euston for instance the Victoria lines are trasposed to give easy interchange between the north London parts of the Northern line and the West end but that is not perfect either as it’s only city branch trains that are so easily connected in this way. The Victoria Line seems a masterpiece today but I don’t see how the latecomer Crossrail could have been improved in a similar way at many central stations without compromising its fairly straight and fast east-west trajectory and adding possibly eyewatering additional cost.
As to Crossrail 2, easy cross-platform interchange between Crossrail and Waterloo services could be achieved by keeping the new line on the surface through Wimbledon and placing the SWT fasts in a new tunnel under the station. This also has the advantage of requiring no expensive underground platforms at this difficult site with much less destruction and disruption during construction in the centre of Wimbledon too.
@Herned
Well I did say “during a relatively short closure.” but I didn’t realise it was as short as twelve hours (including four which were non-traffic hours anyway): end-of-service on Saturday to 2pm on Sunday!
Timbeau I make it 14 hours: last train 00:03, first train 1400. Still *extremely* impressive; especially the ‘do as much as you can before the cutover’ aspect which PoP discusses in “Crossrail: Making Concrete Progress”, out today
Re Mark T,
But if CR2 has 4 platforms with turnback as planned at Wimbledon cross platform interchange is a non starter whatever you do. (The CR2 platforms are lower but not underground)
@Caspar Lucas Right, that makes sense for commuter/metro services, which is all Canary Wharf is served by. I think it would be a mistake to send LDHS services there – wherever you build the high-speed stations, most passengers will be heading somewhere else, so the most important thing is to put it at a good transport interchange rather than somewhere that’s necessarily a destination in its own right.
LDHS: Long Distance High Speed
timbeau 13 April 2016 at 10:39
“Train to London takes less than two hours. …….
There was a train to London at 1705, and another at 2110. ”
Kindly name the place with such a peculiar train service.
I misremembered the times – they are actually 1710 and 2126. And this was a Sunday.
Both are connections – (Other connections are possible by changing stations or taking a longer route, at double the price, as no advance fares are available)
The only direct service runs at the crack of dawn, Sundays excluded.
A direct train is scheduled for 2019 (that’s AD, not BST)
Enough clues.
@ Timbeau – Lincoln! 😉 I should have guessed much faster than I did given your many comments about how you loathe travelling by rail to / from there.
And no reminder will be necessary that Lincoln is neither directly involved with HS2 nor in London. Despite all our sympathy for the unsatisfactory nature of Lincoln’s rail service to London, we don’t really want it mentioned at every opportunity and then some. This one was OK as it was fitted in neatly with the ongoing conversation.
@WW
Correct
Two of our party, returning on Monday, were stuck outside Peterborough for three hours after an engine failure on their train. On a single-car class 153, an engine failure is terminal, and the nearest unit with a compatible coupler was, apparently, at Nottingham.
I think I’ll continue to drive.
@Malcolm
“….Lincoln is neither directly involved with …… London”.
A situation that seems unlikely to change any time soon!
“as it was fitted in neatly with the ongoing conversation”
As the precise location was not relevant to the point I was making about frequency, I had not intended to mention it, but since someone asked…………
@Old Buccaneer”
“I make it 14 hours: last train 00:03, first train 1400.”
Quite right. Last train was earlier than I had realised.
The Northern Line will be closed for rather slightly longer to tie in the new platform at Bank …..
http://content.tfl.gov.uk/bcsu-factsheet11-temporary-closure-of-part-of-northern-line-city-branch.pdf?
timbeau: Yes indeed. And there can be no suspicion, of course, that the details you gave would be just sufficient to encourage someone to ask. 🙂
Imm 08.51: I may have got this wrong, but the logical conclusion of your post seems to be that neither HS2 nor longer distance GWML services should stop at OOC unless they also have direct interchanges with WLL/NLL/Underground. This seems to neglect the value of the HS2/Crossrail/GWML interchange in itself (not least in providing a transport hub “anchor” for the entire Old Oak/Park Royal regeneration).
I think we are past the stage for this debate now – HS2 is (virtually) certain to happen, and it will have a station at OOC, which will interchange with XR and GWML, and it will be heavily used, to the extent that I have little doubt that dwell times at OOC-HS2 are being extensively modelled by HS2 Ltd with the result that higher than normal platforms to enable level boarding are being considered to speed them up (and indeed I suspect that the debate about possible internal configurations of HS2 trains, and possibly door positions too, also centres around the dwell time at OOC).
Furthermore, the locations for the WLL and NLL stations have also been determined and, no, they are not immediately adjacent to the HS2/XR/GWML interchange. There was a proposal for their being so (“Poirot’s Moustache” was the name given to the complex arrangement of tight curves required for it) but it must be noted that this would have placed all principal public transport links for the development zone right on its edge – constrained by Wormwood Scrubs – which would decrease the value of land further away, i.e. most of the site.
I don’t dispute that convenient interchanges are useful and their absence is regrettable. However, there are other considerations at play and any outcome is going to be a compromise. I remain reasonably convinced that as the regeneration gets going the majority of WLL and NLL users boarding and alighting at the Old Oak stations will not be interchanging, and importantly would not have been even if “Poirot’s Moustache” had been implemented.
Thus optimising the WLL and ELL interchange opportunities would in my estimation have been a net disbenefit both for the users of these transport links (extended journey times, less convenient station locations) and for the redevelopment as a whole (more of the site would have poorer access to mass transit). Although it would have provided a better outcome for me personally, sitting here in the West Midlands eyeing my potential range of London [re?]connections post-HS2!
@caspar
” I suspect that the debate about possible internal configurations of HS2 trains, and possibly door positions too, also centres around the dwell time at OOC”
Of course, exactly the same issues can be expected to arise at Birmingham Interchange, whether or not HS2 trains call at OOC. Even if the “captive” trains running to the Curzon Street branch were to run through BI non-stop, the trains to further north can be expected to make at least one intermediate stop.
Timbeau 13.46: Fair enough, but I was:
(a) assuming that OOC will be the busiest intermediate station, so solve the issue there and you have automatically solved it at Birmingham Interchange [and Toton, Meadowhall and Manchester Airport]*; and
(b) trying to stay on topic!
*Stops by “classic-compatible” trains at existing-network stations will presumably not be have level boarding in most if not all cases, but I am assuming they are also not as critical to the functioning of the HS2 main line. By definition, they are also outside the scope of LR debate.
If level boarding at OOC is required for all trains stopping there (which sounds like an excellent idea, not just for dwell time but also for accessibility), that will mean that both fleets (captive and compatible) must have the same floor height and width-at-doors. So level boarding at all other HS2-only platforms seems like a no-brainer.
But does it also knock a slight dent in the notion of the captive trains being “standard European” ones, and thereby much cheaper? Or is this notion already getting left behind by events?
Re Malcolm,
Most of the train would be identical just the doorways would be different probably easier to build for level boarding in UK than step down in Europe.
@Caspar Lucas
As the Phase 1 proportion of ‘captive’ to ‘classic compatible’ units with HS2 Phase 1 is 16 to 45, likely even less favourable in per-train-volume rather than train-set-units, and might even increase in favour of ‘cc’ with Phase 2a (no captive line to Manchester), I think you are unwise to ignore ‘cc’ boarding/alighting rates at OOC.
Malcolm 17.57: I was taking my lead from Jonathan Roberts’s post under the Part 1 article (29th March 14.25). I would assume level boarding for both captive and classic-compatible trains, and that the same would apply at all stations on new HS infrastructure. Not sure exactly how this will be achieved though.
JR 18.55: Apologies if I was unclear – my footnote was meant to refer only to stations on the “classic” network, which by definition excludes consideration of captive HS2 trains. See above for my deduction regarding intentions for OOC and other stations on the high speed lines.
ngh: Different doorways. I can’t quite get my head round this. The width-at-floor-level (and lower) of the classic compatible trains has to be to the UK standard, so there is no nasty crunch against existing platform edges. So the width-at-floor-level of the captive trains must be the same. Unless they have some sort of platform level groove in the side, doesn’t this mean that the captive trains’ width at all heights has to be less than the usual European standard? (I suppose they can still be European height – will that be enough to qualify for the cheap offer?).
@Malcolm – a shrewd point! Why is it I see the prospect of “captive platforms” beginning to take shape?
Graham: Indeed. That would make the classic-compatible trains not very compatible. But nor can I see much future in poaching Mr “Mind-the-gap” from London Underground. Scope for those super-reliable slidey platform-gap-fillers? Or gauntleted track at shared platforms? (so long as the difference exceeds the rail width).
@And the implications for Euston…? The gauntleted track would have to be different not just by the rail width, but also the width of the flange – how likely is that?
Just to put some numbers to this, according to the slide in the SkyscraperCity thread linked to by Old Buccaneer in the Part 1 thread (try saying that in a hurry), the horizontal gap at the relevant height would appear to be 235mm, although that may be reading too much into a simplified diagram and summary dimensions.
Gauntleted track was not a serious suggestion. The thought of the points at the start of it going wrong, for one thing. For safety, fat trains would probably have to nearly-stop before the platform and then trundle in. Which would not be good for timings.
Separate platforms for CC and captive trains? Or is that too obvious?
Malcolm surely you should know better, even suggestions in jest may be seized upon by the hidden crayonista to trumpet as their call to arms. Thankfully Graham H & yourself have put the kibosh to that quickly.
It’s those kind of comments that get moderated for that very reason but then again, who moderates the moderators… ?
I spent this evening watching High Speed Rail debate in Lords and some of them still argue points that were settled long ago .
I was surprised to discover that according to Stop HS2 site no vote was to be held on 2nd reading of the bill .
As for OOC then hopefully the new Mayor will look at this site again to see it better interchange could be introduced and maybe even whether any nearby tube lines could be included . Afterall, I can’t see why London can’t have better interchange facilities as regional HS2 stations may get. This also raises questions re use of non passenger or even closed lines in this area and a new West London Tram similar to DLR .
Of course Canary Wharf provides an example where stations don’t have direct interchanges but users pass through the development often via subways , shopping centre etc and could be way OOC develops.
There is also a need to look at nearby Willesdon Junction station which needs a major upgrade with straighter platforms and maybe reinstatement of platforms on WCML for MML trains .
Re Malcolm,
Continental HS stock effectively has sections cut out of the floor to enable the steps down (typically 2, Siemens typically use 2 steps and a gap filler and Alstom usually use a fixed step and a folding step) to the platform to be fitted, with a level boarding train you don’t need the cut away and steps. You just fit the gap fillers on the compatible sets (as used on the new Eurostar Velaros etc.) A very very minor design change overall.
Melvyn: Doubtless Willesden (sic) Junction station could do with being looked at. Indeed reinstatement of fast line platforms there has been considered. But not for MML trains, which are likely to remain on the Midland Main Line (from St Pancras to the Midlands via Cricklewood).
Re Malcolm,
PS the captive sets will be so close to a standard European design that the small differneces won’t matter cost wise but the compatible sets are another matter as it is a very different product overall (but a level floor makes that easier)
ngh: But is the width of the train at floor level a “small difference”? If it is, what is it about the compatible trains which amounts to a “large difference”?
@ C Lucas – you may be happy with the plans at Old Oak Common but I think they’re a ridiculous mess. We also have a shed load of issues about the actual potential to redevelop the site given the current inability to deck / build over key buildings. This has already raised the hackles of certain people. Now I absolutely understand why no one “wants to blink first” for fear of being landed with a variation order, a bill and a delay but it does rather show the “planning” to be rather poor.
Forcing people to schlep, exposed to the elements, between stations is frankly ridiculous. Seemingly ignoring the existence of the tube on one edge of the site and also a major NR interchange on the opposite edge makes no sense to me. The potential for transport connectivity is enormous but it will be squandered due to lack of imagination and will. That will mean that the actual redevelopment will be far less than could have been achieved with some decent planning and commitment. All we’re likely to get is an ineffective compromise. I also expect that to affect how well any HS2 station in the area does.
WW 01.22: Actually I said that the absence of convenient interchanges is regrettable. And I’d be most interested in your opinion on what the optimal transport arrangements for OOC would be. What I was trying to point out, however, is that focusing on interchange (aka “crayonista joining the dots”) leads to a tendency to forget that the Old Oak/Park Royal area is a huge redevelopment zone that needs multiple access points across its area and not one perfect interchange on the edge (to echo your own points). Too much comment about OOC still seems to be made in ignorance of the redevelopment, assuming that interchange is the primary if not only consideration. “Connectivity” does not, of course, refer to interchange only. It is inevitable that the final outcome will be a compromise, so what would be the best – or rather least ineffective – one? You and others are likely to be more informed than I am about these issues, and I am more than open to alternatives.
@WW ‘Forcing people to schlep, exposed to the elements, between stations is frankly ridiculous.’
I don’t know whether you would regard Manchester’s solution to this problem to be a ridiculous compromise. They have a tram system and three city centre shuttle bus routes (Free, as in – I don’t know who pays for them but it’s not passengers directly.) which not only join the stations but transfer people to and from same as well as between many other locations. I think that falls into the category of imaginative.
WW: I sympathise with most of what you say about the OOC situation (though I note Caspar’s response too). But the one sentence in your post with which I would take immediate issue is :” I also expect that to affect how well any HS2 station in the area does“.
Of course strictly it is correct. Any suboptimality in the interchanges will affect the success of the HS2 station. But I suspect that the effect of difficult access from the HS2 station to Bakerloo, Central and Overground will be extremely limited, as the vast majority of those leaving HS2 at OOC will transfer to Crossrail or GW trains, or to buses, taxis or walk. The small number whose destination makes them want Bakerloo, Central or Overground (some of whom might be deterred by the need to schlep) will have a very limited effect on the success of the HS2 station.
@Malcolm
“The small number whose destination makes them want Bakerloo, Central or Overground ”
Not forgetting that Crossrail will provide an alternative for many destinations served by the Central and Bakerloo – even more if the proposed link to the WCML is put in.
As for interchange with the orbital route of the Overground, the area served by the NLL has good access to HS2 at Euston, via the Wat-Eus, Metropolitan, Northern, and Victoria lines. Less good is access from the south, both from the WLL and the Richmond direction. (You will be able to get from Clapham Junction to Old Oak with one change – either at Whitechapel or at Stratford!)
Surely there has to be a worry that, should the Richmond (and Hounslow?) Overground to Crossrail interchange be decent, that you’ll end up having people using it as a commuter route to London, further overloading Crossrail?
Not saying that it’s great, or even that their was their thinking (£££ is clearly driving the Overground at OOC), just that the suboptimal interchange might have some benefits over a direct interchange.
Si: Interesting point. But if these folk, coming from Richmond etc to central London, do not use the OOC interchange (because it’s not decent enough, or indeed for any other reason) then they’re going to use some other route instead, and these will also be overloaded (I rather think with already-evident overloading, rather than the expected-overloading-in-the-future of Crossrail).
@Si
There is that risk, but I doubt that many people from the SW suburbs would swap their direct services to Central London (whether via Hounslow loop, District Line or Piccadilly Line) for an interchange to a Crossrail service which, by the time the trains get to OOC, will already be crowded.
And of course an interchange would work both ways – there may be people from the Reading direction who would change there onto the Overground if their destination was in SW or NW London
@ Malcolm – exactly. If someone is travelling from South West London to, say, Canary Wharf, then they are likely to be on overcrowded South West Trains to Waterloo then overcrowded Jubilee line trains to Canary Wharf.
Will an overcrowded Overground train to OOC for interchange with Crossrail be any better or worse than this?
Timbeau commented…. “Frequency is irrelevant for flying and, to an increasing extent, long distance trains. As tickets are increasingly only for a nominated service”
Perhaps less true than you think. British Airways have just revised their ticket rules for domestic and short haul. While the very cheapest tickets remain inflexible, the next “fare bucket” (often priced favourably corporate contracts) has had the rules revised. Now you can adjust your return flight to anything on that day, providing seats are available. Easyjet have been operateing a similar model for a few years.
To add to the comment about flying and frequency: Poor frequency on a flying route leads to many sub-optimal journeys, which can knock-on in terms of an individual’s productivity. I have spent ages kicking my heels because widely spaced flights on a particular route meant that I could not travel at the time I wished to. The speed compensates, and this justifies the mode, but it still involves a lot of waste. A frequency of at least 1 per hour creates the ideal travel world.
Reynolds 853, timbeau, Si
I guess the drivers of routing decisions include time & the hassle factor as well as information.
We’re interested in teasing out these possibilities but I reckon most daily users, less so.
I’ve seen TfL research that something like 30pc of ppl who took an alternative route on a Tube strike day stuck to it.
@Reynolds
But if they are coming from far enough out, they are likely to have a seat on the first (SWT, District, or Picadilly) train. Why give that up for the much reduced chance of getting a seat on Crossrail at OOC? Not to mention having to change (at Richmond as well as OOC), instead of a single change at Waterloo, which has direct services to all central London stations served by Crossrail except Moorgate/LSt (for which Bank is nearby) and Whitechapel (change at Clapham Junction if you must).
Fandroid is that ‘ideal travel world’ the one with ideal growing conditions for money trees?
I agree that if the mainland Europeans were a bit more welcoming of RyanJet there’d probably be more flights to more places,but, y’know, this is an HS2 thread.
@ C Lucas – I accept you did make the point you cite. I just think that a convenient well designed interchange will make the overall redevelopment more attractive to investors and people wishing to relocate. I also think it would work better in transport terms. You clearly feel more “spread out” stations will work better. We must agree to disagree. I would cite Stratford as somewhere where (barring the International station) everything is conveniently linked together.
@ Ray K – the possibility of trams at OOC or free bus services is zero in the current funding environment. The Manchester Centrelink buses have run for many many years and are an established feature. However I doubt they will remain free for much longer due to spending cuts. Similar schemes in several Yorkshire towns have been scrapped or have had to introduce charges. Needless to say their popularity has declined. I’ve used the Leeds and Wakefield free buses and very good they are too.
@ Malcolm – I understand the point you make and yes people may well pile on to Crossrail. However I still think a better integrated transport scheme will work better for HS2 and also for the wider development. I can’t prove this but, to me, it seems more logical. As usual I am no doubt in a minority so let’s leave it there.
@WW
“The Manchester Centrelink buses have run for many many years and are an established feature. However I doubt they will remain free for much longer due to spending cuts”
They may become redundant when the Ordsall curve is built, allowing direct trains from Picc to Vic.
@timbeau
Manchester Centrelink routes are more a city centre circulator, as they take non-direct paths downtown. Metrolink trams are the main transit route between Pic and Vic currently.
…. Manchester…. Manchester…. (coughs meaningfully)….
@ Malcolm I meant London Midland services at Willesden Junction which currently pass through as their platforms were removed many years ago. This route is also used by Southern cross London service which could provide better links to OOC from south of the river if upgraded to a Thaneslink 2 service by combining with southern services .
As for layout of stations at OOC that depends on who and for what reason they are being used for. If it’s long distance HS2 passengers with luggage they will need easy convenient interchange to say GWR / Crossrail / Overground .
However , for those who will live and work in OOC they will need a spread of stations as found at Canary Wharf / Isle of Dogs and for that it’s necessary to look at all lines and stations in the area included closed ir freight only lines .
As for travelling from SW London to Canary Wharf their is the South London Line service of the Overground from Clapham Junction to Canada Water with interchange to Jubilee Line to Canary Wharf . And with plans to expand TFL rail network extension of this service into SW London could be an option and could be delivered much sooner and much less cost than Crossrail 2 with LO taking over branch line/s proposed for XR2 thus reducing cost of that project by removal of lines at that end of XR2.
timbeau 15 April 2016 at 22:52
“The Manchester Centrelink buses ………………. may become redundant when the Ordsall curve is built, allowing direct trains from Picc to Vic.”
Er, No.
The 3 free bus routes run around the shops, hotels and city centre businesses. Passengers on through trains run past all of those.
[Could we please get back to the effect of HS2 in London. Further discussion about Manchester may be removed without notice. Malcolm]
@ Melvyn
I very much doubt that OOC-Clapham Junction (CLJ)-Canada Water (ZCW) Canary Wharf will be a popular route, given the alternatives. Such as ye olde Elizabeth line, no change required.
If one is compelled to travel to or from the Wharf in the peak, the passenger volumes at ZCW are really quite significant. In particular, in the morning, eastbound Jubilees arrive stuffed to the gunwales & almost no one gets off. It does avoid Z1 though.
I’m also not sure through trains from elsewhere in SW London would help; there’d likely be more changing at CLJ and the orange line is *remarkably* slow, at least subjectively. Very useful, but slow. Platform length (short) at ZCW is also moreorless insoluble. But none of this will change with HSn (for quite high values of n equal to or greater than 2).
@Malcolm’s coughs
I fully apologise to my fellow Moderators and to the commentariat at large for my digression of mentioning Manchester.
To answer the occasionally asked question “Who moderates the Moderators?”, we are an autonomous collective, and as such have at one time or another moderated each other.
@timbeau
“As for interchange with the orbital route of the Overground,…Less good is access from the south, both from the WLL and the Richmond direction. (You will be able to get from Clapham Junction to Old Oak with one change – either at Whitechapel or at Stratford!)”
Sorry, but you will be able to get to Clapham Junction from OOC in 5 direct stops. The chosen “Option C” has a direct connection between Willesden Junction and Shepherd’s Bush. http://d3e4p1336dty1z.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/London-Infrastucture-Plan-2050-Transport-v92.svg
Briantist: The discussion was about the quality of the interchange at Old Oak Common. Yes, it is planned to build a station on the line between Clapham Junction and Willesden Junction which will be called (presumably) Old Oak Common and which will be intended as an interchange with the HS2/Crossrail station of that name, as your diagram shows. But concerns have been expressed about the walking distance involved. Timbeau’s fantasy routes via Stratford or Whitechapel were intended to show a way between those like-named stations avoiding this walk.
It’s good of Mike to apologise, but mention of Manchester (or of course Liverpool) is not forbidden in this or any other discussion, and no criticism is intended of those who did so. It is in the nature of conversation to wander, I was just trying to gently herd it back into geographically more appropriate regions.
Malcom
geographically more appropriate regions.
Which reminds me.
1: Anywhere within the GLA area – YES
2: Anywhere witin the M25 / Met police area = presumably YES
3: Any place reached by a direct suburban bus or rail service from area 1?
[ E.G. Hertford E, Guildford, St Albans, … ] – probably yes?
4: Other places directly accessible from (1), where the transport operation affect areas 1 & 2? Probably / Usually?
Note Heathrow / Gatwick / Stansted / Luton airports must come under this heading, yes/no?
5: Other places mentioned in passing, provided there is some temporary reference to the subject? Maybe
6: Anywhere else? Probably not.
Or something like that?
7: other non-transport diversions which enliven the day – no comment.
@Melvyn
“As for travelling from SW London to Canary Wharf their is the South London Line service of the Overground from Clapham Junction to Canada Water with interchange to Jubilee Line to Canary Wharf .”
Or, requiring only one change, stay on the train to Waterloo and change to the Jubilee Line there.
Well said timbeau. However, even after all this time I have to remind myself that Waterloo is very well connected to east London.
@WW
“the possibility of trams at OOC or free bus services is zero in the current funding environment. ”
Transfer buses are rarely popular, and occasional passengers in particular are deterred from making journeys that require them. Not only are they inherently more unreliable as they have to use the public roads and get caught up in traffic, but to use them involves leaving the railway environment and looking for them, usually in an unfamiliar cityscape. (All of this also applies to Rail Replacement services)
Which is why, funding crisis or not, one of London’s airports is planning to spend £200m to replace them: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/15/luton-airport-ends-bus-transfers-fast-track-rail-link
@fandroid
Better connected to east London than to the City, in terms of tube cars per hour. Indeed, it’s amazing no-one has ever suggested …………..
(runs away from rapidly approaching sound of snipping!)
timbeau 09.33: Amid stiff competition, I think the artist’s impression in that article may be the most hilarious I’ve ever seen!
It seems to me that if one takes on one or other of the extreme stances there is sure to be disagreement. Some people want interchange to be the priority. Some people want a more even transport supply over the area to be developed. The site is so large that a compromise seems inevitable. The current design suggests that that compromise has been agreed and we have little chance of changing it. This means that some means of connecting the various stations AND the many places spread across the site will be needed. This was why I suggested that something similar to the Manchester Metroshuttles might prove suitable. The area covered is similar. (OOC+ is smaller I think.) The challenge may prove similar. If it turns out that the numbers to be moved are greater then some form of local mass transit system may be required. I think that may have to wait for the need to be proven before anybody will consider shelling out for it. And I am no more able to predict the future than anybody else.
@ RayK: good point. Compare and contrast the Isle of Dogs (little existing passenger transport infrastructure, re development from docks, current infrastructure developed piecemeal over 30 years) with Stratford (existing transport interchange developed into a network node for the Olympics, quite rapidly).
I agree that examining the actual problem at hand and developing a solution to that problem is a good approach. Looking at what others have done and learning from them makes a lot of sense.
I think the hard bit is providing enough flexibility in the texture of your solution to allow for technical progress. Canary Wharf is quite unfriendly to cycles (including motorcycles) and friendly to cars, for example. But as discussed elsewhere, car use is declining.
All the comments on OOC seem to focus on the interchange. I doubt anyone really knows how much interchange there might be and between which bits, {HS2, Crossrail, the two Overground stations and I assume GW suburban} or how much as a destination. Irrespective, or interchange or destination, there will be movements of people around the site. They can either walk, hire bikes, buses, taxis, autonomous pods, guided pods (like at Heathrow T5 to/from the business car park), as well as trams. Where a couple of hundred metres or so is involved, travolators are usually the simplest mechanical option (like the Waterloo tube station Jubilee to Northern connection or any number of airports).
I guess no one can be firm on the solution until they have worked out the likely travel patterns.
@ Timbeau and Caspar Lucas: I don’t think the picture’s too bad; grab a tram off the Internet, put it on a relatively steeply graded bit of track (that’s the light rail bit) add a ridiculously grandiose station roofed in unobtainium and you’re done.
I’m interested in the economics of the project: 200mn for 1.3 miles seems a lot at first blush. For an airport that’s growing from 12mn pax pa in 2015 to 18mn (targeted) in 2020, and takes roughly £10 per passenger at a 20pc gross profit, that kinda makes sense if the current road interchange is the barrier claimed. I’d like to see the list of benefits in the cost-benefit analysis adding up to 300-40mn, though.
I’d be interested to hear from others whether the traffic forecasts at OOC could stand a 200mn capital cost plus whatever pa in OpEx. Or what the ‘back of an envelope’ business case would need to look like.
CXXX: and which modes people will want to use to get there (eg car if doing “big box” shopping, own (not hired) bike to work, etc.
Trouble is, what you provide constrains the patterns.
Old Bucc 13.16: Don’t think it’s a composite picture; pretty certain it’s the Dubai metro with heavy telephoto – the trains are actually five cars long (and the stations really do look like that). You can always tell that no homework has been done when the pathetically badly Photoshopped destination display isn’t RVAR compliant*!
*All capitals = less legible according to the research, hence UK signage standards since the first motorways.
@caspar
Here’s an unphotoshopped picture of the Dubai Metro
http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/dubai-metro-set-for-massive-expansion-1.1227827
(but back to London……….).
@Old Buccaneer – the curious thing is why Luton seem to think it will cost them £200m. Even on-street tramways, with all the attendant cost of moving services, tend to come out at £20-25m/mile (except, of course, in Edinburgh). Difficult to see what is so expensive about Luton, particularly as there are presumably few, if any, objectors to be bought off.
Caspar: they must have photoshopped in the reference to Luton at any rate ha ha
Graham: I think they’re thinking fully segregated and they need to cross a dual carriageway. But even so, … Hence my joke about the “unobtainium” roof. They’re also spending 100 mn on cattle sheds, I mean upgraded passenger terminal buildings.
Although transfer buses are not very popular in the normal world, they have been a favourite for airports until now. Just look at the massive bus fleet that operates at Heathrow. Designed well, publicised well and integrated into the Tube and Overground network, there’s no reason why an (electric?) circulating bus shuttle should not work well at OOC.
Fandroid: or indeed Luton, possibly for less than 50 million pints of ale at London prices.
PS: this is *not* the place to discuss the price of beer in London, obvs.
For Luton, the guided transit link will have to:
+ Have an exit from Luton Airport Parkway built or it will have to cross the railway (there is little or no space for an eastern entrance
+ As Old Buccaneer, says it must get over the A1081
+ Mount a not insubstantial gradient and….
+ somehow get underneath the taxiway from Easyjet’s main stands to the runway.
The surface route is far from obvious looking at Google maps.
Graham: I read a few of the comments under the Grauniad article linked above in search of enlightenment. All I can say is:
All hail the autonomous collective of Londonreconnections moderators!
Looking at Google maps they might be better spending the money on some bus lanes and a couple of bus only flyovers. That would make the buses more reliable. However 130’s concern about the taxiway is not a problem because the bridge was built with passive provision for a second carriageway looking at street view.
@ Ray K / Old Buccaneer – we already know that TfL will put in a pattern of local bus routes at OOC. Some new, some existing extended into or through the area. TfL will extract S106 (or similar) funding from the developers to support those services. I was merely saying they will NOT be free nor will there be a tram.
@ Various – I’m amazed that Luton Airport are not capable of procuring an effective shuttle bus service. For £200m they could have gold plated buses with personal porters hand carrying people’s luggage. Seems a ridiculous waste of money to me. Also worth noting that they are “requesting” Government to specify 4 East Midlands trains an hour to stop at the Airport station to give a 21 min journey time into St Pancras. Seems umpteen Thameslink trains an hour isn’t enough. Why are all airport operators so outrageously demanding about rail access to their airports? One wonders if there will be 4 EMT trains an hour in future to stop there once HS2 Phase 2 opens?
There’s already a bus-only sliproad heading towards the airport from the station. Simply a flyunder in the reverse direction would make the link. But, obviously buses ‘suck’ and therefore you need to make a big thing, rather than merely extend the busway to the airport, which is cheaper and would have wider benefits.
Back to Old Oak: this talk of people-movers would be unnecessary if the NWLLR plans from the lobbying group “Campaign for Better Transport” were taken seriously by TfL, rather than just the borough councils. We’d be talking about modifications to that to tie the site together, and Crossrail/HS2 to the Central and Bakerloo lines.
WW asks: “Why are all airport operators so outrageously demanding about rail access to their airports? ”
Why should they be anything else? They have nothing to lose by it.
A related question, though is “To what extent do the rail operators respond to airport operators’ demands, and why?” Heathrow Express is probably a special case, as the airport owners put serious capital money in. But the Stanwick Express trains seem to gobble up a fair bit of capacity on the respective lines, capacity which could be used in other ways.
But of course travel to/from airports (for staff as well as passengers) is a real need, and will be as long as we have the airports, and is probably better met by rail than by road, where possible. And at least for city centre access, direct non-stop or few-stop trains are probably better, overall, for the economy as well as for the passengers, than sitting on your suitcase for 40 minutes in a packed Picadilly train.
CXXX: reading the Grauniad article linked above, it seems Luton Airport Operations Limited envisage their link railway jumping off (pun intended) from above Luton Airport Parkway (LTN). I assume there will be copious provision of step free access.
I’ve flown from there and picked people up from LTN and yeah, it’s kinda suboptimal but you get what you pay for.
After the Thameslink upgrade, LTN will have a great range of connections. Possibly not enough to ‘tempt BMW drivers out of their cars’ ( thanks, Alex Hynes) but a huge contributor to the ability of (for example) Scottish, Irish, Eastern European and Iberian expat Londoners (or Lutonists), who, perhaps, are not this site’s core constituency, to see their parents their grannies and their babies (not to mention their significant others). And vice versa.
And, you know what? They’re commuters too. Maybe weekly or monthly not daily, but sometimes it’s easier to get to Sczecin than Salisbury or Southend. And no, (mostly) they don’t vote – though of course as EU citizens with a London address they *may* vote for London Mayor, GLA members and the Rubbish Supremos(*) at London Borough level. They don’t have a vote for the Westminster Parliament, though.
(*) also housing, education, social services, libraries, planning, und so weiter (as they say in Germany). But bin emptying, rubbish collection, pretty much affects every household and business in the borough. It’s what political analysts call “salient”; it sticks out.
Si says ” if the NWLLR plans …. were taken seriously by TfL, rather than just the borough councils”
The borough councils may be talking about such plans, but talk butters no parsnips. What would be needed to advance this scheme, or any other similar one, is for somebody to spend money doing a proper evaluation, including the question of where the money to build it might come from. Until/unless that happens, such a scheme cannot advance. TfL are under no obligation to spend such money just because local councils say so.
But the chances of actually building it, in present economic circumstances particularly, seem rather remote to me.
Malcolm, sounds like:
“If we had some butter, we could have buttered parsnips.”
“If we had some parsnips.”
Time to start a dairy farm and a market garden in NW London, methinks. Either that or a stationery shop – it seems the local demand for crayons is *enormous*.
WW para beginning “@Various”:
If I was cynical, I’d think that the difference between capex and opex might be influencing their thinking. Just possibly.
But also see my earlier posts. In part, airport management are speaking for customers who otherwise do not/cannot/ will not (choose yer own verbs) influence transport policies or local politics.
Thank goodness. Otherwise the twice weekly schlep from beautiful downtown Frankfurt to the airport by pu lic transport would have been exponentially more tedious.
@old Buccaneer – the difference between regulated and unregulated airport spend more likely.
@ Old Bucc. My proposal was extenstion of current overground service from Clapham Junction into SW London thus providing a through route to from say Hampton Court to Canada Water then simple change to Jubilee Line which will gain some spare capacity when Elizabeth Line opens .
As for Luton Airport perhaps someone could fly over to Malta where they have a fleet of ex London Artic buses which being single deck with plenty of space are ideal for Airport transfers and could run on a dedicated roadway which could have passive provision for upgrade to trans or even Tram Trains a form of transport is likely to become more widespread in the future .
It’s worth remembering that in addition to OOC there is also the Park Royal area in west London where development is planned to take place.
Which adds weight to tram/ Light Rail development in longer term.
Melvyn, thanks for that.
Extending LO: I think you’d find it easier to extend Windsor Line services rather than Hampton Court. Carto Metro and Google (or Bing) Maps “satellite view” are your finds for a desk based review, but you’d probably need to walk the ground to identify all the snags.
The Windsor lines are beginning to benefit from 10-car trains, which I suspect would not be readily accommodated at stations along the route to Canada Water.
Melvyn re Malta: I will immediately volunteer to fly to Malta, at Luton Airport Operations Ltd’s expense, to carry out an informal, non technical evaluation of thd user experience.
Everything I’ve read and heard about guided busways, including from my Cambridge correspondent, leads me to believe that the claimed advantages are elusive at best. One such claim is the ability of buses to run on to destinations beyond the dedicated track, which does not seem to be needed in Luton. I leave you to enquire of the Luton Airport Operations company what alternatives they evaluated.
As Graham H observed, airports are subject to a special form of economic regulation. In my view, this regime could encourage management to prefer a solution which required more capital spending (regulated, with a specific rate of return allowed) rather than current spending (unregulated and therefore a direct charge on future profits).
Melvyn re: Park Royal and the prospects longer term for light rail in North West London, please see my earlier facetious proposal to open a stationery shop and Malcolm’s rather more measured observations about the likely availability of public finance in the foreseeable future.
But you are right to campaign to get your preferred solution baked into the masterplan at this early stage. I imagine evidence of widespread local support would be particularly persuasive, ideally backed up by a robust high level analysis from a reputable firm of transport experts and an economic or business case.
Melvyn/OB:
Luckily there were already plans for a North West London light rail scheme circa 2008 courtesy of Better Transport.
Some pretty maps, vague ideas that the Brent Cross shopping centre might pay for it but curiously none of those high level analyses you mention. I also don’t recollect anyone suggesting a dust off and refresh for the old oak common regeneration either.
@Snowy, the Campaign for Better Transport did suggest dusting it off, but no one listened.
But if anyone had listened, the conversation about linking together parts of the OOC site would have been rather different (my early point that if TfL had looked at it then we wouldn’t be talking people movers got jumped on as me suggesting crayons) as the concept would be in similar territory of ‘recently looked at scheme that hasn’t happened for various reasons’ to West London Tram and people would skip chat about people movers, shuttle buses, etc and jump straight to proposing a revival of the light rail plans.
“Malta …..have a fleet of ex London Artic buses which being single deck with plenty of space are ideal for Airport transfers ”
First Group’s Luton Airport operation has used (ex-London?) Citaro artics in the past, and is unlikely to want to repatriate any of Arriva’s fleet back from Malta – remember that even the youngest ex-London artics are now ten years old
I’m sure the Maltese would have handed them back happily. However they haven’t got them anymore. They were taken away from the island a couple of years ago as too big for the job.
The Parkway station – Airport link passed from First to Go Ahead last year (or perhaps slightly earlier). They took over four artics (including one of the Wright Streetcars) and a 12m single deck. The occasional visit to the airport usually reveals at least two artics and the fixed-length bus in use. It probably just isn’t high-tech enough for the image Luton wises to create.
The pros and cons of interchanges that are spread out or concentrated are still playing out in the not entirely unrelated connectivity of the South London Line LO route. Recent meetings and presentations involving transport, council and community stakeholders highlighted access to Old Oak as a driver for the old connecting-Brixton chestnut. The TfL side seemed to prefer the ‘network benefit’ of the more costly central site over bringing back East Brixton, but at risk of overwhelming LO with interchange traffic. The same thing could hold true at OOC. As long as the HS2-Crossrail interchange reasonably easy, I think there would be benefits for everything else being analogous to Canary Wharf, where the access to travel options are spread through the development, yet not an unpleasant schlepp between them when need be. This also spreads the availability of prime sites over a wider geographical area.
That’s the ‘head over the heart’ view. The ‘heart’ still always resents having to go out and cross the bus stops when changing at Shepherds Bush, for example, rather than remaining under cover / within the gate line… but it’s still a preferable experience to Canada Water in the mornings…
@ Man of Kent – the local TV news about the Luton changes actually showed the bendy buses in service. Admittedly there was a large queue of people shown in the news feature which suggests to me the service isn’t frequent / demand responsive enough. That’s why I said someone needs to improve what exists rather than splashing £200m on a rail shuttle.
@ Nick BXN – I am not sure the Isle of Dogs and OOC are strictly comparable. The IOD has peculiar geography courtesy of the old docks. The DLR’s station pattern emphasises this. I also feel the interchange arrangements at Canary Wharf are very poor. You face multiple level changes and then confusing and unintuitive wayfinding. You can move via shopping centres, office basements or via the street and having to cross roads. It’s all a bit illogical and lengthy. This will be exacerbated when Crossrail opens. I’m sure people do interchange there but I’d love to see the numbers involved. I suspect a better design with shorter distances would encourage interchange rather than perhaps hinder it. If we are going out of our way to somehow recreate the Canary Wharf “experience” at Old Oak Common then I feel that’s rather poor and not a good legacy.
The UK seems to be in the “don’t do interchange very well” camp along with some other countries. Strikingly other countries (Germany, Switzerland, Spain?) are prepared to spend their money creating effective interchanges that also support business and development. In the context of High Speed Rail then the UK seems to be mirroring France and Japan with its locations of HS stations with all the connectivity downsides that exist in those countries (although Japan often has a metro connection to “Shin” stations from the city centres/ CBDs).
My impression of the status of the current plans for stations at and around OOC is not that we are ‘going out of our way to somehow recreate the Canary Wharf “experience” ‘. That would be rather perverse.
I think we are accepting something of a similar sub-optimal level to Canary Wharf, because the fully connected option (the Poirot moustache or similar) has evident disadvantages, including but not limited to much higher cost and over-slowing of through traffic.
The other arguments which have been advanced here (better coverage of a bigger area for non-interchange travel, “Canary Wharf isn’t too bad”, etc etc) are additional factors which might help to mitigate the accepted interchange difficulties. They would probably not be sufficient if there was an full-interchange design with no snags and no extra cost.
@MoK
“[Luton] Airport link passed from First to Go Ahead last year (or perhaps slightly earlier). ”
Of course, silly me. It is associated with the Thameslink franchise, which changed hands in late 2014.
Apparently Arriva’s Maltese bendies were to have gone even further from London
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140218/local/bendy-buses-to-be-shipped-to-sudan.507334
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-02-20/news/sudanese-question-purchaseof-bendy-buses-from-malta-4008640516/
or maybe not
http://euflyer.boardingarea.com/2014/10/31/ever-wonder-happened-londons-bendy-buses/
I think the proposed Luton Airport light rail link might be a consequence of HS2. If Heathrow and/or Manchester and/or Birmingham International get high speed rail links, other airports risk getting left behind.
WW 16.35: I hope we can all agree that OOC-HS2 will indeed have a metro-style connection to the city centre/CBD.
Re. OOC:
HS2 platforms will be 400 metres long. I repeat: 400 metres. There are complete pairs of Tube stations – including both sets of platforms! – that are closer together than that. It’s also how South West Trains intend to fit over twenty coaches of Windsor Line train onto each ex-Eurostar platform once they’ve finished remodelling that station’s approaches.
(This length is also why St. Pancras had to have that big, flat-roofed glass shed nailed onto the back of it: the Eurostar platforms wouldn’t fit under Barlow’s original glass roof.)
Old Oak Common station will be vast. Not just because of the number of platforms – HS2, Crossrail 1, and the GWML – but because HS2’s platforms will be almost twice as long as any of the others. Entrances at each end of the complex will be almost half a kilometre apart.
From the developers’ perspective, this makes OOC station a no-brainer: it’ll serve a big chunk of the redevelopment area all by itself. Crossrail 1 alone will get you to pretty much anywhere of note in central London, including the upgraded Thameslink. That means Gatwick, Luton and Stansted airports are just one change of train away; Heathrow is just around the corner, and there’s access to the whole of the South West, and West, of England, and southern Wales too, as well as a big chunk of the North.
Any “peripheral” OOC stations on the TfL networks will be merely gilding the lily. They’re nice to have, but there’s no real need for better interchange with them than is planned.
It’s worth pointing that that HS2’s design phase is concurrent with that of Crossrail 2. For those wanting to get from South London to Birmingham, Crossrail 2 will likely provide a far better link with Euston from Clapham Junction than the glacially slow orbital service offered by TfL’s Overground. The latter has no cost-efficient scope for major expansion to deal with the greater load placed on it by an improved OOC interchange. It’s already close to capacity today, so it makes more sense to plan an interchange with Crossrail 2 instead. That’s connecting with HS2 at Euston. Problem solved.
@anomnibus: Entrances at each end of the complex will be almost half a kilometre apart
This would be the case if there were entrances at each end, but the last renderings I saw suggested a single entrance in the middle of the platforms and TfL’s consultation counted interchange distances from an entrance in the middle of the platform. Yes, this means someone at the back of the train faces a circuituous walk to get to the North London Line, and a double ended station would have better regeneration benefits, but that seems to be the plan…
@Malcolm, ngh a few days ago re: level access and the classic/compatible distinction: as I understand it the platform heights of HS2 are yet to be decided: the TSI says platforms should be 550mm or 760 mm, but those low heights make level access impossible, so HS2 have suggested that they would like to see a new higher standard added to the TSI (I think not a derogation but an actual change that could be adopted by other railways in Europe) to allow level boarding:
HS2 is considering a ‘high’ platform and has started discussions on a possible revision to the TSI, as the GB Specific Case would probably not be appropriate for new high-speed lines; and use of the TSI standard 550mm or 760mm heights would not support level access from platform to seat for any credible HS2 train designs.
So it is possible that they could end up with something similar to the 915mm standard UK platform height anyway (but set further back to stay in the UIC loading gauge, and then perhaps with sliding gap fillers on the narrower classic compatibles).
The Luton airport shuttle would involve building a new access on the east side of the Parkway station, which would be very beneficial for the Stirling Place development of the former Vauxhall factory next door. Conveniently Stirling Place has recently been bought by… Luton Airport. The airport is itself owned by Luton Borough Council who of course are very keen to encourage regeneration of the area, which is also an Enterprise Zone.
As for the cost, the 1.2km Gatwick people mover cost £43m to refurbish 6 years ago, retaining the original guideways. Of course the whole shuttle-buses vs people mover question is one airports are very familiar with, and it does seem that passengers and airport managements prefer people movers: even very car-centric places like Atlanta and Dallas use them.
@ Ian J re: TSIs. Isn’t there a PRM-TSI for ‘persons of restricted mobility’? I imagine that has something to say about level access.
But look, if trains that comply with the *existing* TSIs can’t run on the quick bit of HS2, it’s not really interoperable, is it? So the choice is level access with a bigger gap than we’re used to or a significant step up/down. Hmm mm.
Just to note that Business Travel News has reported on the Luton airport shuttle scheme in their edition today, link here: http://www.btnews.co.uk/article/10168 . Several designs for shuttles were shown, not just Dubai, though a specific route is defined. A planning application is intended this summer.
@kate
Not so much an HS2 effect, but that Luton is the only London airport, and one of the biggest in the UK, to rely on bus transfers from its nearest railway station.
@IanJ – I wouldn’t trust any quoted cost for the renewal of the Gatwick peoplemover. As we have seen with the spat on what BAA/HAL might or might not be allowed to charge for CrossRail to run into the airport, the costs can be argued to suit the case – and the case is heavily (totally?) influenced by what are or are not defined to be common purse matters and therefore subject /or not subject to regulation. Airport access seems to be one of those matters where airport owners have considerable flexibility in what is charged as a cost. I suspect the Gatwick costs have been inflated accordingly, without the ORR being able to ride in and argue about the railway costs. A proper benchmarking exercise -perhaps against DLR upgrades -would show how gross that £43m is – you could buy an awful lot of DLR kit for that…
Ian J: Thanks for that information on platform heights. Yes, I feel that the height question is resolvable, though tricky. Suggesting that for level boarding, higher platforms might be useful all over Europe sounds plausible and maybe a good way forward.
But width seems to me to be more intractable, in the specific British case. Sliding gap fillers may be the only resolution (if timbeau’s seperate platforms is not possible). But that’s a lot of novel additional safety-critical hardware. (And after so much effort and standardising has gone into making platforms straight, avoiding a different need for gap-fillers).
I would like to hope that the single central access to OOC station might be revisited. Crossrail can do double-ended at many busy stations, and this is a sort-of clean sheet start (to contradict which claim I am reminded of all these depots littering the place).
Re Malcolm,
” But that’s a lot of novel additional safety-critical hardware”
Err no – The new Siemens Velaro Eurostar units (374s) have gap fillers built in, it really isn’t a problem!
See second pic here:
http://www.businesstraveller.com/news/102296/eurostar-debuts-e320-on-london-paris-route
The gap would be circa 23.5cm for a classic compatible to 1200mm (as suggest in the actual articles) UK HS platform.
(also the interior floor level inside the unit in the photo above 😉 )
The older Alstom built 373s have a gap filling fold down step so this isn’t new, unique or unsolved.
@ Malcolm – the Japanese manage to cope perfectly well with Shinkansen trains of varying widths. The narrower trains have gap fillers.
Not my photo – https://www.flickr.com/photos/recliner/26339907541/in/album-72157664801093584/
They also run “mini” and normal Shinkansen together.
Not my photo – https://www.flickr.com/photos/recliner/26133250990/in/album-72157664801093584/
Given we know the Japanese (JR East) are advising HS2 then platform heights and stepping distances are likely to be peripheral issues “in the round” but obviously need to be considered properly.
Silly me. I was thinking of gap-fillers attached to the platforms. I now understand, and width doesn’t seem to be the same problem as I thought it was. Bits that fold out, drop down or whatever as the door opens are quite widespread, indeed.
They would need something to detect that the train is at a standard platform (in Preston or wherever) and not come out then. But I suppose this is quite do-able.
(@Walthamstow Writer:) “Why are all airport operators so outrageously demanding about rail access to their airports? “
Outrageous demanding is a low-cost, low-risk activity. Unlike the activity of actually providing new rail access to airports.
Birmingham Airport’s 2006 surface access strategy was quite open about their unwillingness to contribute any money towards improving rail access (but the airport indicated it would be quite happy if someone else paid for it).
(@ngh:) “Err no – The new Siemens Velaro Eurostar units (374s) have gap fillers built in, it really isn’t a problem!”
If gap fillers aren’t supplied and maintained free of charge, or 100% reliable, then they are potentially a problem.
Furthermore, the Class 374 does not facilitate level access, so any so-called gap coverage looks restricted to the horizontal plane.
Although daftness permeates the whole project, it’s remarkable to find that captive sets have survived as part of the HS2 proposition.
(@Walthamstow Writer:) “They also run “mini” and normal Shinkansen together.”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/recliner/26133250990/in/album-72157664801093584/
Note the not so “mini” curved platform gap.
Re Bel Eben,
“Furthermore, the Class 374 does not facilitate level access, so any so-called gap coverage looks restricted to the horizontal plane.”
Horizontal plane only – Which is exactly what you want with 1200mm vehicle floors and 1200mm platform heights for level access that are being proposed. You just don’t have the 2 steps down built into the vehicle to comply with current UIC rules, so the gap filler would be mounted 40+cm higher for the proposed 1200mm platform height. Level access sorted.
I picked the 374 example because it shows a train mounted horizontal gap filler already in use in the UK on high speed train.
(@ngh:) “Which is exactly what you want with 1200mm vehicle floors and 1200mm platform heights for level access that are being proposed.”
Where does this 1200mm figure come from?
Malcolm at 1221: similar to selective door opening at short platforms. GPS and trackside balises are enabling technologies.
@Bel Eben:
The more mod-cons you fit to anything, the more potential points of failure you add, but what matters most is whether each point of failure would require taking the train out of service.
Modern trains have walk-through corridors, so passengers can always use another door if the one in front of them fails to work correctly. A faulty gap-filler shouldn’t be sufficient reason to take an entire train out of service partway through a journey.
Mechanical gap-fillers have been around for decades and, as that video shows, are even in routine frontline service on high-frequency metro networks, let alone low-frequency high-speed trains. Ditto for automatic steps, automatic train doors, automatic platform edge/screen doors, etc.
Contrary to popular belief, the people working on major projects like these really do know what they’re doing. Those working at HS2 Ltd. literally think and work on nothing but HS2 all day long.
The suggestion for updating the Technical Standards for Interoperability (TSI) makes a lot of sense: standardising step-free access across Europe in this way allows the manufacturers to design future trains accordingly. By the time HS2 gets around to ordering theirs, which won’t happen for some years yet, there should be plenty of suitable options to choose from.
ngh at 1153: that door looks quite narrow; I wouldn’t fancy navigating it on crutches.
It seems you still need a special ramp and help from staff if you have a wheelchair and the temerity to want to travel on Eurostar. I couldn’t find anything about people with, eg, sticks or crutches, on a quick look.
There’s a whole page on ‘accessibility’ on the Eurostar website; unfortunately it’s about the website itself, not the trains.
I hope HS2 does better, not just for Londoners who suffer from reduced mobility.
Why the likelihood of an HS2 terminus? paragraph in the original article looks highly relevant to standards. I hope there’ll be more about these later in the series.
I’m still not clear whether HS2 is a ‘domestic’ railway or not. The absence of connections to the Eurotunnel (and Heathrow Airport – among other airports) suggest it is a ‘local railway for local people’ (like the shop in “League of Gentlemen”). But it seems as though it has to be built *as if* it were a European railway. European railway standards seem to care a lot about people who can’t hear and can’t see, but rather less about people who can’t climb steps. (‘Can’t’ includes ‘have difficulty’ in each case).
@Walthamstow Writer, 18 April 2016 at 12:18
“They also run “mini” and normal Shinkansen together.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E6_Series_Shinkansen#/media/File:E6-E5-Coupling_in_omiya_20130320.jpg
This image, also illustrating a full width E5 coupled behind a mini E6, shows the very British style body profile to good effect, conforming to narrow gauge structure and (high) platform clearance on gauge converted classic lines that form the extremities of the two mini Shinkansen routes and in one case share their track with standard gauge converted local trains on the classic sections whilst in the other case they run on dual gauge tracks that also handle narrow gauge local passenger and freight traffic.
Here is a Japanese loading gauge diagram showing the narrow gauge in blue (early lines), grey (later narrow lines) with the larger standard gauge Shinkansen in green.
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%BB%8A%E4%B8%A1%E9%99%90%E7%95%8C#/media/File:Rolling-Stock-Gauge-in-Japan.svg
@Anomnibus
“A faulty gap-filler shouldn’t be sufficient reason to take an entire train out of service partway through a journey”
It depends in what position it fails.
@Bel Eben: To be fair to Birmingham Airport, I’m not sure there’s that much incentive for them to improve rail access there. The station is at the airport and has an enviable suite of services. I’m not entirely surprised if they’re not keen to cough up contributions toward the proposed tram extension.
“(@Anomnibus:) The more mod-cons you fit to anything, the more potential points of failure you add, but what matters most is whether each point of failure would require taking the train out of service.
Modern trains have walk-through corridors, so passengers can always use another door if the one in front of them fails to work correctly. A faulty gap-filler shouldn’t be sufficient reason to take an entire train out of service partway through a journey.”
“Shouldn’t”. A single failed door, stuck in the open position, apparently prevents a Class 350 train continuing in service (from personal experience).
(@Anomnibus:) “Mechanical gap-fillers have been around for decades and, as that video shows, are even in routine frontline service on high-frequency metro networks, let alone low-frequency high-speed trains. “
As can be seen from the video, the NYC subway gap-filling is not great. I doubt very much whether a pushchair would go straight over the ‘closed’ gap.
(@Anomnibus:) “Contrary to popular belief, the people working on major projects like these really do know what they’re doing. “
Having spoken to some of the HS2 crew, I think I’ll stick with “popular belief”.
(@Anomnibus:) “The suggestion for updating the Technical Standards for Interoperability (TSI) makes a lot of sense: standardising step-free access across Europe in this way allows the manufacturers to design future trains accordingly. “
An updated European ‘interoperability’ standard could face backwards compatibility problems with the current standard, and remain noninteroperable with Britain’s legacy network.
Every door on a Virgin Pendolino has a folding step which could in other circumstances be a gap filler. They seem to cause little trouble albeit the whole door open/close cycle is rather slow. I have also seen much faster gap fillers on modern Netherlands trains. The New York example in the video is a museum piece. Indeed, as I understand, it the particular station (South Ferry on the loop track) is now closed, although there are a few other examples.
TSIs are intended to promote uniformity in order to allow trains from all over to interface with a variety of platforms. The devices they use to get wheelchairs on an off trains with floors at 1200mm (which is still typical for Inter City trains at least) and 760mm platforms is a contraption that does nothing for speed or the independence or dignity of the person in the wheelchair. Platforms at 1200mm to match trains is the way to go in my view.
@Bel Eben – “Having spoken to some of the HS2 crew, I think I’ll stick with “popular belief”. And having spoken to some of those working “opposite” to HS2 in the rest of the industry, I’d say popular belief is entirely right to judge from (a) the quality of the questions that the HS2 team ask, and (b) their naivete about railways generally.
Bel Eben: not to mention compatibility with mainland Europe’s networks of classic and high speed lines, which makes the politics of revising technical standards, err, ‘interesting’.
100andthirty: the difference between UK and GC gauge at 1200mm height for a platform is about 2350 mm (4700÷2).
See here:
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=423318&page=133
Good luck bridging that gap!
Re Beleben 1402
“(@ngh:) “Which is exactly what you want with 1200mm vehicle floors and 1200mm platform heights for level access that are being proposed.”
Where does this 1200mm figure come from?”
The author in comments under the first article:
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2016/high-speed-buffers-hs2-london-part-1/#comment-267043
So 1150mm rather than the 1200mm I had remembered
Re Old Bucaneer,
Just 235mm (9.25″) not 2350mm (7’8.5″)!!!
see my earlier comment https://www.londonreconnections.com/2016/high-speed-buffers-hs2-london-part-2/#comment-268232
And note the size of the gap filler on the Japanese E6 (Japanese equivalent of Classic Compatible stock) above as pointed out by WW:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/recliner/26339907541/in/album-72157664801093584/
If the Brexit referendum comes down for Leave then it is hard to see why HS2 would then care about European standards for a railway which would only be built after Brexit. I suspect that more than gauge and platform height agree affected.
With a ten inch gap I expect that any safety case would require gap filling for the whole length of the train, not just by the doors. Otherwise there will be regular cases of people falling into the gap.
Kate: The models held out by the vote Leave camp suggest that Britain would get the benefits of still being geographically in Europe by acting like Switzerland and Norway. Both of which, like Britain, have through trains to countries which have no intention of leaving the EU. The only difference Brexit might make is that sensible suggestions like the one coming from HS2 (for a platform height suitable for level boarding) would have even less chance of being accepted by the EU authorities.
With my moderator’s hat on, I would suggest that occasional mentions of such things as the EU referendum, when pertinent, are OK, but we should ensure that we stick assiduously to discussing only the transport ramificiations.
ngh oops, sorry. Should have calculated in Imperial in the first place, then the massive error would have been obvious even to me!
Re: mini Shinkansen: nice straight platform, platform edge gates and *still* a vertical & horizontal gap between the step and the platform.
Kate, Malcolm: a foreseeable consequence of a vote to ‘leave’ on 23 June is a prolonged period of uncertainty about the legal and technical requirements for a new railway. In the very short term, of course, nothing would change. I guess that would be reflected in the debate on the hybrid Bill.
But it may be that the project’s managers would opt to press ahead within the current legal and technical framework.
As many here will know better than me, changing (or uncertain) requirements tend to add cost complexity and delivery time to projects.
@Bel Eben ‘“Shouldn’t” A single failed door, stuck in the open position, apparently prevents a Class 350 train continuing in service (from personal experience).’
With good reason! A door stuck open is unsafe (people can fall out!). A door stuck closed however is a nuisance (and minor delay source), but has minimal safety implications.
@timbeau ” It depends in what position it fails.”
Quite! – but one would hope that an ability to manually retract & lock off would be designed in, with the implication of then taking a single doorway out of service rather than an entire train (or lineside infrastructure!).
(@Londoner:) “With good reason! A door stuck open is unsafe (people can fall out!). A door stuck closed however is a nuisance (and minor delay source), but has minimal safety implications.”
The design of the plug door does not – it seems – allow manual retraction to closed-state.
@Malcolm “The models held out by the vote Leave camp suggest that Britain would get the benefits of still being geographically in Europe”
I know some of the more wacky members of the Remain camp seem to actually think that a vote to Leave is a vote to physically move the UK further away from Calais, but without major intervention of plate tectonics we’d still be geographically in Europe (with all the benefits) even if we elect UKIP to every seat in the Commons. 😉
The continental loading gauge is a clear feature of HS2 and it won’t go away even if we build a wall in the middle of the Dover Strait and isolate ourselves from the rest of Europe. The off-the-shelf captive units will be cheaper for a double-deck 400m train than a classic-compatible bespoke 240m long train and the larger trains mean capacity more than doubles (and comfort improves), future proofing the line for decades (no Crossrail-esque “we need to start planning to relieve Crossrail before it opens”) and meaning that ticket prices won’t have to increase to pay for the infrastructure (as more people can ride per train).
Re Luton Airport’s plans for a rail link I’ve often thought a funicular would be a better bet with the cliff-like steepness between rail level and runway level. aiui the intention to change from road to rail is about greater transit speed )aka ‘marketing’).
Re “As tickets are increasingly only for a nominated service” this is one reason why season tickets work so well; you aren’t tied to particular services. And on the flying side of things I used to fly a great deal with nearly all the tickets singles which although labelled for a specific flight number could be changed with little notice for another flight *at no additional cost*. Indeed the company’s travel agents were #1 on my mobile’s speeddial so if I was early or late finishing a meeting I could change a flight on my way to the airport.
One thought ‘inspired’ by the town-oop-north discussion, LHR has a free trasport area; maybe the OOC operators might consider something similar for interchanges / local area.
Old Buccaneer: the buses using the guided busway certainly leave it for destinations elsewhere at the Dunstable end.
Si: Yes, I wasn’t very clear there, to put it mildly! What I meant was something like “keeping the benefits which we have got accustomed to (like selling to and holidaying in Europe)”. Geographicality should not have come into that sentence at all!
@Si: I’m not going to comment on the plausibility of the scenarios in your first paragraph and the first sentence in para 2.
Continental loading gauge (GC) is a feature of HS2 *as currently proposed* but absent a GC gauge connection to the other bit of GC gauge railway, the benefits are limited, aren’t they? The additional costs of having two train types and the inconveniences of large (okay, 23.5 cm or 9″) platform gaps in the horizontal plane have been thoroughly discussed up-thread.
I’m instinctively wary of your ‘cheaper’ argument, absent reliable data about pricing of comparable units and data about total cost of ownership. What we do know from IanJ at 0657 on 18 April (big block of text in italic, taken from an RAIB piece on reducing passenger train interface incidents and risks) is that high speed trains in UK and GC height platforms, err, don’t mix. So I don’t see the captive trains as being a ‘lightly modified’ version of a standard Siemens/Alstom/Finmeccanica/Hitachi product.
I can see that once you add in the later phases of HS2, the case is altered. The balance of advantage tilts away from classic compatible towards commercial off the shelf (COTS) kit, but I reckon that you will need classic compatible stock till the GC railway reaches the Central Belt of Scotland, because politics.
Still, that’s all off topic because this is about HS2 phase 1’s impact on transport in London.
Applying to trains and planes, some tickets are changeable at little or no extra cost (or, for trains, useable on any train), some are not. It is a commercial decision which sort to sell at which prices. The discussion point was that frequency is of less benefit to the passenger on a non-changeable non-refundable ticket.
@Alison: a funicular? or an airline sponsored cable car? I hear there’s one in East London, UK which has been a total success. (Probably not up to passengers with luggage, in the volumes required, though, for Luton)
Dunstable busway: sure, absolutely, that’s how it should work. But with specialised rolling stock on an airport-railway station link, I don’t see the same advantage in being able to ski off piste, as it were.
AlisonW re unpriced transport at LHR: I suspect that’s partly a product of the regulatory regime for airports and partly because the operator (HAL) has a very effective power to tax all the tenants, so it can afford to provide services to the tenants’ customers. Or it may be something they inherited at privatisation which is now set in stone. Privatisation does that, as we know from the railways.
OOC’s DevCorp is chaired by a chap (little scope for that gender changing before 2020 at the earliest) who also chairs TfL. I fear the most you’ll get in practice is some generous OSIs and some bank sponsored behemoths of bicycles for hire at rapacious rates.
That said, intelligent, creative thinking inspired by experience elsewhere will definitely be needed to get the best out of OOC. A free transport zone makes almost too much sense. Perhaps some Liberal and Green MLA’s will be in a position to apply pressure on the new boy early in his Mayoralty.
But please, not another Dangleway ((c) Diamond Geezer)!
The choice of technology to connect Luton Airport with the station is clearly not a technical one at all. Its function seems to be to attract airlines to use the airport, and to cost as much money as possible so as to permit the airport to make bigger profits. It seems therefore to be an ideal application for a maglev line.
@ Old Buccaneer – I thought the “Heathrow Free Flow Zone” was part of the airport’s traffic management / pollution reduction obligations. Clearly it has other functions like providing a level of inter terminal transfer transport that is run by a body other than HAL. I’ve only travelled in that zone a couple of times and each time a few airline passengers used a TfL bus for free to travel between terminals. Obviously employees who work at the airport can use the buses and HEX / HEC for transfer purposes too. There is a fairly heavily subsidised “Heathrow Travelcard” in various forms that provides employees with discounted travel on HEX and the non TfL contracted bus and coach routes serving Heathrow. Prices vary depending on what routes you want to use but, again, it’s part of reducing car traffic to / from / in the airport area. The info is on the Heathrow Travelcard website if you dig around. I was quite surprised as to how wide ranging it was.
I’m not sure OCC could qualify for a “free travel” zone given how it has rail routes through the entire site and is surrounded by paid for rail and bus services. Heathrow at least (roughly) forms part of the western edge of Greater London and is somewhat easier to “zone off” from its surroundings. There are also more obvious benefits in trying to constrain car travel to / from an major international airport. I don’t really see OOC as an equivalent destination even with a HS2 station, shops, offices and housing.
@Graham H: I wouldn’t trust any quoted cost for the renewal of the Gatwick peoplemover
Indeed, but I wouldn’t trust Luton’s quoted cost either, for the reasons you give. In the end it seems pointless complaining about how much of their own money they are prepared to spend (yes, I know they will earn it back from the airlines via landing fees).
@Old Buccaneer: high speed trains in UK and GC height platforms, err, don’t mix. So I don’t see the captive trains as being a ‘lightly modified’ version of a standard Siemens/Alstom/Finmeccanica/Hitachi product
Except that the platform height proposed (thanks ngh for correcting me on 1150mm vs 950mm) is specifically intended to fit the de facto European and Japanese high speed train floor height of around 1250mm (the 100mm difference would be manageable with a small slope towards the door within the vestibule) – the platforms being sized to match the existing trains. See here for a lengthy explanation with illustrations of why California is going for a similar platform height on another isolated system. The Japanese and Chinese are at 1250mm already.
It is true that current standard TSI platform heights are not compatible with level boarding (neither are most current UK platform heights, except on the likes of the tube and Underground platforms with humps). So HS2, rather to their credit, are proposing to add to the TSI. The hope would be that other countries would follow the Asian, UK and California precedent and allow genuinely unassisted level boarding.
@OB: I don’t see the same advantage in being able to ski off piste, as it were
I bet the ski lift manufacturer Doppelmayr make a bid for the Luton project with their cable-propelled people mover system… London’s first new cable-hauled railway since the London and Blackwall?
Sorry Ian J, the London Tramways Company opened a cable tramway up Brixton Hill in 1892. It was extended to Streatham in 1895. Converted to electric conduit in 1904. So the London and Blackwall was not the last.
I don’t know how the people movers that connect Heathrow’ s T5 to its satellites are powered, but cable is a possibility.
Anyway, where were we on HS2?
@IanJ – perhaps the only thing to be added at this stage to the airport link debate is that it illustrates a problem faced by all regulated utilities in choosing between a big RAB (bigger income etc) and a small one (fewer liabilities). [On topic, HS2 will face the same problem, of course].
(@Si:) “The off-the-shelf captive units will be cheaper for a double-deck 400m train than a classic-compatible bespoke 240m long train and the larger trains mean capacity more than doubles (and comfort improves), future proofing the line for decades (no Crossrail-esque “we need to start planning to relieve Crossrail before it opens”) and meaning that ticket prices won’t have to increase to pay for the infrastructure (as more people can ride per train).”
It is hard to see how double deck would mean ‘improved comfort’. According to HS2 Ltd’s consultants, the capacity gain from double deck is about 10%.
Building the HS2 track would cost, according to the government, over £42 billion. If ‘ticket prices won’t have to increase to pay for the infrastructure’, who would be paying for it?
(@Old Buccaneer:) “I can see that once you add in the later phases of HS2, the case is altered. The balance of advantage tilts away from classic compatible towards commercial off the shelf (COTS) kit,”
The HS2 concept is very different to any other high speed railway operating in Europe, or indeed the world. I would suggest that, if HS2 goes ahead as proposed, it is likely to require largely bespoke equipment.
“but I reckon that you will need classic compatible stock till the GC railway reaches the Central Belt of Scotland, because politics.”
From the HS2 Ltd ‘Broad options’ report: “HS2 trains operating on the route north of Phase Two would be classic-compatible. This is necessary even for continuous high speed routes [to the Scottish Central Belt], as they are developed on the basis of running on the existing conventional lines during the last few miles into Edinburgh and Glasgow stations, as per the Transport Scotland proposal.”
But please, not another Dangleway
Given its proximity to the runway, that would be interesting to say the least!
@Fandroid
The Highgate Hill tramway was cable operated as well – opened in 1884 (or 1892 if you believe Wikipedia trumps all other references)
“I don’t know how the people movers that connect Heathrow’ s T5 to its satellites are powered,”.
Bombadier Innovia technology. The guide rail is also an electrical pickup. As they are rubber-tyred, they could be considered to be related to trolleybuses.
The Stansted ones use the same technology, and include switching from one track to another, which would be difficult to arrange with cable traction.
The nearest cable-hauled railway to London that I know of is the Hill Railway (a funicular) at Legoland Windsor. Most roller-coasters also use cable traction for the uphill stretch.
Do we have a term for the people who speculate on types of technology used on various schemes – similar to “crayonista” for those who speculate about routes? If we can come up with one, say, “technolista”, the mods could “snip” them.
I was prompted to say this both by the suggestions of cable power and maglev. I’ll suggest vacuum to be sure of being snipped – partly because it’s bonkers and partly because it’s got nothing to do with HS2!
@Bel Eben: thanks. If Transport Scotland are not interested in GC gauge for the last mile, maybe we don’t need captive stock or expensive disruptive tunnelling under Camden/Primrose Hill? Just sayin’, tongue in cheek.
“The nearest cable-hauled railway to London that I know of is the Hill Railway (a funicular) at Legoland Windsor.”
Unless you count this
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2010/11/20/london-funicular-railway/
or indeed this
http://londonist.com/2015/10/video-a-ride-on-greenford-tube-s-new-incline-lift
Re 130
The term m*n*rail is similarly already banned from LR…
Re Timbeau,
Cable hauled – the original failed attempt on the City and South London line?
ngh,
It didn’t fail. It was superseded by a newer technology before it was ever installed. Unfortunately the tunnels weren’t redesigned to take this into account which is another story.
@ngh
or the Tower Subway
Cable haulage of HS2 is a little far fetched, although its 1830s predecessor did use cable haulage for the first mile out of Euston.
As for maglev, 45 years ago the government was giving serious consideration to a proposed high speed transport link between London, Manchester, and Scotland, with a maglev (or possiblly air-cushion) project led by Prof Eric Laithwaite being a front runner. In the end they went for a slower but cheaper alternative running on existing tracks – so no extra capacity. That alternative was the Advanced Passenger Train – and we all know what happened to that.
What goes around comes around, and a dedicated high speed link is once again being proposed, but air or electromagnets have been eschewed for the revolutionary (pun not intended, but kept in!) idea of an Fe/Fe interface.
Regarding OB’s tongue in cheek remark about captive stock. Manchester.
Of course, there is an tendency among defenders of HS2 to answer any criticism of any aspect, X say, of the project with “It’s not about X, it’s about Y”. X and Y can be places, routes or abstract nouns like “speed” or “capacity”.
But nevertheless, I reckon it’s about connecting 3 large English cities with initial letters near the middle of the alphabet. All else is add-on.
@timbeau – 30 May 1884 for the opening date of the Highgate Hill cable route. Ceremonial opening the day before by the Lord Mayor. 1892? Why does Wiki serve up such alternative – as you suspect – rubbish? The facts have long been published and there’s irrefutable evidence (eyewitness reports, local and national press BoT reports etc). [Sorry, rant over – but every time someone quotes Wikipaedia, we all ought to reach for the correct facts…]
Meanwhile back to HS2.
100andthirty: the common term is “gadgetbahn” which I think has been used here before. (Especially used for “Personal Rapid Transit” enthusiasts, but not exclusively.)
timbeau says “… the Advanced Passenger Train – and we all know what happened to that”
I suggest that there are two stories about “what happened to the Advanced Passenger Train”. One is that is was a brilliant concept forced to fail by political interference. Another is that it was an authentic white elephant which should never have been permitted off the drawing board. Yes another is that it is the direct ancestor of current tilting trains and much else on today’s railway, and work connected with it gave us the WCML that we have today. All right, three stories.
I suggest that here is neither the place for deciding between these narratives, putting forward others, or knocking the doubtless-flawed Wikipedia article about it. (Other online encyclopedias are available. Not).
Malcolm 12.43: Those HS2 defenders who can’t see the whole of what they’re looking at, perhaps. It was quite clear from the first announcement of HS2 in its current form* (2009 was it?) that it simultaneously offered three notable gains: (1) journey times, (2) capacity including that released on existing lines, (3) some new (or at least dramatically improved) journey opportunities – notably between the Midlands/North and Heathrow, via Crossrail even without the direct link. Since then the overall form of the HS2 proposal has varied barely one jot, and so – amazingly enough – the three potential benefits remain.
*To bring us back on topic, in the House of Commons debate at the time, Theresa Villiers (then shadow transport secretary) derided what she mockingly called “Wormwood Scrubs International” in comparison to the Conservatives’ then plans for a London-Heathrow-Birmingham-Manchester-Leeds high-speed rail route.
@Malcolm
“connecting 3 large English cities with initial letters near the middle of the alphabet. All else is add-on”
Quite so – including the add-on appendix to England’s second city (in size and alphabetically), and despite phase 1 getting no further than Lichfield (which I doubt was one of the cities you had in mind)
Technically, the three biggest cities in England are Birmingham, Leeds and Sheffield, although the twin cities of Manchester and Salford have a combined population bigger than Sheffield’s )
“All right, three stories”
not forgetting (all right, four stories – nobody expects the Spanish inquisition) the Class 91, aka Inter City 225, on the ECML.
@cent trente
“Do we have a term for the people who speculate on types of technology used on various schemes – similar to “crayonista” for those who speculate about routes?”
My suggestion is ‘technutopian’ – new transport technology that will solve (all) our transportation problems.
@ Bel Eben – The HS2 concept is very different to any other high speed railway operating in Europe, or indeed the world. I would suggest that, if HS2 goes ahead as proposed, it is likely to require largely bespoke equipment.
Are you referring to just the mix of rolling stock types or something else? It seems quite a statement to make and one that is rather worrying because bespoke equipment brings all sorts of issues. I’d hope that HS2 Ltd were going in precisely the opposite direction to buying bespoke equipment. That way financial madness and risk lies (IMO, of course).
“Very different”.
Sadly, no-one has invented a way to measure how different one project is from another. We can tell (because they say so) that HS2 designers have been striving to minimise the differences. We know that some differences are forced upon the project by unalterable circumstances (like the whereabouts of cities and, notably, existing loading gauges).
Whether the outcome is indeed “very different” is probably an unhelpful question. It might form part of for-and-against discussion of the whole project, but we are not having that discussion here, and attempts to introduce it will be firmly sat-upon.
So long as the focus is kept on London, a related question of whether or not any avoidable differences have been designed in might be pertinent. (Avoidable, that is, by means other than scrapping the whole thing). Personally I have not noticed any, but I may be looking in the wrong place (as I often do).
@ Malcolm – for the sake of clarity I am not seeking to broaden the debate. I was just rather struck by the comment and was wondering what I had missed in the discussion and the articles. HS2 doesn’t seem (to me) that different to any other HS railway but I have not studied HS2 in great detail hence my question.
Is HS2 different? The gauge complies with GC. The desire to have a new additional standard for platform height for level boarding is not really much different and makes no significant difference to the design of most modern high speed trains. The top speed is what most train designers are aiming for, although it’s higher than most existing European systems. The signalling will be compatible with ETCS standards. The OLE system is compatible with UK standard, and those of France and Spain. The seating arrangements are neither here nor there, as every train ever specified seems to have variable seating layouts. All this applies only to the captive sets, except the signalling and OLE of course.
What this means for London is debatable, except that it will dictate tunnel sizes and station dimensions, and will not preclude an HS1-HS2 link sometime in the future, with the possibility of LUL style platform humps on HS1!
(@Walthamstow Writer:) “Are you referring to just the mix of rolling stock types or something else?”
In general, high speed railways tend to be low capacity systems. For example, HS1 is, in essence, a standard ‘low-intensity’ ligne à grande vitesse.
But the HS2 proposition (18-trains-per-hour, running at 330-km-or-more) is not found anywhere in the world. That complexity goes some way towards explaining HS2’s high kilometric cost.
[This is starting to veer off the HS2 in London topic. LBM]
Fandroid says “… will not preclude an HS1-HS2 link sometime in the future…”.
I thought that passive provision was still intended at OOC for such a link (in the form of a short single line stub tunnel), but I am wondering if I imagined it, as I can now find no reference to that.
@timbeau
“Technically, the three biggest cities in England are Birmingham, Leeds and Sheffield, although the twin cities of Manchester and Salford have a combined population bigger than Sheffield’s)”
— Surely it is the populations of the conurbations that are the relevant measure here. City boundaries are arguably historical accidents. The City of Birmingham is much bigger than the City of Manchester, but their respective conurbations are pretty much the same size as each other.
Please don’t let’s get too deep into comparing populations of various parts of the UK by various methods. If it is necessary for a point about HS2 in London, OK, but otherwise it can get too much like the famous pin-head-dancing angels.
@Bel Eben – well, the last LGV I worked on (the line to Tours and Bordeaux) was planned for 24 tph (of which two were “recovery paths”) and the French seemed to think that was normal…
The claim that Bel Eben was reporting (“The number of trains proposed per hour is far higher than in other European states “) seems to have been made in a Guardian article on 25th September 2011. Perhaps French frequencies have increased since then, or maybe the Grauniad had got it slightly wrong.
@Malcolm
“comparing populations of various parts of the UK ”
apologies for the digression, sparked by my wondering which “three cities near the middle of the alphabet” you had in mind as being the principal raisons d’etre of HS2. Since Birmingham clearly wasn’t one of them, I assume the third was Leeds or possibly Liverpool or Newcastle.
timbeau: OK, I’ll come quietly – the digression was (at least in part) my fault. I was meaning Leeds, but let’s (try to) get back to London…
@Malcolm: I thought that passive provision was still intended at OOC for such a link (in the form of a short single line stub tunnel), but I am wondering if I imagined it, as I can now find no reference to that
I was trying to work this out when trying to count the number of platforms to be built at OOC. The problem is that the HS2 Bill appears to include powers to build the complete link, but I believe the Secretary of State has indicated he will direct HS2 not to build it. But the question of exactly which bits wouldn’t get built didn’t seem to be defined anywhere that I could find.
I believe that there is also meant to be some kind of passive provision at the other end of the station for a future Crossrail-WCML link as well.
number of trains proposed per hour is far higher than in other European states
There’s an important adjective in that phrase given that the most intensely used high speed rail lines are in Asia.
Perhaps French frequencies have increased since then, or maybe the Grauniad had got it slightly wrong
I think Graham H is quoting the design headway – ie the maximum number of trains the line was designed for, not the actual number that run at the moment, which is obviously a commercial decision for SNCF (who are a bit conservative, in that they only like to run trains that they can fill).
@IanJ – yes, I had similar doubts, but I was responding here to the claim that the design standards of HS2 were something extraordinary – which, in terms of frequency, they are not! (As you say, some Asian routes actually run to these sorts of frequency – and some European routes are designed for that sort of frequency but see a single train a day – Jaen, anyone?). [By way of digression – sorry, mods – and unamusingly, I had the pleasure of advising some banks who were being asked to fund a highspeed line in Saudi – the French pitch was simply to build it as if it was the LGV PSE complete for 24 tph, and seemingly with winterisation and all. The Saudis needed nothing like that at all, but since the French paid the largest sum to the project “sponsors”, that was what they got…]
@IanJ
AP3 (Additional Provision 3) shows some plans in the Camden area with work 1/21 (the HS2-HS1 link) removed. Work 1/21 is still shown in the updated plans for Old Oak Common, in the earlier July 2015 AP2 documents, however it will not be built. IF HS2 chose to keep to the centre lines of the main railway as shown in the plans, then in theory there is still room at OOC for 6 HS platforms, although it has only intended to use 4 (2 each way) for the ‘main line’ and 2 for the HS2-HS1 line. Docs are available in profusion here: https://www.gov.uk/government/latest?departments%5B%5D=high-speed-two-limited. Warning: the relevant AP2 plans are 141MB in size, in here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/additional-provision-2-july-2015-plans-and-sections
The new GW/Crossrail up relief line will have a flyover west of OOC station, over the spur to the NNML which will be converted to three sidings for Crossrail trains to reverse on. Two of those lines would be used for WCML-Crossrail trains if that line were built.
I have re-read the article and looked at all the diagrams and I am still confused about the HS1/HS2 link. Where would the junction with the line into Euston be (have been)? Underground, near the Roundhouse? The mention of two platforms at OOC for the link suggests the divergence would be here, requiring an extra tunnel under NW London.
@timbeau
Yes at OOC. There would been a single-track bi-directional tunnel between OOC and Primrose Hill, surfacing alongside the old Primrose Hill station and joining the NLL near the Roundhouse. The tunnel would generally have been in-between the two main HS tunnels. A separate island platform in-between the main HS platforms was intended at OOC, capable of passenger segregation for border controls.
(@Graham H:) “well, the last LGV I worked on (the line to Tours and Bordeaux) was planned for 24 tph (of which two were “recovery paths”) and the French seemed to think that was normal…”
HS1 was ‘planned for’ 20 trains per hour, in the sense that it was signalled with that capability. But the nominality and the actuality, are poles apart. The intensity of use on any part of HS1 is nothing like 20 trains per hour, nor could it be.
Bel Eben says “The intensity of use on any part of HS1 is nothing like 20 trains per hour, nor could it be.” (My emphasis).
And the reason why it could not be?
I don’t wish to unduly prolong this matter of how exceptional HS2 might be world-wide. It may have to be a claim that we leave on the table, neither proved nor disproved. It will probably make little or no difference to the impact on London anyway. So Bel Eben is welcome to answer my question above, or to let it lie.
@Bel Eben:
I see only three “innovations” with HS2, and even those barely count as such:
1. Provision for 400 km / hr running for the track itself. This is basic future-proofing; this new railway is going to be around for generations. (This is actually a very conservative number; the world speed record for High Speed trains is already well above this.)
2. Level boarding of trains. Possibly. If they can get it into the TSIs.
If not, it’s not clear whether HS2 Ltd. will require level boarding anyway, regardless of whether it’s adopted as a standard. The Rail Vehicle Accessibility Regulations would presumably apply to HS2, which makes level boarding effectively a legal obligation given that this is an entirely new railway, built from scratch, in the 21st century. (And “Step-free access” is also a very big thing for Transport for London; it would be rather embarrassing if the only station on Crossrail that didn’t fully support it was Old Oak Common!)
Note that the use of “classic-compatible” and “captive” trains is not new: HS1’s original rolling stock spent a fair chunk of its life trundling over Victorian railway lines into Waterloo International. Their new e320 stock (a.k.a. Class 374) is a “captive” train built to the largest suitable continental gauge, as they won’t be wandering onto the UK’s classic network ever again.
3. HS2 uses the UK’s novel “K-TE”* gauge, which is definitely a first for High Speed Rail, though not for the UK.
* (“Knee-Tremblingly Expensive”)
[Please keep replies to this relevant to HS2 in London. LBM]
@Malcolm
20tph means an arrival or departure at St Pancras every 90 seconds. From a standing start, a Eurostar will take almost that long just to clear the platform, let alone negotiate the station throat. Even allowing for the fact that Javelins are shorter, and some parallel moves are possible, I doubt 20tph would be achievable.
A quick scan of the relevant timetables suggests it currently handles about 12tph, of which most are Javelins.
HS2 is apparently planned for 400m trains, which is slightly longer than a 373 at 376m.
timbeau: You’ve convinced me. HS1 cannot manage 20 tph, due to St Pancras (and maybe other factors). I want to wonder how close it came during the Olympics, but I won’t, as LBM is looking.
@ Malcolm
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? I think we have our answer. 😀
THC
@timbeau:
I distinctly recall talk of additional High Speed rail infrastructure when HS1 (or “the Channel Tunnel Rail Link”, as it was back then) was grinding through the usual planning processes. A fair bit of crayoning was involved, but there was definitely an implication that HS1 should be designed on the assumption that future High Speed infrastructure would be connected to it at some point.
Besides, I don’t think it actually cost more for the signalling.
So! If St Pancras is the limiting factor for capacity there is room on the line for more trains if linked to HS2.
HS1’s signalling supports three minute headways, which is essential for 20tph running. Not only does it support three minute headways, but these are used every day on the HS1 timetable. 9O46 and 9I52 to Paris and Brussels leave at 1801 and 1804, respectively. The reasoning for this is that the mixture of traffic on HS1 and particularly through the Channel Tunnel means that to maximise capacity, trains with the same speeds and stopping patterns are flighted together.
The three minute spacing is also the reason why the track layout at Birmingham Interchange and the delta junction is so complicated. Non-stop trains heading for the North West won’t be affected by trains slowing down to call at Birmingham Interchange or slowing down to take the junction towards Toton.
Isn’t HS1’s capacity also limited by the fact that the Javelin only goes at 225km/h, and Eurostar at 300km/h?
@Malcolm and others
Not only does Javelin go slower than Eurostar, which is relevant east of Southfleet (the Waterloo junction) where 300 km/h is permitted, but west of Southfleet (230 km/h or less), there are more Javelins stopping and restarting at Ebbsfleet and Stratford Uninternational, so line capacity goes down if not every train does the same thing. Add to that, the Eurostar depot workings between St Pancras and Temple Mills.
Consequently, the optimal solution if you wanted to maximise tph west of Southfleet would be to slow down Eurostars to the average speed of the Javelin trains. It’s also the Javelins, via Southeastern accounting and Govt subsidy to them, which are paying for the bulk of the infrastructure, so that might not be an unreasonable position to adopt!
On that analysis, no reason why Eurostars shouldn’t call at Stratford (apart from the costs of extra Customs etc staff). But you won’t ever get 20 tph in passenger service unless all trains do the same thing, and there were no depot workings….
This may also help to understand why HS2 has refused to contemplate intermediate commuter stations on the HS2 main line.
@JR
“Javelins stopping and restarting at Ebbsfleet and Stratford Uninternational, so line capacity goes down if not every train does the same thing”
Mitigated partly by having separate tracks at the stations so they can at least be overtaken, (and you don’t get Eurostars whizzing past crowded platforms at Mach 0.2) but the tracks are not long enough for a javelin to be going at full speed when it branches off the main line and has resumed full speed before rejoining it.
@ Timbeau – there are, indeed, some speed differences at Stratford International. I’m such a saddo but I do love watching the Eurostars hurtle through at full whack. Must go and have another ride on HS1 sometime – haven’t been on a Javelin since the first day of service to Ebbsfleet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjAW7-9OGwA (25 mins total duration).
Anomnibus 13.04: If I may lapse into speculation, and as I mentioned above (or was it on the other thread?), I suspect that level boarding is rather important for achieving the necessary dwell time to run the planned service intensity, and that this particularly applies at OOC* as the intermediate stop that will have the most intense passenger throughput.
I further suspect that the dwell time consideration extends into the interior layout of the trains, effectively ruling out double decker trains, and by the same token TGV-style one-door-per-car arrangements (and putting a bit of a question mark over any 3+2 seating). As far as I am aware, the only HS train on the market with level boarding at Euro-standard 760mm is the Talgo and I presume that there is no great desire to build a railway that is only suited to one builder’s products, while 1,150mm (or thereabouts) seems to have multiple potential suppliers.
*Seamlessly back on topic!
Caspar Lucas speculates that level boarding may be necessary for dwell times at OOC.
We’d probably all like to see level boarding, for many reasons, but including the one of fairness and dignity for wheelchair users. If extra reasons are necessary, I suspect that Anomnibus’ suggestion of legal necessity (because it’s a ‘brand new railway’) may not quite succeed, as integration with the existing railway, and through compatible trains to many unrebuilt stations, are key design requirements of the new line. So if we wanted to keep steps, we could probably “get away with it” by citing such compatibility issues.
So as we don’t (I think) want to keep steps, the dwell time issue which Caspar raises could be quite handy.
Don’t tell anyone but there is a coffee shop at Stratford International that offers excellent views of trains on HS1 below with stopping Javelins and through Eurostars on different tracks . While tracks with platforms for use by Eurostars have lain largely unused except during 2012 when temporary humps were installed to allow javelins to stop .
If HS2 is eventually linked to HS1 then trains be they domestic or regional Eurostars might use Stratford International instead of Euston . Given the scrapping of the originally proposed link now means we have a blank piece of paper to create a proper link .
(@Melvyn:) “If HS2 is eventually linked to HS1 then trains be they domestic or regional Eurostars might use Stratford International instead of Euston . Given the scrapping of the originally proposed link now means we have a blank piece of paper to create a proper link.”
Stratford International is a massive concrete box, surrounded by development. I wouldn’t really call that “a blank piece of paper to create a proper link” on.
(@NotATrainspotter:) “HS1’s signalling supports three minute headways, which is essential for 20tph running. Not only does it support three minute headways, but these are used every day on the HS1 timetable. 9O46 and 9I52 to Paris and Brussels leave at 1801 and 1804, respectively. “
Dispatching trains at 1801 and 1804 is not the same thing at all as dispatching trains at 1801, 1804, 1807, 1810, 1813…
Melvyn: no crayoning on the blank paper please.
Given OOC platforms will be 2 per direction (ignoring mothballed HS1 link ones), trains will be able to stop for longer than the 3 minutes between paths, though obviously not as long as 6 minutes (as the train 2 behind will want to pull into the platform then).
The boarding/disembarking will mostly be one way (ie not many people will use HS2 to get between Euston and OOC), which will help matters.
@melvyn
Given the scrapping of the originally proposed link now means we have a blank piece of paper to create a proper link.”
@bel Eben
I wouldn’t really call [Stratford International] “a blank piece of paper ”
I think he was talking about where the link would go between OOC and Stratford.
There are already three direct routes connecting one to t’other, via Hampstead Heath, Primrose Hill, and Marble Arch, soon to be augmented by a fourth. Unfortunately none of them are to GC gauge, and they have inconvenient stopping services on them.
The HS1-2 link was scrapped for apparently four reasons. (1) Not required, (2) too expensive, (3) insufficient future-proof capacity, and (4) disruption to Overground through Camden Road. A new design might overcome one, or perhaps even two of these snags, but hitting three, let alone four of them seems quite improbable.
I suspect that Euston to OOC on HS2 could be quite a popular short cut, but judging by St Pancras to Stratford I, it is likely to be discouraged by price, if not outright banned.
Anomnibus……Rail Vehicle Accessibility Regulations don’t and won’t apply to HS2. RVAR were retained solely for those railways that are exempt from the Interoperability Regulations. The applicable requirement is the TSI for Persons of Reduced Mobility. As I’ve said before, the mechanisms (contraptions might be a better term) used on many European stations make UK’s boarding ramps seem positively efficient and dignified, and level access would be positive boon.
Malcolm on reasons not to link HS1 and HS2:
These reasons seem somewhat illogical. I understand the point about Camden Road.
But if expected future demand is low (‘not required’) it is hard to believe that it is also high (‘insufficient future[-proof] capacity’).
It seems that the link was developed to keep costs down (single track, tunnel only to nearest useful existing railway) only to be turned down for the consequences of those design decisions.
And, I suspect, for reasons of domestic politics.
The consequences of not linking HS1 and HS2 seem to include cementing London’s “uniquely well-connected” status among British cities & city-regions, so far as trains to Paris, Brussels and beyond are concerned. Opinions may differ as to whether this is a “good thing”.
I think London benefits hugely from its international connections and see no reason why Birmingham & probably Leeds Manchester Salford and Sheffield would not also benefit if they had better international rail connections.
OB: The reasons are contradictory, that, in a way, was my point. Different people believe in different combinations of the reasons. The demand, in particular, is expected to be low at first, but ultimately higher after some vaguely-defined change in circumstances.
But since any link is going to cost big extra money, and politicians are already getting nervous about the costs of the HS2 we are now expecting, discussion of any link at all may be premature at this stage.
It’s not just price that deters people from using HS1 from StPInt to Stratford Int. It’s that speed v frequency thing again. It may take only six minutes, but with up to 20 minutes between trains on HS1, the 16 minute journey (TfL figure) via Liverpool Street looks a safer bet. Add to this that for most people the South Eastern platforms at St Pancras and at Stratford are less conveniently located than their Tube equivalents, and it becomes apparent that over short distances speed is not king.
timbeau: You may be right that frequency would deter use of high speed STP-SFA even if the price didn’t. But frequency will not be enough to deter EUS-OOC, so I think it will have to be either tolerated (with dwell-time consequences) or price-discouraged.
Re dwell times etc at OOC, is it proposed for HS2 to have platform-edge doors a la shinkansen? Having people queuing in the right place, particularly if the passenger information system is smart enough to specify the door to be used for getting to a your reserved seat, and to indicate through which doors unreserved seats are available, would surely help speed things up.
Malcolm, quite so, hence my second post. I wish I’d said ‘contradictory’ rather than ‘illogical’, but it’s late.
OB: Yes, a rail connection to Paris or Brussels would benefit any town, or indeed village, in Britain. The issue is whether enough people from that town would use it to enable a sufficiently frequent service, so that enough people will use it! Circular, I know.
The calculations which have been done seem to suggest that, even from Manchester or Leeds, insufficient people will use it to justify providing the service, before you even start to allow for the cost of the rail connections which would make it possible.
Throw in the border control issues, which add extra cost, and also mean that seats on a MAN-Paris train not required for through passengers cannot be used for MAN to London, and you have a recipe for pouring money down the drain. And it seems to be generally considered that such border control issues will only get worse within current planning horizons.
Which means that even the enthusiasts for an HS1-2 connection have been reduced to summoning up other flows to help justify the cost. Leeds to Ashford, for instance, or perhaps a bit more plausibly (but not much) Birmingham to Stratford International.
@OB
We have had this HS1-HS2 link discussion at length in another thread. It covered all of the points Malcolm stated.
Nevertheless we are not keen to rehash this discussion.
LBM
LBM: Some of it was here: https://www.londonreconnections.com/2014/coming-across-rail-turmoil/#comment-255045 . Though that does include references to it all having been discussed before. Yes, we should try to avoid going over the same ground again and again, but on the other hand sometimes brief summaries can be helpful. (Though maybe this was not one of those times, and/or the summary was not brief enough).
@LBM/Malcolm – Maybe it was this 2011 piece:
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2011/borisaghast-getting-the-most-from-hs2s-route-out-of-london/
@Malcolm: I suspect that Euston to OOC on HS2 could be quite a popular short cut, but judging by St Pancras to Stratford I, it is likely to be discouraged by price, if not outright banned.
I agree, but if (a big if) the WCML-Crossrail link ever happens, I can imagine lobbying from WCML commuters who work around Euston to be allowed to use it as compensation for losing their direct service.
Ian J: me too. However there will only be room for them in the morning peak if a significant number of inbound passengers get off. I’m pre-supposing HS2 is as popular as its promoters hope, or an operational decision is taken to run full (ish) trains.
The evening peak problem is not symmetrical, but not insignificant either, I guess.
“OB: Yes, a rail connection to Paris or Brussels would benefit any town, or indeed village, in Britain. The issue is whether enough people from that town would use it to enable a sufficiently frequent service, so that enough people will use it! Circular, I know.” – Malcolm
If border control took place on board as used to happen per-Schengen on many cross-border services in Continental Europe, I think a great many cross-London international services could be run. The key would be to have just one or two services a week. That’s what airlines do. It is also what Eurostar has done with weekly ski trains.
“The HS1-2 link was scrapped for apparently four reasons. (1) Not required, (2) too expensive, (3) insufficient future-proof capacity, and (4) disruption to Overground through Camden Road. A new design might overcome one, or perhaps even two of these snags, but hitting three, let alone four of them seems quite improbable.” – Malcolm
Since capacity can be paid for, much of that reduces to a single reason – cost. However, the cost argument presented by HS2 is somewhat disingenuous because they don’t consider whether running some – services over a link and terminating in Kent (perhaps serving Stratford International along the way) might reduce the cost of the Euston rebuild by reducing the platform requirements there.
Without an HS2-HS1 link, the HS2 operator is likely to have a monopoly and won’t need to introduce services until confident they will be filled. A link would encourage competition from more operators (including non-UK operators). I suspect this might be the real reason we won’t get a link.
@Kate – even on the thesis that you could snip a couple of platforms off Euston (suggested saving £500m?) that would not go very far to financing a “useable” link (ie one that could offer capacity to take 1/3 of the HS2 service). As for operating costs, running on to Ashford (not too much capacity to turn a lot of tph at Stratford) adds another 150 miles to the round trip for an HS 2 diagram – at a cost of (a guess based on WCML costs ) £30/mile+ . Do you really think that Brum and Manchester will generate enough extra passengers to pay an extra £4500 per train to go to Ashford? (Here’s a hint – how frequent is the service between Manchester and any comparably sized /distanced town to Ashford – let’s be kind and say “Cardiff” – hourly – fills a three car most of whom are travelling somewhat shorter distances)
@Kate
The problem with running international trains from Manchester (or anywhere beyond London) is two-fold both generated by Border Force and/or security services. One is the passport control which, as you rightly say. in almost every other case of international trains takes place on the train, sometimes while stopped at a border station and, more frequently in Europe, while the train is on the move. Border Force have categorically refused to do this. The other, as pointed out by Malcolm, is the absolute refusal to allow domestic passengers to use an international train. Again, this restriction does not take place elsewhere, at least not in Europe. Put together the economics of anything going beyond London are completely shot.
quinlet
Translation:
1: A body of employees have categorically refused – i.e. Effectively threatened to strike if this “new” – actually old condition is imposed, & a tory guvmint stands idly by.
2: Complete paranoia, based on no evidence.
But, that’s politics for you, I’m afraid.
To add to what quinlet says, talk of persuading the border or security services to relax their rules is, in my opinion, totally pointless. If these things happen to change in the next few years, it will only be in the direction of getting worse.
To set against relaxed on-train checks in Europe (now or in the past), we should perhaps also bear in mind procedures entering and leaving Russia and other rather tenser frontiers. Passengers may not be obliged to leave the train, but the checks are done thoroughly and a bit scarily while the train stands in a border station for an hour or two. Trains can sometimes compete with air travel in this respect!
Greg: I don’t think the employees of the border service have any choice in the matter, they are doing exactly what the government (and many newspapers) want. But whatever the underlying cause is, we have our border “formalities”, and nothing we write here will change them.
Re Greg / Malcolm,
Quite simple – the Home office (and Treasury) won’t foot the huge extra staffing bill required to do this and the info is it the public domain…
(It needs lots more staff and their utilisation level drops significantly so is non starter for them) Do the 374s have the holding cells? (The 373s were designed pre-Schengen and have holding cells as the modelled number of potential individuals potentially detained was far smaller pre-Schengen).
I’m also not sure how reliably a live connection could be maintained to the central databases of any hand held devices used for passport checks – there is big reason they are fixed and the users have large monitors these days!
EPassport checking to reduce costs and queues would also go out the window!
International HS rail in Europe is probably heading to having security checks pre boarding at which point passport pre checking is very quick and easy!
Note the select committee’s criticism on numerous occasions of HO/ BF not monitoring people leaving the UK adequately.
With arrests in Birmingham of some associates of the Brussels – Paris group (at least 1 had visited Brum) anything that potentially makes it easier for less monitored travel is unlikely…
@Malcolm
“I suspect that Euston to OOC on HS2 could be quite a popular short cut”
The immediate Euston area is not a significantly greater generator of traffic than any other area of central London – most commuters into Euston change to other modes rather than walk to their destinations – and if you walk for more than fifteen minutes in an direction from Euston you will be closer to a station which already has a direct service to NW10. (Regents Park, Tottenham Court Road, Camden Road…..) With XR2, Euston to Old Oak will be only a change and three stops from Euston itself. change
@timbeau
HS2 Ltd and TfL have not modelled any passenger flows travelling on HS2 trains just for the short hop from Euston to OOC or v.v., therefore the implication is that this will be discouraged or barred by HS2 Ltd. However the flow might be useful for some inwards commuting to the OOC development lands (55,000 jobs expected there), so it can’t be ruled out from a review in due course. Imagine the fastest journey possible for someone commuting from Walthamstow to OOC by tube and HS, for example, as opposed to using Crossrail 1 ( where Victoria doesn’t meet Elizabeth ! )…
@ Malcolm – and yet I have survived unscathed the “on train” checks on Eurostar when I used it on the first day of public service, East German border checks when heading to West Berlin on international trains and even the nightmare, during the first Gulf War, of passing from Bulgaria to Turkey. Even the Swiss border / customs people were a bit scary on a through TGV to Lausanne. They don’t take any “prisoners” if they think people are breaching the customs rules – they gave some people on the train an incredibly hard time.
OK the massed paranoia of people, with their own agendas, has changed the political backdrop but on train checks are effective. I know we won’t get them in the UK and it’s immensely depressing.
Can we not have any more discussion of cross-boreder train travel, customs inspexions or Schengen rules, as we’ve gone through them a few times now. Unless of course these change AND there is an actual impact on travel through London.
“cross-boreder”
Boreder? We were bored of it last time it came up and now we’re boreder? (and so the moderators are getting cross)
@Mark
Yes, subliminal messages and behavioural nudges…
Even ignoring the boreder checks, the traffic for a (say) Manchester/Leeds-Paris service is undermined by the low frequency it can pull and that it will need to stop pretty much every stop (not Gare des Betteraves!) en route to increase ridership to get to a useable frequency (say 1tp2h).
These two issues are massively exacerbated by the distance between Euston and St Pancras being barely more than a train length, and frequent and fast trains between these two termini and a wider range of Northern/Continental destinations than direct services ever could do.
An HS1-HS2 link would be most useful for Javelins from Kent to OOC for the interchange with Crossrail/Overground (for Heathrow, West London, and parts of the Home Counties). The money would be better off spent providing a way to get HS2 passengers at Euston to St Pancras, without much time or effort on their part, for HS1 and (more importantly) Thameslink.
Si says “An HS1-HS2 link would be most useful for Javelins from Kent to …”
If a link was built for international trains, then javelins from Kent could also use it, and might provide some useful connections. Equally if it was built for domestic traffic, it might (subject to any border control difficulties) be useful for occasional through international trains.
But neither category of trains can pay for its building. International ones because of paucity of demand (and there is probably no money). Domestic trains, well there is probably no money there either, but if cash were found to dig a tunnel of the required length, there would probably be better places to dig the tunnel, to meet some more pressing transport need (crayons not invited).
So, tantalising as the propinquity of the two lines is, they will probably not be linked for a good few decades, if ever.
@Malcolm 🙂
Malcolm
You say domestic through trains would not cover the cost of building the link but since nobody believes trains on the rest of HS2 will pay for its capital cost, what’s the difference?
The answer is probably politics rather than cost and I don’t think we should get conned into seeing it as a cost argument. It seems to me that the business cases for the HS1 and Heathrow link are required to be more robust than the business case for the main capital spend when surely it ought to be the other way around.
Kate: It could not be the other way round. You could not build add-ons to HS2 if HS2 had not been built.
This argument is also another example of the “sunk costs fallacy”. If you are right that building HS2 is a waste of money (not that I accept that), then wasting even more money to enhance it is, err, daft.
I do agree that the answer is politics, in the sense that, if politicians so chose (and could persuade enough of the public), they could disregard the cost argument and build it anyway. But it does not look as if they are about to do any such thing.
It’s not a sunk cost fallacy because HS2 has not been built yet.
A good example is that the decision to have some captive trains has been taken as a given rather than cost justified to the degree the links are being scrutinised. The alternative would be to operate only classic-compatible trains at outset and build platforms to that life with passive provision for captive trains at a later date.
Of course, without captive trains the headline speed would be lower – politics.
It’s smoke and mirrors.
@Kate – “You say domestic through trains would not cover the cost of building the link but since nobody believes trains on the rest of HS2 will pay for its capital cost, what’s the difference?” The difference is this: the (apparent) justification for HS2 has to do with capacity and regional development; applying the same tests to the Link wouldn’t produce the same results by any means. If on the other hand, you argued, as you do, that the Link should be wrapped up in the whole HS 2 scheme, not only would the Link’s costs dilute the performance of core HS2, but why stop there ? Why not add in all sorts of goodies onto the core HS2 scheme and make its SCBA performance carry a whole raft of marginally relevant but poorly performing schemes?
@Malcolm – absolutely.
My point was that international trains (while they could use such a link) are a side show for the HS1-HS2 link – it’s not where the bulk of passengers using such a link would come from.
I totally agree that a link won’t happen, hence why I said the money (well, a small fraction of it – we don’t need multi-billion pound projects when £10-15m is more than enough) is better spent providing a decent link between Euston and St Pancras for easy transfer between services at those stations.
@Kate “since nobody believes trains on the rest of HS2 will pay for its capital cost”
Really? Am I nobody? It will take decades, to be sure, but we are talking about routes that are the really profitable ones for franchises that currently pay the Government premiums. And we’re looking at making the cost for the operator cheaper per passenger – OK, they would pay more in energy costs (as e=mv^2, rather than proportional to speed), but the journey time savings reduces the much more important staffing costs per journey, and the more capacious captive trains increases the number of passengers on each journey (well, potential passengers – that there’s spare capacity that would mean more advance fares available, and that it is faster, would be where the increase in demand comes from on top of the pre-existing rate of increase in demand).
Plus there’s side benefits like regional development, etc that Graham H mentions that will provide benefits that outweigh the costs, as this is a publicly-financed scheme, rather than private enterprise that can only rely on the fare box for return on investment.
@Si – I suspect you don’t quite appreciate the financing mountain that HS2 Ltd will have to climb to service its capex. If the route is privately financed, the total annual cash flow will have to be of the order of 20-25% of the total initial capital spend – that’s £10-12bn – equivalent to the total turnover of the entire UK railway system. No amount of growth is going to raise that in short order. Financed by the taxpayer,the sum required is still going to be about half that – still equal to the total fares income of the national railway system.
Opex would be in addition to that . The bulk of the opex will emphatically not be ontrain staff but track maintenance, rolling stock maintenance, energy and station running costs, and so on. Typical operating costs are thought to be around £30/milefor HS2 services- say £6000 for a run to Manchester, of which ontrain staff (5 in number perhaps) will between them account for perhaps 4 hours each – 20 hours of time in total – @£25/hr cost, that looks to me to be about £500 – a trivial proportion of the total cost.
Payment of a premium by a franchise is no indication of actual profitability because of the way track access charges and NR direct subsidy is handled. Possibly only two franchises cover both their own costs and pay enough to cover their full NR costs as well. The great bulk of the system loses money.
Doubling the cost of the present system requires much more than twice the revenue to balance the books. However, HS2 has to fish in the same pool as every other TOC, and that pool will not be expanding fast enough.
As they say, “never ask a question to which you don’t know the answer…”
[Without totally chopping discussion of overall HS2 finances, could I remind everyone that the article, and the discussion, are intended to be concentrating on the London-related issues. So it might be best if we try to generally treat most of this stuff (fascinating though it is) as a background given, rather than going too far into it here. That does not mean that this should necessarily be the last comment on the matter, but perhaps it could be one of the last few… Malcolm]
@Si
” e=mv^2 ”
Kinetic energy was 1/2 mv^2 when I went to school, but I suppose that’s inflation.
At high speeds aerodynamic drag force is the principal factor the motors have to work against, which actually increases with the CUBE of the velocity. (You need to double the power to achieve a 25% increase in speed)
Of course, the faster you go, the less time you need to be drawing that power, so the energy expenditure to cover a given distance is indeed proportional to the square of the speed.
@ timbeau
“Kinetic energy was 1/2 mv^2 when I went to school, but I suppose that’s inflation.”
Either that, or a mixup with E=mc^2 (Einstein). A famous formula but it ignores kinetic energy.
@ Albert JP
Two different things – E=mc^2 however fast it is moving, if at all.
And v < c for any non-zero mass. (As Einstein tells us that KE tends to infinity as v approaches c)
[Please, no more Border Agency comments. It’s been done to death on the aforementioned threads. LBM]
@ timbeau, yes I know (I study physics). A moving object’s energy with Einstein is E=mc^2/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2). If you set v to 0 you get mc^2, which makes clear that massive objects have rest energy. Hence this E=mc^2 simplification is not useful if you’re interested in motion.
[And that’s enough physics. Obviously much more could be said about all the important aspects of physics that have been touched on. But it will not be said here. (And if it is, it will be immediately removed). Malcolm]
Well, the article is about High Speed!
Graham H 22 April 2016 at 13:50
“never ask a question to which you don’t know the answer…”
is what lawyers say. That is why lawyers have influenced the world less than scientists.
@Graham H:
“Why not add in all sorts of goodies onto the core HS2 scheme and make its SCBA performance carry a whole raft of marginally relevant but poorly performing schemes?”
They’ve done exactly that with the Euston rebuild. Network Rail were planning to rebuild the station before HS2 was on the table. If memory serves, the HS2 announcement was made almost at the eleventh hour, just before NR were about to commit to their original project.
As if by magic, the rebuild rapidly became HS2’s problem, instead of Network Rail’s.
To paraphrase Mr. H. Simpson: “Politics! The cause of, and the wrong answer to all of our problems!”
@Anomnibus – of course, every scheme promoter tries to get away with it and everyone holding the purse strings tries to deconstruct the proposal to ensure that their money gets the best vfm. The Great Game… Mr Pareto rules OK!
@Alan griffiths – an interesting claim; did you have a metric in mind?
“Why not add in all sorts of goodies onto the core HS2 scheme and make its SCBA performance carry a whole raft of marginally relevant but poorly performing schemes?”
It’s not just Euston. HS2 doesn’t need OOC in the way that OOC regeneration needs HS2 yet that cost was loaded into HS2 as well.
@Kate – Yes, the politicians will always try for this sort of slipstreaming, whereas the professional appraisers try and cut back the schemes to what is germane to delivering the stated objectives. Indeed,in this particular case,it could well be argued that the OOC stop will have a negative effect on the HS2 objectives – as now stated to be about capacity, or perhaps regional development in the North. Quis custodiet and all that…
Inner suburban stops for long distance trains (eg Old Oak Common on HS2) just don’t seem to work well. Look at Eurostar Stratford, a real sop to politicians which the operator (sensibly) just refused to use. Outer suburban stops like Ebbsfleet or Watford Junction make much more sense, for those travelling to them by road from points which would take maybe a couple of hours more to get into Central London and out again.
A further issue with inner stops on departing unreserved trains, notable at the likes of Clapham Junction, or West Ham on the Southend line, is that while they may be practical on inward journeys to connect onto more local trains in various directions, when returning those boarding may well find all seats occupied and have to stand for the lengthy journey. Making their way to the start point gives them a much better chance of avoiding this.
One of the operators on HS1 (Eurostar), with a typical journey time of 3 hours-ish, and with border formality complications, refuses to use the Stratford International stop. The other (Southeastern) with typical journey times of under 2 hours, does stop there.
Granted, some of the HS2 destinations will be 3 hours-ish, but none of them will have border complications. One important one is under one hour, never mind 2. It is not known whether the trains will be all-reserved-seats, but that is possible.
With the intensive service planned for HS2, it is considered to be impossible to stop some of the trains at OOC, it has to be all or none. The effect of a stop there on the journey time to Euston is comparatively small (as the trains have not got up to full speed), whereas as stopping at a hypothetical Denham stop would cost more time, would require enormous car parks and road access, and would do little to relieve Euston, or provide convenient access to Heathrow, Canary Wharf or the City.
@Malcolm :
“It is not known whether the trains will be all-reserved-seats, but that is possible.”
Reserved seats for passengers boarding at OOC having come from Heathrow is a nonsense. If I have flown in from Los Angeles and am travelling to Birmingham, I have no idea to within an hour or two when I might actually make it to OOC. Needing a reserved seat, and having to predict exactly which train, on a service to Birmingham operating at almost Metro frequency, is just not going to work. Nor are 60-second stops where passengers, with heavy bags, are going up and down the platform looking for a specific carriage.
If a stop at Denham requires “enormous car parks” it is not then apparent how it nevertheless does little to relieve Euston. Whatever are the enormous number of those arriving by car then doing? Trainspotting?
@Mr Beckton
if 10 trains an hour were to stop at Denham and 10 passengers got onto each one, you would need a station car park in excess of 1000 spaces, which, by anyone’s standard is enormous. Yet the 10 passengers per train would have little noticeable impact on reducing congestion at Euston.
Mr Beckton: A good point about reserved seats. Clearly, if they are required, then the system would have to be similar to TGVs in France, where, if I understand it correctly, reservations are required but are obtainable (when available) from machines at the starting station – right up to a few minutes before departure.
Malcolm
Similar “restrictions” apply on at least some of the German ICE services.
Graham H 23 April 2016 at 08:41
– an interesting claim; did you have a metric in mind?
Just the grand sweep of human history.
@Alan griffiths -not a useful measure, then. Hollywood would like it as the basis for a movie spectacular, however.
Graham H 25 April 2016 at 13:25
I suggest complaining he number of new products and services created by Engineers, with Lawyers.
Quite apart from the fact that seeking old answers never answers new questions.
Eh?
@ Mr Beckton 24Apr 2148
Seat reservations can be flexible if required and so it is possible to have a system where they can be made or changed more or less up until time of departure. Having a gate system such as Eurostar allows the rail operator to know who has boarded and can therefore automatically release unclaimed seats for rebooking.
Having seat reservations avoids overcrowding and allows much faster boarding and alighting, as well as giving a much better on board ambience.
Finding one’s seat should also be a simple process. HS2 trains will all be a common type. It is therefore easy to have signage at each station, in particular marked on the platform surface where each carriage door will be and so you go straight to the appropriate mark. JR have been managing to do this on the Shinkansen (as well as ordinary lines) for years.
@james Bunting – until you have intermediate stops at which people can reserve up to the moment of boarding – Cross Country do that and it sometimes requires punters who sat in an unreserved seat to get up and stand when the seat is reserved “under them” subsequently to their departure.. Useful, popular etc?
And gates are so good, too.
Graham: I guess the Cross Country situation arises when you have a mixture of reserved and unreserved passengers: and it has happened to me in Germany too. But it will not arise if no-one is allowed on the train without a reservation. (And if the software performs perfectly, of course, and no-one sits in the wrong seat).
@Malcolm Does SouthEastern have any choice as to whether they stop at Stratford? Or is it a franchise requirement? Do we have any numbers on how many passengers use that stop?
I would also note that Eurostar have been steadily removing *all* intermediate stops – few of their trains now stop at Ebbsfleet, Ashford, Calais or Lille. I would think HS2 will face similar constraints. Certainly I would bet a substantial sum that they won’t get anything like 1/3 of London passengers using OOC.
@Malcolm – indeed so, although I think we might all regret to the move to the reservation-only railway (almost as restrictive and customer-unfriendly as the recent Swedish move to smart-phone only ticketing…)
@Imm
As a regular user of South Eastern High Speed services, it’s clear to me that Stratford does very good business with maybe as many as a quarter to a third of the passengers on any train getting on at Stratford, especially in the peak hours. So I can’t see any desire to remove Stratford stops.
As far as Eurostar is concerned, they have a contractual issue at Ebbsfleet and a responsibility for filling acres of car parks. Privately I suspect that they were sold a pup with that one. At Ashford, on the other hand, the pressure is to increase stops. Note that the services to Disneyland and Marseille stop at Ashford, not Ebbsfleet, and Eurostar had to re-introduce Ashford stops on Bruxelles trains after having shifted all of them to Ebbsfleet when that opened.
@Graham H, @Malcolm
Last year, with an off peak flexible standard class ticket and no reservation, I boarded a Cross Country train near the beginning of it’s journey at Torquay and found an unreserved seat with a real glass window on the sea side in an apparently totally unreserved coach. By the time we had got to Newton Abbot, the reservation system had kicked into life however and a host of seats around me suddenly became reserved from various stations en route. Luckily my seat remained unbooked. When the guard came round shortly afterwards to check tickets, I commented on the events and he apologised for problems with the system on departure from Paignton. Whilst I had his attention I asked about the possibility of others booking my seat from under me. He said that had not happened to anyone so far in his experience (I think the ‘facility’ was fairly new at the time) In any case he invited me to reserve the seat I was already sitting in online which is possible apparently using their website or app if you already have a valid ticket. I pointed out I didn’t have a data enabled smartphone and I was loathed to have to pay at least £3 for wifi access via my laptop. He explained he couldn’t make the online reservation on my behalf (why?) but offered to move me to first class if I lost my seat. Unfortunately I never got my upgrade!
For what it’s worth, Ebbsfleet’s massive car-parking provision was only ever intended as an interim solution. Note the unusually wide bridge-like structure a little south of the station that currently seems to serve no purpose: this is intended to form part of a future pedestrianised street. The idea was that most people using the station in future will likely be new to the area, moving into the new developments with the express intention of commuting via HS1. (Remember: Crossrail 1 was already in the design stage at this point; even back then, it was felt that most existing Kent commuters would [prefer/use*] the much more direct service from Abbey Wood once that opened, leaving HS1’s via-Medway services with sufficient capacity at Ebbsfleet.)
Admittedly, I saw the original model on display in the nearby village of Springhead back in 2009, so the details may have changed since then, but I also recall seeing some additional “Fastrack” infrastructure around the station itself and in the new developments, while access would be improved to the older districts. Some of the parking will therefore disappear, as the public transport network will become more capillary, while some is expected to be replaced by multi-storey affairs if sufficient “park and ride” demand remains.
Basically, while it’s still a station in a field today, the complete development will see Ebbsfleet International almost entirely surrounded by new buildings.
E&OE, of course. [“errors and omissions excepted”, a disclaimer stating that information is not necessarily accurate. LBM]
[* I’m guessing at the missing word here. LBM]
@ Imm – the ORR station usage data (usual caveats apply) states that there were 1.074m entries and exits at Stratford International in 2014/15. I suspect that the introduction of PAYG may have bumped that up a little bit for 2015/16. Further more demonstrable demand growth will come from the wider redevelopment of the Olympic Park and Docklands as offices and other facilities are completed and occupied over the next few years.
@Malcolm: I guess the Cross Country situation arises when you have a mixture of reserved and unreserved passengers: and it has happened to me in Germany too. But it will not arise if no-one is allowed on the train without a reservation. (And if the software performs perfectly, of course, and no-one sits in the wrong seat).
The situation also needn’t arise if a coach is kept free specifically for non-reserved passengers, as on the Shinkansen in Japan. The two Shinkansen routes out of Tokyo station are examples of high speed trains with well-used inner urban stops a few minutes out from the terminus (Ueno to the north and Shinagawa to the south), both of which provide connections to airport services.
@lmm: Certainly I would bet a substantial sum that they won’t get anything like 1/3 of London passengers using OOC
HS2 believe this based on passenger modelling: what data is your belief based on?
Graham H
Off topic … then how the hell do you get on a Swedish train?
That sounds awfully complicated & difficult.
quinlet
Stratford-in-the-hole gets used a lot at weekends, too.
As for Eurostar, they have a reputation for “knowing what’s good for the customer” shall we say, & also believing that they are really an airline & that is the model to follow (shudder).
RE: Graham H, 25 April 2016 at 20:41
“(almost as restrictive and customer-unfriendly as the recent Swedish move to smart-phone only ticketing…)”
I have just booked a single 2nd class to Gothenburg for tomorrow, and I had the choice of getting the ticket sent to my smartphone, as an e-mail för printout or to collect a “paper ticket” from the machine at the station. So I wonder what move you are refering to?
Maybe some other operator than good old SJ? (Formaly known as “Swedish /state/ Railways”)
I suspect the technology exists now, and certainly by 2026, for an unreserved passenger to have a seat allocated as he/she went through the entry gate.
So, as well spitting your ticket back out, it’ll spit out another docket with your seat number on.
This would still work if ‘swiping’ in with a phone code or contactless.
So this would eliminate the chance or a Euston boarder having their seat booked out from under them by the time they got to OOC, as in the interesting scenario that Mark T outlined above.
Of course, this may be complicated for groups travelling together. But to be honest, even now, a family of four turning up without an intercity reservation already face a risk they won’t be able to sit together.
@TKO – as reported in the UK trade press (Modern Railways April), SJ’s plan is to phase out the paper option (to an unspecified timescale) on the grounds that it is less environmentally friendly. [And it’s easy to see where this might eventually go – who needs ticket machines when you can order your e-ticket via your smartphone? ]
@Greg T -indeed -unless you are prepared to have the Googazon “retail chip” implanted behind your left ear, you will soon die of hunger, cold and isolation. I jest,I hope.
@Ian J nothing so concrete; just an impression that nowhere else boasts that kind of usage for that kind of station on a long-distance line. I wanted to have my prediction in writing, so to speak. I hope to be proven wrong.
Graham: so ” the recent Swedish move” is actually the recently-announced Swedish aspiration? To be adopted in the recent future?
Depends on what you mean by “long distance”.. Birmingham is almost outer suburban territory (even more so when the journey times are reduced by HS2) and stations like Clapham Junction do pretty good business on the Portsmouth and Eastbourne lines, which are not that much less in distance. Not so many Southampton/Salisbury etc services call at platforms 7/9 as SWT would like, but that is a capacity issue, not because there isn’t the demand.
lmm: Most stops additional to a London terminus (use of some of which has historically been somewhat meagre) do not have the range of onward possibilities which OOC will have. It is really a new situation, so modelling may be the best available approach.
@Greg
I know what you mean about Eurostar. They have an unerring knack of combining the worst aspects of train travel with the worst aspects of flying.
@Malcolm -well, yes, with the present change announced as a first step towards the next one. I’m not sure of the semantic distinction you are drawing between a multi-stage policy and an aspiration but probably doesn’t matter.
@Malcolm:
Stratford? Clapham Junction? East Croydon? And those are just the first that sprang to mind.
lmm 25 April 2016 at 19:49
“@Malcolm Does SouthEastern have any choice as to whether they stop at Stratford? Or is it a franchise requirement?”
Franchise requirement since the preview service, when SI was accessed by bus from the end of platform 11.
Anomnibus: All those places do provide, granted, access to a large number of London stations. Whether any of them provides access to quite as many popular stations as the future OOC may be a different matter. However I do concede that this explanation may only work with a particular value of “popular”. So probably my claim was rather weak.
@ Malcolm
“a particular value of “popular”. ”
It so happens that Diamond Geezer has blogged on one particular measure, number of passengers, today.
The busiest station is Waterloo, but it is not a particularly popular destination – most people are interchanging (and probably double-counted as they go through two barrier lines?)
Stratford has direct services to seven of the other stations on the top ten list, the exceptions being Victoria and Paddington, which are both primarily interchanges rather than destinations in their own right. Clapham Junction and East Croydon are not on DG’s list as they are not Tube stations, but both have access to a wide range of destinations across central and inner London. The complex meshwork of lines in south London makes such things possible – the northern routes tended to be more designed to create one main line each, the money being in shifting as much as possible to London from as far away as possible as quickly as possible, and they had little interest in local traffic. Thus the plethora of unconnected lines radiating out through Middlesex, Herts and Bucks. Two companies made lukewarm attempts to have inner London interchanges for West End and City, but neither Finsbury Park nor Willesden Junction had the volume of converging flows on offer to allow a even-sided two way interchange and they never quite caught on the way Clapham Junction and East Croydon did. (The SER’s equivalent was rather closer in, at London Bridge). Stratford has only become such a focus since Docklands was developed, but OOC, by focussing HS2 and GWML traffic (and probably others) may become another.
.
timbeau, there’s a link to the 2014/2015 National Rail data in DG’s post. Almost a year old now, but…
Re: interchanging and double counting: they count entries and exits(N/X) so only interchanges between upstairs and downstairs should show up. Changing from Bakerloo to Jubilee shouldn’t count.(There are of course legacy arrangements of readers for the Unmentionable Line, but we won’t mention those).
Finsbury Park seems to have caught on now, with 28mn N/X on the Underground in the year ended December and 6.2 mn N/X upstairs in the ORR year 2014/15 vs 24mn interchanges and 2mn N/X at Clapham Junction (CLJ) in the year to April 6 2015. CLJ is famously bereft of an Underground link, as you noted.
I can see OOC developing into a transport hub, with or without HS2; the challenge is turning it into the next Stratford, rather than the next Shepherds Bush.
@Old Buccaneer
“Changing from Bakerloo to Jubilee shouldn’t count”
I doubt there’s much of that – the Long Trek changing between Jubilee and any other Tube line at Waterloo is not something anyone is likely to try more than once, and almost any journey that could be made by changing between those lines at Waterloo can be done more easily by changing somewhere else.
timbeau: “the plethora of unconnected lines radiating out through Middlesex, Herts and Bucks”
There were formerly quite a few orbital routes, including Leighton Buzzard (WCML) – Dunstable – Luton (MML) – Welwyn Garden City (ECML), Watford (WCML) – St Albans – Hatfield (ECML) and, of course, Oxford – Bletchley – Cambridge. Whilst closing them made sense back then as there was very little custom on many sections, now they would see greater usage (purely because people travel more generally.)
@Alison W
Many of these did not really connect – look at the two stations in St Albans and in Bedford for example – and they tended to act as feeders, rather than two-way interconnects giving viable alternative routes into different parts of London, like East Croydon or Clapham Junction (No-one would seriously consider travelling from St Albans to London via Watford or via Welwyn on a regular basis, if only because all three routes end up in Somers Town!)
They were also much further out (most of your examples are in Bedfordshire)
“No-one would seriously consider travelling from St Albans to London via Watford” – at one time there was a through rush-hour train on that route, but subsequently with the relocation of car parking at Watford Junction the relevant platform shifted. Similarly, though not mentioned by me earlier, there was the example of Hemel Hempsted (sic) on the Midland line connecting to London (Somers Town) via Harpenden.
timbeau: “Did not really connect”. At the places you mention, St Albans and Bedford, the orbital lines connected well with each other (*), just not with the radial ones. But you are absolutely right that, taken together, they never provided the sort of network that could make a serious dent in the list of possible origin-destination pairs in the area as a whole.
(*) ..although generally the timetables (at St Albans) didn’t!
@Malcolm – have you been to S Albans? – quite a hike from Abbey to the Midland station….
@Malcolm
The orbital lines may have connected with each other, but not with the radials.
And although there may have been direct trains e.g St Albans Abbey to Euston, they would have been primarily for passenegers from e.g Bricket Wood and Garston rather than end-to end. The Weybridge to Waterloo service via Hounslow is well loaded, but I doubt that many people travel end to end.
Graham: yes, but my point was that there was no hike at all from the station which served Watford to the station which served Hatfield. But I think we’ve done the Beds Herts & Bucks orbitals, particularly as most of them have long since gone, so exactly what use they might or might not have been has become a question of very little relevance to anything at all, let alone to High Speed Buffers.
@ Timbeau 1713 – how odd then that the old travelator at Waterloo was always busy when I used to use it? I frequently had to do Leic Sq – Canary Wharf and Waterloo was the only logical place to change lines. No point going via Green Park as the interchange there is almost as long plus the journey time is longer. If the travelator at Waterloo was only carrying tumbleweed then I might agree with you but at the moment there are plenty of journeys which are logically routed via Waterloo to link to the unique sequence of stations on the JLE east of Waterloo. Things will no doubt change come Dec 2018 when Crossrail opens and people have Bond St and TCR as nodal interchanges in the “West End” for points east / south east.
@timbeau: No-one would seriously consider travelling from St Albans to London via Watford or via Welwyn on a regular basis
If you mean central London, yes, but if you live in St Albans and work in say Harrow or similar parts of northwest London then the Abbey Line is the way to go. Just as not many people will catch the Metropolitan Line all the way from Watford Junction to Zone 1, but it will still be useful for similar journeys.
exactly what use they might or might not have been has become a question of very little relevance to anything at all, let alone to High Speed Buffers
The relevance would be that orbital services need to connect well to radial services to be useful, which has implications for decisions currently being made about Old Oak Common.
@Malcolm – to be an orbital service, it should connect at at least teo points with a radial,as IanJ implies, otherwise, the service is a mere branch line
@Graham H
I don’t think a service has to connect with any other line to count as being an orbital, it just has to connect two points that are not on a radial line into central London. It could be an entirely isolated and self contained line and still be an orbital. It comes back to geometry, not networks.
Oh help, not the “radial” vs “orbital” line definition debate. [ hides under table ] 😉
@Walthamstow Writer, 27 April 2016 at 00:20
“how odd then that the old travelator at Waterloo was always busy when I used to use it? “
Although routinely arriving at Waterloo on the Bakerloo Line, I regularly used the travelator tunnel to exit the station via the Waterloo Rd entrance, close to my workplace and avoiding crossing the busy the mainline concourse. Certainly it is no longer than many other interchange tunnels in central London stations and is very quick with the moving walkways.
@Ian J:
Surely the key criterion is for any new infrastructure is whether it serves a useful purpose, not whether it links to specific infrastructure?
Given the plans for the area surrounding OOC station, it’s a fair assumption that demand for access to the area for people who intend to work there is expected to increase. Not every destination is in the very centre of London.
The Overground’s orbital network has limited scope for capacity enhancements and is already struggling to cope in some areas. The East London Line section is particularly problematic, as has already been discussed in various threads here, but there are also capacity limitations on the WLL and NLL due to extensive freight operations.
By deliberately making their OOC Overground stations less attractive as interchanges, TfL can avoid overloading their trains, which would have to cope with much longer services on the GWML, Crossrail 1, and HS2.
Graham H “quite a hike from Abbey to the Midland station” – yes, but not from the London Road station which was the first stop after the Abbey station towards Hatfield. (It was actually under the Midland line)
@WW: Can I put a spanner in the works by adding the term “tangential” to the discussion 🙂
@Anomnibus:
it’s a fair assumption that demand for access to the area for people who intend to work there is expected to increase
But that demand will be heavily peaked and in one direction only, which is a notoriously uneconomic way of operating a transport system.
By deliberately making their OOC Overground stations less attractive as interchanges, TfL can avoid overloading their trains
…and miss out on the counter-peak and off-peak demand the interchange would develop.
Clearly as a general principle TfL could avoid “overloading” any of their services by providing deliberately poor quality of service and creating artificial obstacles to passengers, but this would presume that they see the need to avoid “overloading” as being more important then providing mobility to London, and I have never seen any evidence of this. In particular, that is not their stated reasoning in the options selection report (which includes “interchange quality” as one of the criteria and doesn’t mention overcrowding), or when they say things like “In providing an interchange to orbital rail services, journeys for new and existing passengers will be easier and quicker, as well as freeing up capacity in central London”
It would be particularly perverse as “overloading” is an inherently self-limiting problem: if the trains are full, people won’t be able to get on them, and will find alternate routes instead. Worse still, the alternate routes are mainly via central London and especially Euston, which is already predicted to be overloaded.
@AlisonW: I wonder why it never seemed to occur to British Rail to extend the Watford services one stop to London Road station (or through-route them to Hatfield).
@Ian J
I wonder why it never seemed to occur to British Rail to extend the Watford services one stop to London Road station
“https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield_and_St_Albans_Railway#/media/File:Dunstable,_Hertford,_Hitchin_%26_St_Albans_RJD_35.jpg”
British Rial was never really much interested on opening lines.
An extension to London Road would have been expensive – the layout would require reversal at Abbey, and consequential installation of points, signalling etc. And after all that, London Road would still be a bit of a walk from City.
With a link from the MML to WCML already available via the extension of the Marston vale line from Bedford St Johns to Midland, would there have been sufficient demand for a duplicate?
@timbeau – BR was actively discouraged from opening new lines and certainly very minor but expensive works such as that described for St Albans would have been especially discouraged. As I have remarked many times before, the basic criterion for BR investment was cost-saving, closely followed by “is it profitable”. No mention of economic benefits- a major internal source of bureaucratic infighting once LT had been brought in-house.
@Ian J:
The present Overground orbital routes are limited to very short trains compared to the radial lines. If the Overground interchange at OOC is too convenient, it’ll be swamped, and everyone, their dog, and their local MP will whine and moan about it ad nauseam, but none of the above will actually consider paying for the necessary – and rather expensive – work needed to actually fix the problem.
As TfL are about to be hit by swingeing cuts to their budgets, I can’t blame them for taking this path. Politically, they have only two options here: get kicked in one nadger, or get kicked in both. Neither is going to be pleasant, but only a lunatic would choose the latter.
This discussion of radial/orbital has rather distracted from the comparison of OOC with places like Clapham Junction, East Croydon, London Bridge etc, which are essentially interchanges between radial routes. I know this looks like an oxymoron, but it is possible when dealing with a city with a fairly diffuse centre like London. (Indeed, London is two cities very close together)
@Anomnibus: everyone, their dog, and their local MP will whine and moan about it ad nauseam, but none of the above will actually consider paying for the necessary – and rather expensive – work needed to actually fix the problem
You appear to have a rather pessimistic view of human nature. Are you really saying there is no will by anybody to pay for increased capacity on the Overground? How have all the capacity improvements of the last few years happened, then?
You still haven’t provided any evidence that TfL are deliberately making the interchange at Old Oak Common longer to discourage people from using it.
@timbeau, Graham H: Sorry, I should have said I was thinking of the 1950s, when the Hatfield line was still open – no reopening costs required, and potentially saving money by replacing two terminating services with one through service. But I think it would have needed coordination between the Eastern and Midland regions which might have made it a non-starter at that time. As I understand it BR did make some attempt at saving money by switching to DMU operation on the St Albans-Hatfield line, which suggests that closure wasn’t a complete inevitability.
This would have predated the rearrangement of Bedford’s stations (which does show that later-period BR could sometimes manage to justify such minor customer-friendly projects).
@timbeau: interchanges between radial routes
True, but as in the case of East Croydon and Clapham Junction (and Stratford), such inter-radial interchanges are also good places for orbital routes to head to, because you get two orbital-radial interchange opportunities for the price of one. So an OOC HS2-Overground interchange will also create an Overground-Great Western (-Heathrow) interchange as a bonus.
Isn’t E Croydon a classic site for an already existing orbital route?
The trams from/to Wimbledon & Beckenham Junction ….
Ian J 28th 01.51 and 29th 04.00 (rather you than me): I would have thought that working residents of the new OOC development will provide the contrapeak flows, and outbound offpeak flows while at leisure, while the new OOC’s status as a leisure destination will generate inbound offpeak flows and its commercial development will result in offpeak business travel both in- and outbound. That is of course on top of the existing travel markets that pass through the area without alighting. To be honest I wasn’t aware that excess capacity on the orbital London Overground routes was a major issue whatever the time of day or direction of travel, but I am a remote observer. It does though seem to me that investment in LO capacity may well be needed irrespective of whether there is direct interchange with HS2 and Crossrail, or whether it is deliberately made difficult.
Talking of High-Speed lines.
THIS
Amsterdam via Eurostar without (?) intermediate checks … ?
@Greg T – only a generation after it was first included in the PBKA spec…. (and it’s still not actually there yet).
@Graham H
PBKA = Paris – Brussels – Cologne (Koln) – Amsterdam ?
“Interchange deliberately made difficult”.
No transport designer ever would deliberately make something difficult. They may well tolerate a difficult interchange resulting from pursuing a different goal – safety or saving money or something else. (The increased safety might result from diminished overcrowding, for instance).
But if there is a choice between a difficult interface and an easier one with no offsetting advantage then the difficult one would not be chosen.
I think a better phrase might be “a difficult interchange deliberately tolerated”
@LBM – just so (and we still have only PB!)
@GT
I saw that story and thought it raised a couple of questions. First, that Border Control has only recently produced a policy statement that said it wouldn’t provide passport control staff at any further out stations on the continent than those already staffed. The story suggests a change of heart here which either means there has been a specific exception made for Amsterdam (and Rotterdam and Antwerp?) or that the policy has been changed entirely.
Second that services to Germany are too difficult. DB trialled a train without technical difficulty but they were deterred by the security/border control issues and, with some bigger technical issues on that generation of ICE trains, put their focus elsewhere. From what Eurostar has said, the first problem may have been overcome and the second does not affect them. Curious.
@Graham H
Ask Thalys and they will tell you just how happily they are running TGVs between Paris, Bruxelles, Koln and Amsterdam, and have been for some years. PBKA never included London.
quinlet says “The story suggests a change of heart here which either means …”
A third possibility is that the reporter misunderstood or was misled. The PR technique of talking about a desired change as if it has already been decided on is not uncommon, and can sometimes yield favourable results.
Malcom
IIRC, they were talking about the outward trip being “No problem” with a hint that they could find wriggle-room ( lobbying contra the airlines?) for the return journey … the sort of thing you are suggesting, in fact
Wasn’t the Warren Street interchange between the Victoria Line and the Charing Cross branch made deliberately difficult because at the time the Charing Cross branch was much more heavily used then the City branch and LUL wanted to encourage people going from Barnet/Edgware to Victoria to use the City branch instead?
GH – I thought that it was Thalys that was all about the PBKA spec, Eurostar being PBL (so to speak), with KA as later aspirations.
It is interesting to speculate on the reasons for UK border control being unwilling to provide border control activities in a way that avoids some of the inward trains having to stop af Lille for an extended time. Indeed I wonder whether the issue is with the border control at all and whether it’s about Channel Tunnel security?
Passports could be checked on the train. For that the issue is one of the cost of providing the staff (who pays?) plus the means to deal with anyone who doesn’t qualify to enter UK. There could be passport control on arrival. After all there aren’t that many trains of this type.
However, doing the body search/scan and luggage scan would be an interesting challenge, though since the South of France Eurostar was introduced, Thalys have had to start some security activities in stations not designed for them, so it must be possible.
CXXX
Your suggestion re. security on Thalys (since the recent incident) is very suggestive – of possible other ways around some of the problems. Perhaps.
@quinlet/Mike – ‘fraid not: PBKA was the acronym we used in DTp and BR back in the ’80s, at a time when Thalys had not been set up, for the highspeed connexions from London.
130 says “It is interesting to speculate on the reasons for UK border control being unwilling to …”
It is interesting. Indeed it is so interesting that it seems to have been done quite frequently here already. It is not yet a banned topic, but it is one on which we ask commenters to make extra effort to investigate whether whatever they want to say has already been said.
130 says “…passport control on arrival”.
Generally considered unfeasible because of (perhaps among other reasons) asylum claim issues, and concern about who takes rejected people back abroad, where to, and using how much coercion/force, and at whose expense.
(Though of course all these issues arise with air travel, and are solved, presumably more-or-less satisfactorily).
GH: interesting that the PBKA abbreviation (it ain’t an acronym!) seems to have been in use on both sides of the Channel at about the same time, when what became Eurostar and Thalys were in their conceptual stages. A remarkable coincidence, or what?
@Mike – to be clear PBKA was the handy way for officials and managers of describing a network of highspeed links, not the operators which ran on that network. In the mid-80s, the assumption – at least inside DTp – was that there would be through services from London to all those places (and indeed, there was a debate as to whether Frankfurt wasn’t a better hub than Koeln for these purposes*.) The “dream” gradually faded as it became clear that the Blogs had no intention of speeding up the construction of their highspeed link to Aachen and Koeln, and that problems of rolling stock compatibility would eliminate through running to Germany.
*A suggestion that The Hague should also be included lasted all of,err, two minutes as I recall.
In relation to Thalys, “PBKA” was used (among other meanings, it would seem) to denote the part of the fleet that has 15kV 16.7Hz capability for operation into Germany, as opposed to the PBA sets that don’t.
I may have forgotten things over the years but I have no recollection of proposals for day trains (what became Eurostar) extending beyond Paris and Brussels after they became a serious proposition in the late ’80s. In particular, my memory of the big interactive board at the Eurotunnel visitor centre is that connections were assumed at these points. All getting a long time ago though…
@Caspar Lucas* – in the nicest possible way, I don’t recall you being present at the meetings in DTp in the ’80s. [What the public were told was another matter altogether]. So far as officials were concerned, PBKA denoted the network of highspeed lines regardless of operator or stock. As the problems of running beyond Brussels became clearer, terminology may have changed but the term continued to be applied to infrastructure rather than operators or stock about which there were a good deal of uncertainties. Even the operator designations shifted over time, especially Thalys.
*Unless your nom de plume is a front for “Philip Wood” or “Alan Nichols” (or one of my Principals – Richard Bayley,perhaps?)
Acronyms and abbreviations can cause difficulty. Where possible, we would like to encourage those who wish to use them to spell out what you mean by them on first use, unless you are reasonably sure that the meaning is (a) well-known, and (b) unique.
GH/Malcolm: The issue here is that the same abbreviation *for the same thing* has been used in at least two different contexts. No, I was not in DTp meetings in the ’80s, which explains why the term PBKA doesn’t convey anything associated with cross-Channel trains to me, whereas it does have a meaning related to Thalys fleets since that one *was* in the public domain and so I had heard of it. I wasn’t the only one confused in the thread above!
@Malcolm, 30 April 2016 at 10:02
I also suspected passport control on arrival may have been considered unfeasible because of the asylum claim issue, and how rejected people would then be removed. I think with air travel the arrangements to do this may be covered by worldwide treaty agreements that trump any special agreements the UK has with our near neighbours and the wider Schengen Zone Europe for land or sea border crossings. In order for rail to have a level playing field, rules and arrangements similar to the international air regime need to apply to continental rail services entering the UK. Coupled with the wider security checks on the European mainland high speed network being promoted, that could offer the opportunity to use of the same security facilities for document checks prior to embarkation by operators’ own security staff rather than by outbased UK Border Force personnel, including at the main hubs of Paris, Brussels and Lille.
@Graham H
but if PBKA was, in your context, an aspiration for a network of high speed lines then that aspiration has, indeed, materialised with the high speed links between Roosendaal and Schipol, Leuven and Liege(W) and Liege(E) and Aachen. Fair enough that there are some gaps and they don’t quite reach Amsterdam or Koln, but neither do the high speed links completely reach Paris or Bruxelles, either.
@130
IIRC at the time of the original Channel Tunnel Bill, the issue of passport control was raised. Neither the Home Office (‘we don’t do it that way’) or the trade unions (too much hassle) wanted to check passports on the train, and, indeed, produced a number of arguments to Parliament as to why this was undesirable. These included that passengers wouldn’t want their passports checked on the train because it could be embarrassing, and would far rather go through static checks on arrival. Parliamentarians did not buy these stories and insisted on passport checks on trains. This resulted in an initial demand from the Home Office for a whole carriage on a Eurostar train to be made available with secure compartments for undesirables, etc. Eventually this was compromised into a single compartment with facilities for handcuffing people to the seats.
I believe there were even a few occasions when passports were actually checked on trains before the compromise of checking passports on departure was reached.
With respect to security, it is, perhaps, noteworthy that other high speed train services in Europe, with the exception of the Spanish, do not do baggage checks. They do not seem to be any more susceptible to bombs than Eurostar and while there was the incident with a gun carrying terrorist on a Thalys train last year, it is suburban trains and metros (Madrid, London, Bruxelles) that have been terrorist targets. Presumably this is because of the higher passenger density and the location inside cities. It does make you wonder whether the baggage checking on Eurostar actually offers any increased security or if it is just about giving a message to passengers.
@ Malcolm 1002 – When I first used Eurostar (on its opening day) the passport checks were indeed done on the train both ways. Accepting that security and other concerns shift over time the last time I used Eurostar from Lille I had to endure a passport and security check on boarding *and* on arrival at St Pancras. Just to live up to their tedious reputation we also had a full customs check as well. This is (was) apparently done because everyone travelling on trains from Lille and Belgium are apparently carrying 3.5 tonnes of tobacco products on their person because of the tax differentials on such products.
Now this may have changed again in the light of events in Europe but I do struggle with the really quite ridiculous processes that passengers are now subject to and the extended times you must allow at each end to comply with regulations imposed on the railway. It is almost as bad as travelling through an airport. We must be pretty close to the point where Eurostar’s time advantage has now been eroded so that it’s about as fast as using a plane. I suspect that is also true for the potential service to Amsterdam if we assume the ordeal you endure are Paris or Lille (I’ve never used E* to Brussels) is to be replicated at Amsterdam Centraal.
A London-Amsterdam flight is just a short hop eastwards across the North Sea. To go via rail you have to go a completely roundabout way via the Channel Tunnel, then Lille, then Brussels to Antwerp on slower tracks shared with other trains, before joining the Dutch high speed network. This could be straightened by building a bypass via Bruges avoiding Lille and Brussels but at the moment that’s just a crayonic idea.
Drifting away from topic as we are, I have always been mystified as to why Eurostar and Thalys did not combine their operations years ago. After all, the core of the Thalys routes is Paris-Lille-Bruxelles, which coincides amazingly well with Eurostar’s use of the same tracks.
@Fandroid
Although they share track, the facilities at stations have to be segregated because of the extra security required for the trains passing through the Tunnel, and passport controls because Eurostar passes into and out of the Schengen area. I don’t think PBKA rolling stock is permitted through the tunnel, although now that they operate in the UK entirely on HS1, the British-loading-gauge Class 373s are an anachronism, and Thalys units would physically fit.
(Am I right in thinking the 374s are built to a more generous loading guage?)
I had my passport checked on the Disney express in 2011. When we used it again in 2012 it had reverted to check on arrival. I seem to remember being checked on arrival from Paris at Waterloo in 2001 but going through British immigration at Brussels in 2005.
@timbeau. I am aware of all the restrictions that apply to Eurostar. A unified company controlling both Thalys and Eurostar could minimise the effect of all that nonsense and make them operate in a way that added convenience for passengers and presumably reduced overheads. Not London so we had better stop this digression.
@Fandroid @ Timbeau
Wasn’t part of the separation because Eurostar and Thalys had different ownership structures? Basically British interest was restricted to the former and German interests to the latter, though both have drifted towards majority control by SNCF. And apart from loading gauge, Eurostar trains have to satisfy the requirements of the Channel Tunnel Safety Authority, which amongst other things I believe means the trains have to have a higher level of fire resistance (hence the extra internal doors that close only during the transit of the Tunnel). Those requirements are another deterrent to running through services beyond the core network eg to HS2…
‘Fandroid
“A unified company controlling both Thalys and Eurostar could minimise the effect of all that nonsense ”
I doubt it, as “all that nonsense” is imposed on Eurostar by the Government.
I don’t really want to continue this discussion, but I want to emphasise that I think that common management of Eurostar and Thalys (not through running nor magical elimination of legal requirements) is very likely to benefit passengers. Perhaps their are already in talks!
@Quinlet/fandroid -I suspect that these days, as the European highspeed network has expanded,neither the term “PBKA” nor the idea of a common management of just part of it is terribly useful any longer. What would help restore the advantage of rail over air for shorter distance international travel would be at least proper through ticketing to major destinations rather than aggregated fares (which is what makes it so expensive every time you change operator); a common and slicker approach to security would also help but I can’t see – as we collectively have so often bemoaned in these columns – the UK being part of any such exercise any time soon.Nor is the mood music amongst European politicians helpful (cf the “instructions” of the French Interior Minister after the Thalys incident) although fullmarks to SNCF for telling their minister the price of fish pretty bluntly.
In reply to Timbeau the Eurostar Velaro E 320 class 374s are built by Siemens and very closely related to their GermaN Railways ICE3 Velaro D class 407 trains.As such they are built to the same loading gauge but at 400 metres and 16 coaches are twice as long as the Velaro D at 200 metres and 8 coaches.
On Eurostar (and I think Thalys too) the announcements mention ‘XX, a member of RailTeam’ which is an alliance of HS Europe rail operators. Maps showing the full French & German networks are displayed in the trains. I think the advantage is that in the case of delays you are automatically rebooked.
CdBrux: not sure about the “automatically” part, but I can vouch for well-organised rebooking (and a free hotel room, with kettle) in the event of such things as German train driver strikes.
@Malcolm – “*free kettle*”? Blimey, you move in hotel circles far above mine….
@Edmonton Eadcase: Wasn’t the Warren Street interchange between the Victoria Line and the Charing Cross branch made deliberately difficult because at the time the Charing Cross branch was much more heavily used then the City branch and LUL wanted to encourage people going from Barnet/Edgware to Victoria to use the City branch instead?
My understanding was that it was not so much made deliberately difficult, as not going to be provided at all – Warren Street station being a late addition to the Victoria Line plans. Which meant that when it was added, the broad tunnel alignments were already decided and there was no chance of being able to provide cross-platform interchange (if that was even physically possible). Whereas as you say, good interchange to the City branch was a high priority.
@cdBrux: I think it is not so much automatic rebooking as that in theory you don’t need to rebook at all but just board the next train and your existing ticket should still be valid. Will the same thing happen for connections between HS2 and HS1?
There is also reciprocal lounge access and point earning for frequent travellers – so very much like an airline alliance and no doubt intended to match airlines’ schemes.
Ian J says “.. just board the next train”.
Yes. You just have to find a special person to apply a special rubber stamp to your ticket. (Or that’s how it worked for me at Koeln – a little bit of queuing but nothing too dreadful). Then you can travel on most trains reservationless.
On Eurostar, presumably because of security checks, you do have to be allocated a place on a specific new train. (In my case that was the next one running).
@Malcolm
I was told by somebody that the reason I got a free reschedule, breakfast allowance and hotel room was because the EU ruled that if a person were delayed crossing EU boarders through no fault of their own then the company is required to compensate! Rather good to know I’ve found (especially with all the Eurotunnel problems last year!)
I note that the DfT has published a “Rolling Stock Perspective” which states on page 28 that “High Speed Inter City” will feature level boarding and platform edge doors. I interpret the latter to refer to new-build stations.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rolling-stock-perspective-2016
Apparently Sadiq wants Euston/rebuild “paused” & OOC used as a “temporary” terminus
IIRC he doesn’t get a vote on that one …..
And/or he really hasn’t got a clue about lead-times, long-term planning (he’s a POLITICIAN, after all) or sunk costs. Oh dear.
@Greg
“I want doesn’t get”
Whether or not he can actually change anything, Mr Khan can have someone look into whether such a thing would be possible, but any such review should include the costs of doing it, including such things as configuring OOC to operate as a temporary terminus. There are precedents, from Spa Road (1836) to Heathrow Junction (1998)
@ Greg – you can hardly be surprised that a Labour Mayor would show sympathy / offer support to Labour run Camden Council who are vociferously opposed to HS2’s plans for Euston. Given the loss of social housing in the area that would result it’s hardly a surprise that local residents and businesses are deeply sceptical (to put it mildly). While I am ambivalent at best about HS2 I don’t see how a Mayor committed to vastly increasing the housing stock can be seen to be supporting a scheme that reduces it, probably destroys a local neighbourhood forever and which will, no doubt, if built, result in yet more gentrification, surging property prices and out of scale redevelopment proposals. Again do we really need any more of this given the damage that is being done to communities in London as a result of such policies for the last decade?
The adequacy or otherwise of OOC as an alternative short term terminus is a separate issue.
I think two of the last three commentators need gentle reminders that:
1) Camden loses more homes to HS2 than any other Borough or District on the route.
2) Sadiq Khan has experience as a Transport Minister
AG & others
I suggest you consult J C Bourne for “disruption” in the Camden area
@ Greg – I can only check via the internet as I do not possess a vast library of railway history books nor had I heard of JC Bourne until you mentioned the name. The blunt but rather obvious point is that 2016 is not the 1830s. What the early railway entrepreneurs were able to do then sets no precedent for today’s railway. The People’s Republic of China may be able to bulldoze its population out of the way in order to build railways, airports and luxury apartments (as we did in the 1830s) but that doesn’t make it right nor a fitting example for us to follow now. I’d hope we were more nuanced and balanced in our judgements especially where some level of disruption is needed to secure infrastructure improvements. I also don’t hold to the view that all large scale infrastructure investment is inherently good as seems to be the current mantra for a lot of people.
Anyway if people have a problem with what I wrote would they please just say so instead of skirting round and saying “some people” or “x out y posters”. Providing people are polite and put up a reasoned response there’s no need to tread on eggshells (AFAIAC).
WW
Except that (IIRC) most of HS2 is going to be underground in Camden, apart from the immediate area close to Euston?
In an odd way, I agree with Camden council/Sadiq, but for completely different reasons, namely that Euston is the wrong place & it shouldn’t be a terminus, or not entirely.
But that ship has long since sailed, unfortunately.
I don’t believe a through undergound HS2 London terminal is practical at all, along the Euston Road or anywhere else. Each platform cavern could be equivalent in earth moved to an entire Crossrail station, and even with train cleaning and restocking located elsewhere to a single or a number of out of town locations east or south of the capital, dwell times of at least five or six minutes would still be required due to the vast majority of passengers that would want to board or alight at the ‘central’ station with its ‘cab ride’ distance to west end and myriad existing and future public transport connections nearby. That would equate to a platform reoccupation time of 10 minutes or more, so for 20 TPH throughput in each direction we’re talking about eight through platforms, or possibly six at a pinch as planned for OOC (with it’s possibly shorter dwells due to lower passenger numbers). I suggest that an eight platform undergound HS terminal with vast underground throat junction arrangements at either end would be around the cost of the core city tunnels and stations of an an entire new Crossrail line! There’s no dominant destination south or east of central London that the majority of passengers arriving on HS2 from the north will want to go, so any particular routing would likely result in fairly empty working beyond Euston of very expensive high performance trains that really need to be turned round and sent out on another lucrative run to the north ASAP rather than pootling around the south.
The vast majority of the social housing planned for removal in the current terminal proposal is contained in 3 large blocks between Hampstead Rd and Granby Terrace. Much of the remainder of the property to be acquired is non residential apart from a few terraced houses around Euston St and Cobourg St. Displaced social housing COULD be replaced nearby if desired, perhaps on a (albeit expensive) raft above the new railway in the same vicinity. If the social housing is not to be replaced nearby, then that is a political decision really and perhaps Camden and London Labour generally feel this element of the project smacks of externally imposed gerrymandering, to interfere with the local political balance of power. Rather than opposing the Euston terminal concept, which I believe is essential to the whole HS2 project, is of remarkably low impact on any interesting or unique architecture, and actually opens up much of the area to locals with new east-west pedestrian routes across the complex, I sincerely hope Sadiq Kahn concentrates on the important replacement social housing issue where there could be room for negotiation.
Like you WW, my love for HS2 is relatively thin. The Euston plan is madness, but terminating at OOC is equally mad. The only solution to the Euston problem is to use British sized trains and do away with the larger size. This would solve Curzon Street/Leeds/Sheffield termini issues as HS2 trains could run into existing stations. Furthermore, this would allow St. Pancras and Kings Cross to play host to HS2 trains to their native destinations rather than Euston picking up all the traffic and reducing the demand on the station.
Tiger Tanaka: Obvious difficulties include the need to build or enhance connecting lines to join HS2 to the approaches to several terminals – without using any crayons it is possible to price this as “quite expensive”. Also there are few or no 400 metre straight platforms at any London termini, nor space to build any. (Excluding the international platforms at St Pancras, which are, not surprisingly, in use for international trains).
@Malcolm – a reference to the Breitspurbahn Hitlers and its megalomaniac stations seems appropriate on this thread, too…
Graham H: Well, maybe. Often mention of that name (however innocuous and/or appropriate the reason) ends in tears before bedtime.
Part 3 concerning issues about who will use HS2 has been written and is ready for publication (but won’t necessarily be the next article published) and part 4 will look specifically at what sort of terminus (or otherwise) is required and where it should be.
Consequently, I am going to be brutal from now on hit the trash button with a vengeance if discussion centres around the London terminus. And I won’t be sympathetic to the “just one final comment before the embargo” type comment.
POP Look forward to parts 3 and 4, trust publication of part 3 not long off.
@Malcolm – it does; you will have noticed that I eschewed the temptation to make the inevitable association.
Mark Townend mentioned ‘social housing’ four times there in discussion about what will be lost when a terminal station is constructed. I’d point out that in common with much of London’s council stock a large proportion has been sold off on long leases, with all the compulsory purchase valuation headaches that will induce.
Tiger Tanaka mentioned that “British Size” trains should be considered, although one assumes that option was dismissed early on in the planning, when HS2 was to be gold-plated in every way. But if drastic savings have to be made to the project to avoid cancellation, that might be the only option. Is it likely that monster continental trains would ever run on HS2? If not, then how much could be saved by scaling the gauge down to more normal size? There may be other benefits, as the line could be used more flexibly as a diversionary route, and the HS2 trains wouldn’t be “trapped” on HS2 either, should there be trouble on that route.
@Alex McKenna – continental loading gauge doesn’t allow “monster” trains (enough has already been said about the Breitspurbahn Hitlers already); the differences are no more than a few inches – crucial, of course, but hardly *monster*.
I suspect that the proponents of HS2 in its full form with captive trains are keen to keep it that way, lest the project dissolve into a series of small scaleinterventions to enhance capacity at specific points. [That may be better vfm anyway, but that’s not the “political” point]..
On the other hand, as is now slowly emerging from NR’s internal work on the shape of the LNW post-HS2, the existence of a captive network which serves only a small number of destinations means that a great deal of any capacity released is absorbed by the need to maintain the existing pattern of connexions (eg MK to Coventry, or Wolverhampton to London). An own goal by HS2 Ltd, one might think.
But do not expect any politician to work through the logic that needs to be applied to the whole HS question. It’s probably too late to stop the juggernaut now,anyway.
Allowing more frequent services between Coventry and Milton Keynes is precisely the kind of benefit that HS2 could allow by removing the very fast non stop trains from the WCML fast lines. It could be the case that all trains remaining on the fasts could conform to a standard stopping pattern south of Rugby, namely Milton Keynes and Watford. That would maintain much improved connections from a selection of northern and midlands towns to these destinations whilst providing a step change in services between Watford, Milton Keynes and Euston. The down side of stopping at these stations is that some places like Coventry would have a marginally longer journey time to London compared to today’s fastest services, but this might be countered by an increase in frequency. You might, for instance, have path space for a 10 minute interval semi-fast service from Birmingham to Euston in the peak, all stopping at Birmingham International, Coventry, Rugby, Milton Keynes and Watford. This could not possibly work today with the vary fast long distance trains from Scotland and the north west eating up so many potential semi-fast paths.
Graham H
22 May 2016 at 10:01
“a great deal of any capacity released is absorbed by the need to maintain the existing pattern of connexions (eg MK to Coventry, or Wolverhampton to London). An own goal by HS2 Ltd, one might think.”
Wolverhampton to London = 1 direct train per hour
Coventry to Milton Keynes = 1 fast and two (much) slower trains per hour
I’m no great fan of full size GC gauge trains on HS2, not least because the supposed benefit of being able to use bog standard European trains will be hampered by unavailability of a GC gauge connection between HS1 and HS2, requiring trains from Europe factories to be broken down into distinct cars and these delivered one at a time by sea/road and reassembled and recommissioned at a depot somewhere alongside the new line rather than being hauled or even arriving under their own power. GC could allow double deck cars but with their heavier vehicles and larger cross sectional area, bi-level is not a free lunch, with greater air resistance, particularly in tunnels, more oomph required to accelerate the larger mass and concerns about dwell times with more passengers having to share a limited number of doors. It’s notable that Japanese Shinkansen operators are quickly phasing out their remaining bi-level trains and have no plans for any new ones, as they speed up their trunk lines and concentrate on longer distance markets and further extensions. With their slightly smaller cross sectional area, it is possible that on HS2 the classic compatible smaller profile trains may be allowed to travel marginally faster through the long tunnels at the south end of the route than GC gauge stock, and especially any notional bi-level stock.
In Japan the full size Shinkansen loading gauge is slightly wider than GC. That allows full size ‘captive’ trains to incorporate 2+3 seating in their ordinary class cars. Japan East also have some mini-Shinkansen units which have narrower bodies to fit on former narrow gauge routes whose track gauge has been converted. These have 2+2 seating in ordinary class. GC is not sufficiently wider than the UK classic profile to allow 2+3 comfortably with the kind of Intercity seat width we have become accustomed to in Britain and Europe generally, so a single deck GC gauge set on HS2 in unlikely to have any more seats on board than a classic compatible of the same length.
@MarkT/Alan griffiths – I took one of many similar examples. In aggregate, those who have done the modelling for a living concluded that HS2 releases just “2” new paths if no existing punters were to lose out. The use of captive trains to captive stations merely exacerbates the problem by reducing flexibility.
Graham H.
I am afraid you are being disingenuous. The point is that the existing paths will be used in a different way. Since they will no longer have the primary purpose of transporting passengers on end-to-end journeys so can be used primarily for intermediate journeys to the end point nodes. Whether you believe this benefit is large or small is a separate issue, but there is a benefit from diverting the end-to-end journeys away from the WCML, and the 2 extra paths that would be created are not the entirety of the benefit from this diversion.
I shouldn’t think that it makes any sense to talk of existing paths; the question is a rewrite of the timetable. And – the justification of the scheme is (we are now told) not about benefits but about capacity, which is not the same thing . So not disingenuous at all.
I don’t doubt that the end to end passengers benefit but – remember – any disbenefits to any of the other passengers subtract from the claimed benefits of the scheme as a whole.
Loading gauge on HS2. Clearly (assuming the line is built at all) it will now be built to continental gauge. All the design has been done on that assumption, and any slight saving which might be achieved by building the tunnels to a UK gauge is likely now to be outweighed by the cost of redesigning. But I think that is an academic point, because even if it were not intended to use the gauge now, to build it thus would be a very cheap piece of future-proofing.
The issue of whether to actually use this gauge, by buying and deploying a captive train fleet, may still be open to a change of mind – if the planned savings on buying “European standard trains” do not turn out to be as great as was expected, then a case can perhaps be made for having an all-compatible fleet. Even if some of the trains are only used on HS2, and “could have been” European gauge. But there seems to me to be no reason why such a decision need be made until the bids are in for the respective fleets.
I doubt if the apparent difficulty of getting captive (“big”) trains onto the line will weigh very highly in the decision, however. Although it seems cumbersome and counter-intuitive, road delivery of all sorts of trains is quite widespread now, and might even happen anyway for the classic-compatible fleet for other reasons such as lack of paths from a suitable port, or just cheap bids from the specialised transport firms who do this.
@Malcolm – I’m sure you are right about the small savings from building the line to a smaller loading gauge.
The difficulty of having the two fleets is one of flexibility. Captive trains can go only to captive stations and narrow trains will presumably fall foul of the PRMTIS requirements for stepping distances at captive stations, which would seem to leave you with little choice in the way you deploy the two fleets, especially at intermediate “captive” stations such as OOC (assuming that that’s eventually intermediate). In some ways, it would be easier and clearer if the HS line was entirely self-contained.
A few thoughts…
Mark T 11.39: I find it hard to believe that the method of delivery of rolling stock from the factory should be a major consideration (which cuts both ways – a hypothetical GC gauge connection between a port and a UK train manufacturing/assembly facility would not in and of itself stimulate exports exports as some correspondents to rail magazines have suggested).
The Talgo Avril does appear to have 3+2 seating in a GC gauge but also appears to be ruled out for HS2 as it has a 760mm high floor level but according to information posted here HS2 assumes level boarding at c.1150mm, which of course allows level boarding at the same platforms at the new stations for both captive and classic-compatible stock.
Tiger T 12.55: While eliminating Curzon etc is theoretically made possible by only ordering classic-compatible stock, that does not create the station capacity required to accommodate the additional services using the new infrastructure.
JBD 17.05: Quite so.
Malcolm 18.34: Presumably if a decision were to be made to obtain trains of classic-compatible dimensions only, then having the infrastructure built to GC gauge leaves a gap to bridge that is somewhat easier to resolve than the converse scenario. Future-proofing indeed.
GH 18.50: Or the classic-compatibles come with extending steps, as previously discussed on this thread. But one of these two options must have been the working assumption for several years now.
The other key distinguishing feature between captive and classic-compatible stock is the difference in maximum journey time. Captive – c.1hr 45mins (Euston-Leeds). Classic-compatible – c.3hr 45mins (Euston-Edinburgh Waverley). Could this not drive some significant differences between the types, extending potentially to the bodyshell even within the same gauge?
@CL -not sure what you had in mind – crashworthiness, perhaps? Commercially, I’ve not seen anything to suggest differences of comfort between “quite long” and “very long” journeys (ie 3+2 is probably just as unacceptable for 105 minute trips as it is for 225 minute expeditions.)
Graham H 22 May 2016 at 12:10
“In aggregate, those who have done the modelling for a living concluded that HS2 releases just “2” new paths if no existing punters were to lose out.”
Can you point to any published modelling, so that those with more expertise than I can scrutinise it? Despite reading of your accumulated expertise, I’m finding it difficult to take seriously.
There is 1 train per hour Stoke-on-Trent to Milton Keynes, which is 1 of the 3 per hour London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly.
Every station north and west of Stoke on Trent and Stafford can gain faster trains to London from phase 1 of HS2.
As well as the present 3 per hour London-Birmingham,
That’s 3 per hour Manchester Piccadilly
1 per hour Glasgow Central
1 per hour Blackpool North (branch from Preston electrified by then)
1 per hour Liverpool
1 per hour Chester, some continuing to Llandudno or Holyhead.
I can only see a need to keep 1 per hour London Manchester (the one that stops at Milton Keynes & Stoke on Trent) and 1 per hour London Wolverhampton, continuing to Edinburgh to preserve most of the present connectivity.
That releases 8 train paths per hour in each direction.
Maybe throw in a new semi-fast to Blackpool North or Liverpool and adjust calling patterns?
@Alan G – no – it’s confidential within NR, sorry. As matters stand, HS 2 and DfT are doing their best to suppress the analysis, so it may never see the light of day, alas. I suspect the key word in your comment is “most” . There’s an easy and unwarranted assumption that those who don’t actually benefit from HS2 are expendable.
@graham h
3+2seating is( just as) unacceptable for 105 minute trips………..
As Portsmouth commuters (fastest time to Waterloo 102 minutes) have been banging on to swt about ever since the 450s became standard fare on that route!
I know I’m repeating myself here, but I’ll put forward my theory that 3+2 (and double deck) is dubious for HS2 because of the dwell time implications at intermediate stations, especially Old Oak Common.
@Caspar Lucas -I don’t know any operator who wouldn’t strongly agree with your view on the d/d v dwell time point- and the gain in capacity – typically around 1/3 – is rarely worth the time wasted.
Graham H: I’m not suggesting that there is necessarily anything sinister about it, but on a site which prides itself on fact-based analysis, and not necessarily believing unsupported claims, this situation is rather unsatisfactory. Those of us who are sceptical of your claims of “HS2 benefits being whittled down to 2 paths per hour” will, it seems, have to choose on a gut-feeling basis between believing them without really understanding them, or not believing them (while still not really understanding them).
I appreciate that you are treading a delicate line here, prepared to share your understanding of the conclusion of this secret study, while unable to give more detail of who did it, what question was asked, and how the answer was produced.
From the hints you have added, it seems to be about the difference between two apparently similar postulates (1): “No deterioration whatever in existing WCML journey opportunities”, and (2): “The majority of existing WCML journey opportunities being preserved”. Apparently (2) would release a useful number of paths (but would produce a significant aggregate disbenefit which should be accounted for), whereas (1) would release very few paths. Am I understanding this correctly?
@Malcolm – yes,a good summary. I do apologise for not being able to share the detail of the study (which surprised me and indeed those who undertook it). As you rightly imply,perhaps they should not have been asked to look at such an absolute constraint as no worsenment whatsoever, but one can see the political reasoning here. There are going to be some awkward choices and compromises ahead with some awkward consequencesfor the business case.
For those who want to look further into the issue,may I suggest drawing up a matrix of present connexions and their frequency and typical journey times, and then build up some alternative scenarios for assembling these into journeys.
Going back to Tiger Tanaka comment at 12:55 21 May 2016 that started much of this recent discussion:
Except the existing stations in Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds are all maxed out so you would need to build large extensions or new stations at which point you might as well look building the new infrastructure to a forward looking standard!
HS2 allows Leeds and Manchester particularly to improve local services with the capacity released at the existing stations (probably less important at Birmingham)
@Graham H: As matters stand, HS 2 and DfT are doing their best to suppress the analysis, so it may never see the light of day, alas
Surely the results of this analysis (only two paths per hour “released” on the WCML by HS2) have been extensively published already, including on the article you are commenting on – see the two purple “spare paths” on the second diagram above, with the DfT making it clear that they expect that a similar service to today will operate on the WCML after HS2 opens. It would be bizarre if opening a new railway intended to add capacity led to a reduction of services on the existing main line.
It seems to me that “releasing paths” is the wrong metric to use. A “released path” implies an unused path – ie. a waste of capacity. It would be like saying Crossrail will be a failure because it won’t release any paths on the Central Line.
I don’t know any operator who wouldn’t strongly agree with your view on the d/d v dwell time point
SNCF?
@IanJ – I agree absolutely with you about “released paths” being the wrong metric (see my comments in response to an accusation of being disingenuous above…).
Politically, as you say, it would be astonishing if buying extra capacity led to a worse service for a large number of people. What it would seem to mean is that the benefits will be heavily concentrated on those making trips within the captive system and the scope for producing new links will be somewhat limited.
If the thing is now in the public domain – sorry,I’d been told this last autumn in confidence – then Alan G can check it himself.
SNCF dwell times – station calls for the duplex sets seem to be fairly relaxed but then the main exchange of passengers seems to be at the termini where dwell times are not an issue. On the RER, my own discussions with RATP management – admittedly not recent – suggested that they were quite concerned with the problem to the point where they would have liked to have separate boarding and exiting platforms; no doubt,they are now stuck with the problem and could not afford the loss of capacity.
Surely the issue is on paths is that HS2 doesn’t release many new ones per se, but what it can do is allow many more calls at Milton Keynes and Watford by fast trains, which can’t be accomodated today because of:
1. The desire to minimise journey times to London for longer distance services from key cities.
2. Seating capacity on board, especially in the peaks.
Stopping more trains at these stations could bring them much better connectivity to places in the north AND London, and note also that with East-West Rail at MK and Metropolitan at Watford, they become more important as interchange hubs in their own right.
A similar effect post Phase 2 might be seen on ECML with again no total increase in numbers of trains possible but many more calls at Newark, Grantham, Peterborough and Stevenage.
Graham says “Politically, as you say, it would be astonishing if buying extra capacity led to a worse service for a large number of people.”
True. But this all depends on how large is large, and how worse is worse.
An illustration from HS1. Travellers wishing to go from Ramsgate to Bromley South undoubtedly have a slightly slower service due directly to the introduction of HS1. A few more stops have been added to the Victoria service (typically one per train) (not to punish cheapskates who don’t buy HS1 tickets, though it does have that effect, but to give a better service for, say, Longfield). Greatly offset (for London destinations in general) by HS1 opportunities, except that HS1 goes nowhere near Bromley South.
But I would claim that this disbenefit is not very great, and the number of people affected is also small. Those actually affected may disagree.
The lesson for HS2 is that it is unreasonable to require no disbenefits whatever from the shake-up which opening HS2 will cause. And that any disbenefits which do occur should be subtracted from the benefits (to others) of the opening of that line. I still consider that aggregate benefits to passengers remaining on classic WCML will be substantial, but I agree that this overall improvement is not “axiomatic”, but must be calculated from actual new timetables.
Malcolm et al,
Milton Keynes currently “enjoys” an off peak service on 5 trains per hour to Euston. But they are all concentrated in a 34 minute period with a 26 minute gap each hour.
In the reverse direction they are all concentrated into a ten minute period – xx:10 to xx:20 and at xx:43 and xx:49. I’m not complaining about this number of services or the speed but if HS2 delivered just 6 trains per hour at a regular 10 minute interval, I reckon that would be ideal and the demand would support it given how crowded off peak trains have become over the mast few years.
I know there are lots of other towns/cities this far out of London which don’t get this sort of service, but then again there are not many towns currently expanding at the rate of Milton Keynes.
@130 – the current calling pattern has evolved because of the need to flight the trains in the face of non-hourly calls.. (A similar effect can be seen on EC). A nice standard interval is good for the punters but may consume capacity if there is no scope for overtaking. It depends…
There have certainly been “upgrades” in the past which have resulted in an inferior service on some routes – for example fewer direct trains to North Wales, Blackpool, Grimsby, Harrogate etc following electrification of the WCML and ECML. Not to mention the inconvenience to travellers from SW London and Surrey to the continent following the opening of HS1 stage 2.
Doubtless there were Stanmore-Piccadilly Circus commuters who were incommoded in 1978 by the opening of the Jubilee Line.
Timbeau 10.51: And maybe we could add the owners of coaching inns? Or the patrons of the Met Pullmans? I’m not convinced this is a new or rare issue! In fact, there are rumours that my local line may be affected in the near future (albeit my usual journeys would see an improvement if they are true).
I see that Chris Grayling (at the Conservative party Conference) has lauded HS2 as heralding a “New Elizabethan era” for the railways.
Lèse-majesté notwithstanding, even on the most optimistic predictions Stage 1 will not open until after the Queen’s 100th birthday, so it seems unlikely the HS2 era and the modern Elizabethan era will overlap by very much.
My first blog and I’m quite impressed. The reading time guideline for this article was 13 minutes and after 2 days I’ve only reached half-way, the MK of the discussion. I have learnt a fair bit and realise some later unread comments may be pertinent so apologies.
Rather like Brexit many feel an IC service should go directly to the centre, others that OOC serves most of the conurbation and HS2 will crawl empty slowly into a congested wait at Euston, the rest vote both, a 3rd at Stratford/Wharf, or none.
Given the long run down of UK rail assets and our character of dithering it is surprising that so much has been decided so quickly by so few. The sums now committed for rail are staggering in post war history – CP6 £48bn HS2 £56bn 6k new carriages £15bn.
In the modern vernacular of double decker buses and football fields just those 3 amount to 13 Olympics or years of UK fare collection.
So may I gain insight on the following-
Euston Road – selected by Victorian leaders to PREVENT trains reaching into the centre of the city. Does that still make it the BEST place now?
Terminus – no other UK (or world) city intentionally ‘terminates’ it’s trains. At Manchester that is considered a ‘problem’ being ‘solved’ by Ordsall.
Agglomeration of long distance services is a ‘benefit’ for interconnection or does it overload and congest one street with taxis, hotels, coaches?
If Euston Road is now the nation’s InterCity OSI then there is an argument for the Chiltern’s Oxford, Stratford, Kidderminster at Marylebone together with the Ruislip Metro. The semi-fasts MK, Aylesbury, Bicester, High Wycombe would then divert to OOC. Chiltern should safeguard 4 rather than 2 platforms at OOC, after-all the whole depot site is going to be decked over regardless so existing rail use can still be preserved.
Is there any value in running on to Paddington as it just congests those platforms, will they retain the depot flyover to cross over the EL?
Is it similar to the case at Euston, that an industrial estate is not ‘real’ London but a Ryanair service.
OOC: While safeguarding include 2 platforms on the southern lines through OOC at North Pole for the WLL potential. Possibly a Heathrow-Gatwick Express serving OOC, Olympia, Clapham. The whole HRWX franchise will need a future purpose after 2020 so a premium direct airport connection service hubbed on HRW would service tourists wary of interchanges. HRX to GTW, LUT, BHX.
Euston Platforms – lots of capacity comments. The only original features are the throat and a gate house. Everything else was already redeveloped. Given the scale of what’s planned why is the focus on the platform level. Grand Central NY is on two levels, with even the tube tunnels for LIRR on two levels.
Why are the platforms not being rebuilt on multiple levels? HS2 is already approaching in a tunnel, Euston is at the bottom of an incline from Camden so it’s actually a benefit to elevate some outer urban service platforms.
DC Lines – still featuring in this thread. Seems a poor utilisation of terminus space. Surely HS2 would prefer to evict them. TfL justs wishes for suitable payment. The cost of refitting platforms from Watford Junc to Harlesden + Kensal Green for Bakerloo standards, rebuild Primrose Hill Station and the Camden Road viaduct to rejoin the Overground network from Willesden Junc LL bay 2.
GWR: With multi-level platforms at Euston (+multi-decade crayons) the suggested relocation of Riviera Express, Wales, Cornish Sleeper to an InterCity hub does not seem far fetched.
World City status may mean a higher proportion of terminating passengers but also multiple London ‘centres’ to serve. Why not run a Bristol train to Cambridge or a Canterbury one to Oxford? It is just a historic model that the lines were built separately and are being managed by Franchise territories. Which also means a lack of measured demand and higher cost barriers to overcome.
Other points from previous commenters.
The Stratford interchange has the DLR for those needing to ride. OOC is actually also Park Royal (and Willesden) so includes the Bakerloo and Central as an OSI. The new Acton line station is less than two train lengths walk and connects to Willesden.
The reinstatement of goods lines to Wellingborough is quadrupling not for freight. Both Wellingborough and Corby are regeneration zones having lost their carriage and steel works. The suburban electrics are being extended from Bedford, so that will maintain a double track for MML (bi-mode) Expresses. To Kettering I believe it was a triple line but as Corby is singled I guess they will get by with loops for 2 tph.
Lack of Capacity at St Pancras and Snow Hill tunnel: The Thameslink territory is not being extended and there are redundant platforms at Kentish Town where the additional Corby services could terminate after a stop at West Hampstead. Those would serve many destinations with one change.
After OOC development the EL Paddington terminators will have to be extended. Someone commented they will run onto the NNML. But Park Royal is part of the development so another platform there would be useful. That is halfway to Greenford so would it not be more efficient to loop back there. Cross-rail would become a one way service on the loop. There is space for a 12 car platform serving South Greenford=Castle Bar Park and on the curve at Drayton Green. EL trains would stack at the stops for release into the return Eastbound pattern.
The northbound branch would still be available for bi-directional working of freight, charter, and a Heathrow-Birmingham Airports Express.
It would end the orphan shuttle. Users gain a more frequent direct City access with some waiting but less than transfer delays and circular returns. The Up platform at Park Royal could be picked up by Chiltern.
NNML use by EL leaves the Chiltern singled at some bridges and sections in the beginning.
CASPAR LUCAS 13:37
Imm 12.17: You are assuming that OOC is meant to be an interchange. I am dubious as to whether that is the case (with the exception of HS2/Crossrail)
Cross Platform opportunities for XR. GWR, Chiltern, HRWX, maybe WLL, HS2 might be underneath. Along the west end there is NLL Richmond-Riverside and WLO Kew-BrentX (proposed). 600m for WLL to Olympia-Clapham. One stop or short walk to Bakerloo, Hampstead overground. Central Line is a short walk at North Acton.
A40 passes by the site so expect a regional Bus and Coach station within the transport interchange development.
@JONATHAN ROBERTS at 17:05: no reason why Eurostars shouldn’t call at Stratford (apart from the costs of extra Customs etc staff).
Inbound that would not apply as they are pre-cleared so maybe they could/should detrain at Stratford.
@SI at 21:56: The boarding/disembarking will mostly be one way (ie not many people will use HS2 to get between Euston and OOC), which will help matters.
That ticket would not be offered (unless it was a break of journey on an open fare).
BR bye-laws for the outer London Inter-City calls were for pick-up or set=down only.
The amateur colourists have been supplanted by overlords with felt tips, one day they might actually integrate services if demand trends resume.
Surely end loops and through services always enhance utilisation.
@OLD BUCCANEER at 23:08 It seems that the link was developed to keep costs down (single track, tunnel only to nearest useful existing railway) only to be turned down for the consequences of those design decisions.
And, I suspect, for reasons of domestic politics.
Too much credit, likely crayoned because the existing HS1 link was there without any evaluation. It is the service line to the original HS North Pole depot in place of WLL from Waterloo.
and European politics.
@ALEKS2CV
World City status may mean a higher proportion of terminating passengers but also multiple London ‘centres’ to serve. Why not run a Bristol train to Cambridge or a Canterbury one to Oxford? It is just a historic model that the lines were built separately and are being managed by Franchise territories. Which also means a lack of measured demand and higher cost barriers to overcome.
From memory, digging the joining-up the various London terminals to each other to run trains from Bristol to Canterbury is the easy bit.
The problem is that each of the railways from the terminals are slightly different::
National Rail: 25 kV, 50 Hz AC overhead:
West Coast Mail Line
London, Tilbury and Southend
West Anglia / Fen Line
Great Eastern Main Line
East Coast Main Line
Midland Main Line
Most of London Overground
High Speed 1
650 V – 750 V DC, third rail (top contact)
South London and the southern counties of Dorset, Hampshire, Sussex, Surrey and Kent.
London and North Western Railway
Northern City Line
630 V DC, fourth rail (top contact)
London Underground
750 V DC, third rail (bottom contact)
Docklands Light Railway
And then there are the diesel-only areas. Far too many of them.
This means multi-mode trains that can switch systems without passengers noticing, like Thameslink does.
Next you will need to deal with platform lengths. Which means longer platforms for every stations on one part of the network, – or systems for selective door opening.
Then there is the different Train Protection Systems in use.
Then there are the issues of platform heights.
So, your train from Bristol would need to not only have a Paddington to London Bridge tunnel, all of these trains. would need to be third-rail and overhead compatible system and potentially many stations worth of new safety systems all the way to Canterbury.
Aleks2cv
Surely end loops and through services always enhance utilisation.
They have their downsides though. Through services – problems one side of the centre will work through to the other – as is often demonstrated on Thameslink, where catenary problems on the MML (or indeed soon pathing issues at Welwyn) can soon affect pinch points such as Croydon – and of course vice versa.
For longer distance services, London’s position in the SE corner of the country makes it difficult to see how anything other than International services could justify a through Inter City working. (And note that very few Eurostar services go beyond Brussels or Paris, so it is not just a UK issue) There are simply not enough large concentrations of population south of the Thames to balance services to Manchester, Birmingham etc.
From the West Midlands, north west etc, a change to an inter city service in Birmingham, Manchester etc is faster than a direct semi-fast train. But for the shorter distances involved in the south, there is less call for non-stop trains, as most people prefer a direct service to London, without having to change at Brighton, Portsmouth or wherever (which would probably involve doubling back anyway).
Terminal loops give little or no opportunity for service recovery – layovers are obviously out of the question. And for long distance services, dwell times on the loop station would seriously dent capacity.
“World City status may mean a higher proportion of terminating passengers but also multiple London ‘centres’ to serve. ”
Indeed, but that is what the Tube is for – having the same destination served from multiple termini leads to confusion and inefficiency – if you miss the Bristol train at Paddington, will you have time to get to Euston for the next one?
@timbeau – quite – that’s why when the Channel Tunnel opened, the market surveys showed that apart from Brum-Paris, rail could offer no time or price advantage over (cheap) air travel. Overnight, at best Manchester-Paris – but that was before the days when really cheap and frequent air travel took off. [Quite why the ONS was ordered before anyone thought to inquire into the service viability is one of life’s little mysteries, whose answer lies in the murkier political depths and the “Ready, shoot, aim” school of planning.]
Surely the ONS (Overnight Stock) was ordered in order to secure the votes of the MPs for Not-the-South-East, which were needed to get the Channel Tunnel Bill through parliament.
It is notable that in Japan, the pioneers of high-speed rail operations, two separate Shinkansen networks servicing different parts of the country approach from opposing directions and terminate right next to each other, on the same level, at Tokyo station, that city’s main central Intercity hub. These tracks could be very easily joined to create a through station, to allow high-speed trains to run right across the city and from one end of the country to the other, but despite the two networks sharing the same track gauge there is no physical connection at all, not even for stock transfer or engineering vehicles. This keeps the two networks separate from an operations point of view & the longer stops involved give time to embark & disembark the very high numbers of passengers at this, the most significant traffic destination on the both networks, whilst there is also time to allow some cleaning & restocking to take place. Importantly, with no physical dependency, delays on one part of the network simply cannot affect performance on the other. Clearly any passenger who is making an easy interchange between the two networks would experience delay on their total journey in that case, but the vast majority of passengers on the unaffected network, whose high-speed journey leg starts or ends at Tokyo station itself with it’s myriad of local, regional & urban transport connections, would not be impacted at all.
While for shorter urban & commuter operations like Crossrail & Thameslink, running through the city centre & calling at a number of key stations & interchanges is clearly a great benefit, the unique challenges of long-distance high-speed operations lend themselves well to traditional terminal layouts especially at their principle traffic nodes. Because of longer dwell times sufficient for the passenger density throughput & servicing operations a through station in such a city centre location may need almost as many platforms as a terminal, and it would require large ‘throat’ junctions at both ends, a significant concern if constructed in subsurface caverns.
For HS2 there is not one dominant domestic destination or group of destinations in the same corridor south or east of London that suggests a logical target for sending all or at least a large proportion of those 18 trains an hour that are intended to terminate at Euston. Running most of these on to Europe would be a vast overkill based on current market assessments, quite apart from the difficulties with immigration & security checks, and long distance through running adds greatly to operational risk for the core domestic HS2 operation.
Terminal stations are not ‘out of date’ or sub-optimal with regard to HS2 or continental HS1 operations clearly, & any proposal to link operations via a through London station or a bypass line raises many, many more problems than it appears to solve. With different operators involved for each line, Eurostars crossing the borders at speed without Britain being part of the EU, & the unique security concerns of the iconic cross-channel link, it seems to me much more sensible to concentrate on organically developing Continental services to and from the already secure continental terminal of St Pancras, hopefully adding greater frequency to existing routes & more European destinations in the future. In tandem, HS2 will bring increasing numbers of travellers into Euston from all over the north of England together with others from more local destinations along the classic lines that also feed this and other terminals nearby. At least some of those arriving at Euston will be potential continental passengers, and the good frequencies available to a large number of destinations at St Pancras will be much more attractive to many business and leisure travellers than perhaps only a handful of weekly direct through service to Paris from a tiny number of hubs in the north of England.
I believe a good quality PEDESTRIAN connection between the two main terminals of this vast new London ‘railport’ will become essential, serving not only the continental traveller, but also linking HS2 to the increasingly important Thameslink network with its frequent trains to South London destinations & the south coast, as well as the South Eastern High Speed domestic services to Kent.
Whether construction of such a link in whatever form it takes is part of the HS2 project or a subsequent Crossrail 2 project by TfL is not important. A greatly improved surface or shallow subsurface link between the two Crossrail 2 entrances already planned would be only a little longer than many existing London Underground connecting tunnels, & equivalent to many airport transfer links. It would link the Kings Cross developments lands better with Euston station too.
@timbeau – yes, the ONS were a con and probably considered as cheap at half the price as a vfm bribe.
@Mark Townend – I think you have, before,explained how you could install a mechanised link between KXStP and Euston. Besides the points you make about through running and terminal capacity, i might add that the footprint of any terminal in the central area would be enormous – “Euston” obviously” and even if underground, the cost would be as vast as the throat caverns – think 40-50 Underground stations in terms of length required .
@GH – Indeed, perhaps as expensive as two or three further London (or northern) ‘crossrails’. “Euston surface terminus, indubitably”.
” only a little longer than many existing London Underground connecting tunnels, & equivalent to many airport transfer links. ”
Indeed, we are used to airports having multiple terminals, some of them with multiple Tube/Metro stations (see Heathrow) so we could consider the whole Somers Town complex in the same way, with Kings Cross as the East Terminal, St Pancras domestic as the North Terminal, Euston as the West terminal, and St Pancras International as the International terminal, Viewed in this way, HS2 is simply adding yet another terminal next to the West terminal.
One of the main reasons why Eurostars do not penetrate further into either the UK or Europe must lie with the attitudes of Border Force and security. Unlike all other rial border crossings in Europe (Schengen didn’t exist at the time the Tunnel was being planned) UK immigration and customs was extremely hostile to checking passports and customs on train. Parliament forced them to accept this in principle, but they were able to ditch it as soon as they could, within a year or so of opening. Since then they have required dedicated international platforms within the UK and have refused to allow domestic passengers to travel on international trains. Both of these put the economics of running trains beyond London out of the window. While trains from, for example, Berlin to Moscow, are able to rely on domestic passengers in Germany, Poland, Belorussia and Russia to help increase patronage, trains from Brum or Manchester to Paris could not benefit from local passengers between Brum or Manchester and London. Similarly, London to Marseille trains cannot take French passengers between Lille or Paris and Marseille. Moreover, Border Force has previously said it is not prepared to have any further immigration checks in Europe apart from Paris, Bruxelles and Lille, meaning that any trains from further afield require a complete detraining, usually, at Lille for immigration control, adding more than an hour to the journey. This inflexibility is almost certainly what has put paid the the DB proposal for trains from Frankfurt and Koln to London.
Interestingly, there seems to be some wriggle room here because the Eurostar trains from Amsterdam will have passport control in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, but Dutch passengers will all be booked in one half of the train, allowing Belgian passengers from Bruxelles into the other half. The Dutch half will sit in Bruxelles Midi (having taken a circuitous route into platforms 1/2) with the doors firmly closed while Belgiam passengers board.
@Quinlet
I don’t think the Lille example is correct. Passengers can board at Lille on trains *from* the UK, as it is by then in the Schengen area and there is no luggage screening needed, as the train has passed through the Channel Tunnel.
It is also certainly possible to book from Brussels to Lille on Eurostar (I’ve just double checked on the SNCF website). A passport/ID and security check is necessary, unlike the same journey on TGV or Thalys, which adds 30 mins to a 34 min journey time.
The website implies internal journeys from the south of France to Lille are possible, because all the border formalities are conducted at Lille.
@ ALEKS2CV at 04:53 (a bit over 20 hours ago)
“@SI at 21:56:” that would be 21:56 20 months ago…
I’m not sure BR bye-laws apply now 😉 The availability of Oyster (albeit strongly discouraged) between St Pancras and Stratford International provides a precident that one could take a train between Euston and Old Oak Common. Add in that OOC would have an interchange between two intercity routes, one would imagine that one would be allowed to make an Intercity change from Bristol to get to Euston (as one can off an SWML Intercity train at Clapham Junction and go to Victoria), etc. Add in that unlike Stratford and Watford (where there are pick up/set down only trains – or rather ‘train’, as it’s one-an-hour) there aren’t non-intercity trains on the Euston-OOC axis that can provide those flows without needing to put short-distance passengers on long-distance trains.
I doubt many would use it, but I also doubt such flows would be restricted by anything other than price.
—
About North-of-London Eurostars and HS1-HS2 through running.
Greengauge, in it’s lobbying for through-running, produced a document to push a case for thru-running. As well as glossing over the security/border issue, it needed the cheap cross-Camden alignment to save money (and scuppering the freight/Overground network at the same time) and filling that with 3tph in either direction to justify the expense. It then struggled to fill those trains. Something like half the flows were intra-South East (eg Kent to Heathrow) and another third were SE to HS2 northwards. The document assumed that no one would walk the 400m between Euston and St Pancras, but that people would walk the 400m between Stratford and Stratford International – most of whom would have been better using Crossrail between Stratford/Docklands and Old Oak Common (even if it added a change) than going via Stratford International.
And Manchester – Paris (say) would have to stop at every station en-route to fill it enough to generate traffic. Even running every 2 hours, that would still mean that more often than not, on arrival at Piccadilly, you’d get to Paris faster getting on the first Euston HS2 train and then the next Paris train at St Pancras (as those would be fast) than the direct trains that would take about half-an-hour longer in-train and run less frequently. TGV Picardie would have strengthened that as London-Paris trains would take that short-cut, but other trains between the Chunnel and Paris would need to go via Lille to serve destinations that are a change from there.
Though I’ve probably mentioned both these things upthread. It has been a while.
@Si – ticketing isn’t controlled by the bye-laws (which still exist albeit not as “BR” bye-laws) but by the fares manuals and routeing guide based on the Ticketing and Settlement Agreement. What you say , assuming it ever comes to pass, may be defined in the “Any available route” and “London Termini” arrangements – or not.
@Quinlet – mycolleagues in the Department dealing with InterCity and Eurostar at that time were simply not prepared to stand up to the Home Office, and left BRB to make all the running on the passport check issue.
Many thanks to all the helpful feedback. I realise this discussion had gone quiet so wasn’t expecting any immediate pick up. I am trying to get caught up as I couldn’t make a case out of the official propaganda. And I will review the second half of the discussion if points have already been made.
Euston – alright I am beginning to see the case is something similar to why GNR and MR sited close to the competition allowing for Goods and service. Living in London it’s a bit of a Heathrow to be avoided if there is a choice. For facing out towards the country from London a Euston Road Termini covers the Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham conurbations which are a different category than smaller regional markets.
BRIANTIST at 11:26 Legacy – SCHOOLED on historical incompatabilities. More RER working is still an aspiration where better balancing volumes can be paired. With funding of £100bn rebuilding large parts of the network could be a blank sheet restart.
Through running – need not balance. Especially if it’s covering both sides and the centre of a city. Not optimal utilisation. If running to a depot for servicing you may as well carry passengers to the last station.
TIMBEAU at 12:08 HS2 Terminal – through Inter City working. (And note that very few Eurostar services go beyond Brussels or Paris, so it is not just a UK issue) There are simply not enough large concentrations of population south of the Thames to balance services to Manchester, Birmingham etc.
Services to Manchester run through, and Sheffield so it’s the size and expense of London. TGVs centre on Paris so that’s not Eurostar specific. More similar to London legacy and geography.
Belgium’s size does not give another destination though Amsterdam could be considered a through working.
Is Berlin not a better case though someone already covered Hauptbahnhof and it’s expense.
GRAHAM H at 13:10 rail could offer no time or price advantage over (cheap) air travel.
For the traveller the relative price and time is dependant upon the Government APD, subsidy, and the required check-in time.
Quite why the ONS was ordered before anyone thought to inquire into the service viability is one of life’s little mysteries
A market does exist. The Bourg St Maurice ski trains run overnight. Hotel tourist trains are becoming a thing in the far east. They did not need to be HS just Chunnel compatible and a comfortable nights journey time.
MARK TOWNEND at 18:18 Shinkansen
The Tokyo – Osaka line was a stand-alone pioneer for 2 decades. The Aomori was opened when the original route had been extended in the other direction. HS costs were a factor in the losses leading to the break-up of JR national. The competing regional JRs now have their own territory.
Their terminal servicing/cleaning regime is impressive.
Because of longer dwell times sufficient for the passenger density throughput & servicing operations
– servicing should be at a reversal point when empty not on a through stop (Liv not Man).
For HS2 there is not one dominant domestic destination or group of destinations in the same corridor south or east of London that suggests a logical target for sending all or at least a large proportion of those 18 trains an hour that are intended to terminate at Euston.
For the InterCity connections the Euston Rd does offer a dominant market, combined with OOC it makes a logical dispersal. HS1-SE has a feeder network into a similar 2 part dispersal, I was trying to extend that out the other side but it is not balanced pairs so involves changing HS2 services at Euston or Brum anyway. May as well find your own way to the actual train you want. The pitch seemed to address an HS2 customer whereas in reality most users will have an HS component within their overall rail journey.
unique security concerns of the iconic cross-channel link
Isn’t this the crux of it that even if we still held Calais or had joined Schengen the long under sea tunnel is a target that would require security screening for IED contaminants and threats hence the UK border stance that it makes sense to check identities whilst using scanners.
vast new London ‘railport’ : lost track of that term much prefer it to my Euston Rd Terminals.
TIMBEAU at 19:43 we are used to airports having multiple terminals so we could consider the whole Somers Town complex in the same way
But most airports have free transit between their terminals as a compensation for the very reason that original structures had easy interchange.
QUINLET at 22:11 Interestingly Eurostar trains from Amsterdam will have passport control in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, but Dutch passengers will all be booked in one half of the train, allowing Belgian passengers from Bruxelles into the other half. The Dutch half will sit in Bruxelles Midi (having taken a circuitous route into platforms 1/2) with the doors firmly closed while Belgian passengers board.
Does this mean UK passport officers working with Dutch ones at Rotterdam and Amsterdam?
Why run half the train empty, to achieve twice the frequency otherwise justified ?
So Rotterdam – London passengers board with the pre-cleared Amsterdam passengers or different coaches. Are they both from precleared dedicated International platforms? It would appear that Amsterdam and Rotterdam passengers to Brussels could be allowed into the Belgian half with a lock out or segregating on-board train crew. Disembarkation at Bruxelles of Schengen passengers would be followed by security crew boarding for the manoeuvre into the International cleared platform during which cleaners would pickup left property and sniffer dogs would sweep.
At Japanese standards that should not cause delay and changes the economics of the operational subsidy required. Similarly UK inbound regional internationals could pick up intermediate domestic passengers whilst disembarking international ones. Can’t see why the Marseille Eurostar does not pick up fares in Lille and Disney. Once you’ve regularly sold out end to end fares then non-stop like Paris makes sense for selling speed.
they have required dedicated international platforms within the UK and have refused to allow domestic passengers to travel on international trains. Both of these put the economics of running trains beyond London out of the window. #
So the security regulation for heading into the tunnel is that all loading must be from segregated cleared international platforms onto a swept empty train at London-Ashford-Paris-Lille-Bruxelles-Amsterdam-Rotterdam.
All others must halt at Lille and detrain for a security sweep and ID check (with luggage for customs / scanners ?) That’s actually not that bad, it used to be the standard, and if you have to go through security anyway there is no actual loss of time. Regional Eurostars could do the same at Ashford.
Even if only trains leaving the Chunnel picked up intermediate domestic passengers that’s still half of the economics sorted.
trains from Brum or Manchester to Paris could not benefit from local passengers between Brum or Manchester and London
If it’s a matter of security they could if the train only became ‘international’ once cleared at Ashford.
If it had just been Border Control for immigration then the loading could have been dynamic. The last car at Manchester would be booked for International passengers. On departure doors are locked until Lille. Ticket collector verifies bookings and moves out any trespassing domestic stowaways. Two passport officers follow to verify documents. Next a security officer to deal with issues. Lastly a complimentary trolley dolly to keep punters happy being locked in.
At Birmingham next car empties and Birmingham international passengers load. Doors lock on departure. Ticket collector, Passport and security move forward.
The front domestic and rear locked international portions are segregated at all times by Border Control but utilisation is maximised for appropriate domestic and international occupants.
International passengers boarding at the front of the train would have their booked seats to the rear and on board announcements would remind them to pass through. They would cross Border Control when they meet the Passport officers.
By OOC the trolley dolly would disembark to restock and return. The quarantined international portion should have reached the buffet/restaurant facilities.
After Stratford and Ebbsfleet remaining domestic Ashford passengers should all be booked in the first carriage.
At Ashford the last domestic doors open and remaining domestic passengers disembark. Security moves into the last remaining carriage to clear it for security and detrain. International doors open and remaining pre-cleared International passengers board from the international platform. After the chunnel the regional Eurostar is a domestic Schengen service picking up at all stops.
Impressive load factors throughout.
MAN OF KENT at 23:42 It is also certainly possible to book from Brussels to Lille on Eurostar. A passport/ID and security check is necessary, unlike the same journey on TGV or Thalys, which adds 30 mins to a 34 min journey time.
The corollary to that would be booking from StP to Ashford on Eurostar if you checked in and went through ID and security screening. Cheaper and quicker to use HS1-SE though you may want to try the experience of an e320.
If security takes 30 min at Bruxelles why twice as long at Lille ?
SI 2017 at 01:44 I’m not sure BR bye-laws apply now
Some current railway bye-laws predate BR.
one could take a train between Euston and Old Oak Common
some felt that dwell would be extended if permitted. It’s unlikely to be a popular option at a premium fare. With all the interchanging I don’t understand how access will be restricted or enforced. Are barriers intended on HS2 platforms?
one would be allowed to make an Intercity change from Bristol to get to Euston
if holding a valid ticket
Add in that unlike Stratford and Watford (where there are pick up/set down only trains – or rather ‘train’, as it’s one-an-hour) there aren’t non-intercity trains on the Euston-OOC axis that can provide those flows without needing to put short-distance passengers on long-distance trains.
“it’s the only direct option” agreed re the set-down/pick-up distinction
Something like half the flows were intra-South East (eg Kent to Heathrow) and another third were SE to HS2 northwards
Leaves one sixth as exclusive regional International ? So if dynamic loading or a Lille type security check-in at Ashford then 3x more international services could be funded with domestic loads ?
Heathrow seems an odd choice but that was considering an HS spur so same logic as continuing the HRW Express. Kent to Bristol or Oxford would still be a pairing.
people would walk the 400m between Stratford and Stratford International
but there is the transit option on DLR
better using Crossrail between Stratford/Docklands and Old Oak Common
standing in a crush load with luggage when your hotel was in Stratford overlooking your Manchester train
Manchester – Paris (say) would have to stop at every station en-route to fill it enough to generate traffic. Even running every 2 hours, that would still mean that more often than not, on arrival at Piccadilly, you’d get to Paris faster getting on the first Euston HS2 train and then the next Paris train at St Pancras (as those would be fast) than the direct trains that would take about half-an-hour longer in-train and run less frequently.
Only if it was an International train otherwise no. It could be an international section or an Ashford detrain control service. Does anyone just turn up at StP. I thought it was all pre-booked. Most will pre-book as not on unlimited budgets so no hanging around as you turn up at the time you have picked to travel from the schedule.
Every station is Manchester Piccadilly or Airport, Crewe, Birmingham International, OOC, Stratford Intl., and Ashford if clearance needed and Ebbsfleet if the (Paramount) Studios ever open. If full then Paris otherwise Lille for Bruxelles/NL transfers.
EUSTON Redevelopment – is it a property scheme with railway attached ?
It’s the only major terminus now without a railway hotel. Some operator like Hyattt or Four Seasons could tie in with the Sleepers, Luxury Cruise trains, Cruise Boat train to Liverpool, Pullman excursions. Having tourist platforms with lounge suites and showers.
@aleks2cv – I am not aware of any UK government subsidy to either air traffic or Eurostar. If rail cannot compete on time with air (and frankly, only on London=Paris/Brussels is that feasible- then it has to compete on price. That pretty well excludes rail attempting to enter the high price/ low volume business market – something that even the SNCF has begun to realise with its Ouigo operation.
I do not think that anyone seriously suggests Bourg StMaurice as a useful all-year round remote destination – at present it receives only a few Eurostar services a year. (You have also forgotten the Avignon run – comment as before). The main constraints on running international services have proved to be the problems of security and border control – exhaustively, and exhaustingly covered in these columns.
In relation to your comments about the location of Kings Cross and St Pancras, these termini are where they are because that was as near to London as they could get in the 1850s withut demolishing a lot of very expensive property – not so much competition, as lack of options.
@ Graham H
All the northern termini except Euston were built after the Royal Commission on Railway Termini, which established the Euston Road as the line in the sand which should not be crossed.
http://turniprail.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/defending-londons-interior-railway.html
That didn’t of course stop the attempts to reach Charing Cross from the north. The Royal Commission was, in effect, merely crystallising a political aspect to an unpalatable financial decision – one which the L&B had already had to take (as you say) before the Royal Commission’ report.
More to the point, there is an interesting discussion to be had about (a) the choice of the “West End” v the City when coming from the north, and (b) the effect of that red line on the construction of the Metropolitan. On (a), there were fewer constraints on building towards the City at that time, as Broad Street demonstrated, but clearly the passenger market was the carriage folk of Westminster and Mayfair rather than the City merchants, fast declining in number as residents of the Square Mile. Exchange of passengers between London termini was also less important to the very early railway system: there seems to have been little concept that people would attempt to travel beyond London in the course of a single day (and indeed, that would have been quite difficult for timetable reasons before c1850).
@Si
“And Manchester – Paris (say) would have to stop at every station en-route to fill it enough to generate traffic. Even running every 2 hours, that would still mean that more often than not, on arrival at Piccadilly, you’d get to Paris faster getting on the first Euston HS2 train and then the next Paris train at St Pancras (as those would be fast) than the direct trains that would take about half-an-hour longer in-train and run less frequently. ”
This is why the Cross Country services via Olympia had such poor loadings – most people preferred to take the Victoria Line between Euston and Victoria than trundle down the West London Line on a direct train.
@Alecs2cv
I think the security risk about the channel tunnel may have been overstated or misread. The tunnel itself is relatively secure as it’s burrowed through rock – which would withstand a much more massive attack than would the equipment or the train. As we have seen, the equipment in the tunnel is much more vulnerable, to the extent that a lorry load of smouldering margarine can close the tunnel for several weeks. Similarly, a car with a boot full of semtex on a shuttle service could cause the same level of destruction and few cars go through any form of obvious security checking – using the shuttle frequently I think I get stopped for a cursory check perhaps one in ten times and a somewhat more thorough (but still not rigorous) check perhaps once every two or three years. You wouldn’t even need to be a suicide bomber as you could just get out of your car and walk to a different part of the train before detonation.
Which leaves the trains themselves. Are Eurostar trains that much more attractive a target than prime inter-city trains? Especially when experience has shown that terrorists are far more interested in crowded suburban or metro trains as far more people will be affected and far more terror created.
The higher levels of security checking and check-in times on Eurostar may give some people some added peace of mind, but I can’t help feeling that they are not addressing the more vulnerable parts of the system and do cost a lot to operate. A chain, after all, is only as strong as its weakest link.
Quinlet
Exactly …
To seriously damage the tunnel itself ( as opposed to “merely” a train ) would require either so much explosive, or such a powerful explosive (“fission”) that other targets would be much more “appropriate”
@Alecs2cv
Re: Kent – Heathrow flows on an HS1-Hs2 link. These would be change at OOC. As would the HS1-GWML flows that further reduce the actual HS2-HS1 demand (so it wouldn’t be a sixth for international trains. It was about 20-25% of the measly number of passengers using the link with the Kent – North domestic flows as well as the France – North flows. Everyone else would change at Stratford or OOC).
Re: changing at Stratford onto High Speed Train to avoid crush-loading on the ‘Liz. If you are on a GEML – is it worth lugging bags onto the DLR short hop, or hauling them on the walk through Westfield? Especially if you are coming from Docklands (and thus taking an indirect-route to OOC), or the tube/Liz from East London. Greengauge needed such passengers to get the limited service reasonably full.
Better to build a decent link (travelators?) between Euston and St Pancras. Far cheaper for almost all the connectivity gains, and with the added benefit of connecting HS2 and Thameslink to a higher standard at the same time.
Re: Security – isn’t appeasing airlines a reason for it, along with the Home Office demands? The ro-ro shuttles and ro-ro ferries have similar checks, and the airline-style-trains and planes have similar checks.
Are there similar checks on trains running through similarly long tunnels elsewhere, such as the Seikan or the Oresund or the many alpine ones?
GRAHAM H at 16:03
@aleks2cv – I am not aware of any UK government subsidy to either air traffic or Eurostar. If rail cannot compete on time with air (and frankly, only on London=Paris/Brussels is that feasible- then it has to compete on price. That pretty well excludes rail attempting to enter the high price/ low volume business market – something that even the SNCF has begun to realise with its Ouigo operation.
Subsidy maybe an emotive term. Some consider Air does not pay it’s external costs, congestion and concentration, environmental. Our UK airports and connections have received a lot of public money. APD is loaded against intercontinental travel because alternatives are inconvenient, break of itinerary in Dublin or Schipol etc. If it were rebalanced to a flat Airport Exit Fee the rail competition would be different. It is not a free open market but a Government determined policy. If Air travel is considered ‘cheap’ then maybe the balance is sub-optimal.
HS1, Eurostar, Eurotunnel have not met their traffic (or profit) forecasts. We are agreeing that Air should be ‘priced’ above Rail for optimal economic allocation.
The airlines have been very good at yield management and rail franchises have learnt. Ouigo may be a way to fill a train and still have the last few seats at full price.
Italo, the first privately operated high-speed train in Europe Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori, maybe succeeding. The pitch should be speed and better service, additional costs for flexibility, facilities, space.
No one wants to feel they are paying a ‘high’ price though it may be a ‘higher’ price if it offers some perceived additional value. The ‘Business’ class was a bit of a dead end without real meaning, better description is Premium, Silver, Excursion, Group.
Austrians are having a go at making a success of Sleepers so one to watch.
QUINLET at 21:24
GREG TINGEY at 22:31
Agree – most people feel that way about rail tunnels. My rationalisation considered sea water, mixed traffic with fuelled vehicles, lack of ventilation shafts. All I ever come back to is an Abundance of Caution in regulations to reassure the public to authorise construction. Terrorist threat since 1990 has elevated but Chunnel security is apparently unchanged. I was even considering Kevlar baggage cars. No justification warrants a real constraint on increased use.
As tunnel users where is the rail connected passenger link, is there a Folkestone Calais train or is it the Ashford Lille segment of Eurostar? Maybe there isn’t one and it’s minibus links either end between rail stations and EuroShuttle terminals.
SI at 00:08 Interchange convenience is the goal.
Customs and Security are different procedures. The Ferries, Coaches, deplaning passengers have the customs inspections
Boarding plane and HS passengers get the security baggage scans.
TIMBEAU at 00:17
Never experienced it at any other tunnels but most of my travel predates HS networks.
HS Trainsets ? Earlier it was stated that Captive trains were ‘faster’ than classic compatible. Why would that be, did they mean tilting vs classic?
Spell check just highlighted the connection between TRAIN set and TRIANG – never noticed that before. Funny what one takes for granted.
My view on security is no threat to a tunnel, rather keeping the crew in control and occupants safe similar to aircraft in that sense. HMG would say that a 25 year safety record justifies their measures.
MR BECKTON at 21:48 Reserved seats for passengers boarding at OOC having come from Heathrow is a nonsense. If I have flown in from Los Angeles and am travelling to Birmingham, I have no idea to within an hour or two when I might actually make it to OOC. Needing a reserved seat, and having to predict exactly which train, on a service to Birmingham operating at almost Metro frequency, is just not going to work. Nor are 60-second stops where passengers, with heavy bags, are going up and down the platform looking for a specific carriage.
There will be an app for that ! There will need to be reservation with check-in. If you’ve bought an open ticket the passometer would print the allocated reservation for the next train with boarding position.
LMM at 19:49 Does SouthEastern have any choice as to whether they stop at Stratford? Or is it a franchise requirement? Do we have any numbers on how many passengers use that stop?
Absolutely it is designated a separate station to Stratford Regional
Usage is definitely rising
DLR annual boardings and alightings
2012 1.644 million
2013 Decrease 1.246 million
2014 Increase 1.784 million
2015 Increase 2.551 million
2016 Increase 3.195 million
(inter) National Rail annual entry and exit
2012–13 Increase 0.958 million
– interchange 3,353
2013–14 Decrease 0.928 million
2014–15 Increase 1.075 million
2015–16 Increase 1.632 million
– interchange 12
2016–17 Increase 2.136 million
TIMBEAU at 14:44 The busiest station is Waterloo, but it is not a particularly popular destination – most people are interchanging (and probably double-counted as they go through two barrier lines?)
I read an interview about how ORR adjust raw data using modelled travel patterns to avoid that.
National Rail annual entry and exit
2016–17 Increase 99.403 million
– interchange Increase 6.106 million
London Underground annual entry and exit
2016 Increase 100.36 million
The Waterloo terminus is the National as the East through platforms are a separate station. The interchange is those travelling onwards using a Terminus departure.
The second gateline is at the Underground and is higher. Almost a million local or bus passengers plus those walking.
London HS interchange
Railway Gazette – In 2014 Eurostar began promoting travel from the UK to Genève via a change to a TGV Lyria service at Lille Europe, but this was not as successful as had been hoped. The journey time of more than 6 h and the need to change trains were thought to be unattractive.
Even changing HS services at the same station has challenges.
Found this on HS security (so not a tunnel thing)
FRANCE: Equipment to enable passengers and their luggage to be scanned prior to boarding Thalys services in Paris and Lille is to be installed, Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development & Energy Ségolène Royal has announced.
Thalys warned that tightened security meant ‘boarding might take longer than usual’, and passengers should arrive at least 30 min prior to departure.
My understanding is that the capability is being introduced on HS lines (following the Eurostar example). Hopefully it is not intended to be used all the time as it would rather mess up a 1hr journey.
SI:
isn’t appeasing airlines a reason for it, along with the Home Office demands?
Yes, entirely so.
and …
Timbeau
Are there similar checks on trains running through similarly long tunnels elsewhere,
No, or only very occasionally.
A2CV
That was after the failed gun attempt on a Thalys. AIUI, it’s for “emergencies” not general traffic at all times
( More “Theatre” IMHO ).
MAN OF KENT at 22:00 Eurostar trains have to satisfy the requirements of the Channel Tunnel Safety Authority, which amongst other things I believe means the trains have to have a higher level of fire resistance (hence the extra internal doors that close only during the transit of the Tunnel). Those requirements are another deterrent to running through services beyond the core network eg to HS2…
or a case against the scrapping of classic compatible Eurostar e300.
Now I just read that new classic compatible HS2 trains are being chosen in 2019.
Much scrapping and replacing.
“The five bidders for the train-building contract will tender next year and the contract will be awarded in 2019.”
“The Commons Transport Committee noted a poor level of public debate (on HS2) which had failed to address the facts”
.. so it’s not just me
@ALEKS2CV 30 December 2017 at 08:07
“Railway Gazette – In 2014 Eurostar began promoting travel from the UK to Genève via a change to a TGV Lyria service at Lille Europe, but this was not as successful as had been hoped. The journey time of more than 6 h and the need to change trains were thought to be unattractive. Even changing HS services at the same station has challenges.”
I don’t think that’s comparable to a cross city interchange e.g. London or Paris as it is a newly promoted and limited service (maybe once or twice a day) and not a ‘traditional’ or particularly busy route. I’ve done London to Geneve a number of times by train, always via Paris. The last time I walked across the city on a fine Spring day in under an hour. Would have been much quicker if the Geneve TGV route terminated at Gare de l’Est.
@ALEKS2CV 30 December 2017 at 06:17
“Earlier it was stated that Captive trains were ‘faster’ than classic compatible. Why would that be, did they mean tilting vs classic?”
There was some thought at one time that the reduced width below the sole bar in the restricted UK structure gauge could limit room for bulky suspension elements on the bogies that would be neccessary for the very highest speeds. In Japan, Mini-Shinkansen trains such as the E6 series have to cope with a similar problem on gauge converted classic lines that branch from the main high speed trunk. At first these units were subject to a slightly lower maximum speed limit than their contemporary full sized cousins the E7, with which they work routinely in multiple on the main line. More recently the E6 has been approved to run at the full E7 speed so that suggests the problem is resolvable. Note the Japanese narrow (cape) loading gauge is very similar to our classic standard gauge profile with the same characteristic high platform intrusion below the sole bar, revealing a British influence in their early railway developments and lending weight to the theory that we run a narrow gauge railway on standard gauge tracks in the UK!
Errata: It is the E5 series (full size) Shinkansen with which (mini) E6 works routinely in multiple with.