HS2

[Rittmeister]

For me, HS2 is needed, but it must connect to HS1. I am surprised the EU has not said they would fund the link under the Trans European Network project.

If I were to redraw the link, I would avoid going direct to London, build the line from Manchester and upgrade the route to Reading essentially copying the German high speed project of linking regional centres. The trains could be dual mode and then spur off to London Paddington, Heathrow, Willesden for HS1, Southampton, Bristol and Gatwick Airport all stopping in Birmingham.

[Steady rider]

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/900 ... g-nowhere/

My impression is that the whole project is profit driven for some investors and loads of promises to get support. It is certainly not well considered and evaluated. Assumptions are widespread on many aspects, guess work to a degree.

[661-Pete]

When I was a kid, I used to watch the big Pacifics hauling the once-a-day express between Dover (and other starting points) and Birkenhead - not going via London. Passing through Ashford and Tonbridge, it reached Redhill (where I lived) where they had to shunt locos because of a change in direction (also coupling up with a portion from Brighton), then on to Guildford, Reading, Oxford, Birmingham and on to the North-West. They don't make trains like that any more!

However, I don't think this is a viable route for a modern HS-anything. Much of it still not electrified, and plenty of bends!

[TonyR]

I've been hearing about the demise of travel to meetings because of the rise of video-conferencing for at least forty years now. Still waiting for it to happen.

Things have moved on quite a bit already, and video link technology in fifteen years time will undoubtedly make what we have now look extremely primitive.

That's what they said 15 & 30 years ago. And my iPhone today is more powerful than the state of the art Cray-1 supercomputer I used 30 years ago so its not technology that is holding it back. I've had professional video conferencing facilities available at the office for over 15 years but its rarely used even by the young staff. I'm probably the biggest user of it.

[al_yrpal]

Hmm… Crossrail now coming to Reading, previously only as far as Maidenhead. The local high court judges will be pleased. But, this will push house prices through the roof, local youngsters frozen out.

Al

[CREPELLO]

Once upon a time when the channel tunnel was first built, I still used to fly to Brussels for meetings because I live only half an hour's drive from Heathrow (provided I set off early enough in the morning), and it was still more convenient to fly. But once HS1 was built, it became better to go via rail, even though it takes me longer to get to St Pancras than to Heathrow (I can take public transport direct to St Pancras, though I can do it more quickly with a change, and of course there is also my 12 min bicycle ride to the station). My usual destination in Brussels involves two legs by public transport and a 5 min walk whether I arrive at the railway station or the airport.

That works fine for the admittedly large number of people who live near London and have meetings in or near Paris, Lille and Brussels. They can now get there and back in one day without flying.

And if your meeting is much further away, as some of mine have been, in Berlin and Munich, one can catch a Eurostar the previous evening to Paris and sleep your way there on a City-Night-Line train - and back again, saving time (since you can't do anything else with sleeping time) and the cost of a hotel.

When there was an overnight ferry from Harwich to Hook I used to do something similar for meetings in the Netherlands. I went directly from a day at the office to a night on the ship, which docked at 7am so no problem to be at the meeting by 10. Another night on the ship and back to the office by the afternoon of day three - with a few hours of very pleasant Dutch cyclepath cycling fitted in. This worked fine until the slow overnight ship was replaced by a much faster day ferry. But not fast enough. There's no kind of ferry can get you to Holland for a 10am to 4pm meeting in Delft, in-between two nights in your own bed (even if that bed's in Harwich I guess) so that necessitated at least one and more likely two nights in a Dutch hotel and turned 1½ working days into a 3-day trip! So then I flew. (I hear the night ferry is back, but I no longer go to meetings in Delft.)

Maybe I'm unusual in that I can sleep on a moving train or ship, but I wish I could catch a night train from London through the tunnel and wake up next morning in Amsterdam, Franfurt, Turin, Toulouse - any of those destinations further than Paris but not as far as Berlin: too far to go there and back in a long day by fast train and not far enough for City-Night-Line from Paris. If there were such overnight trains from and to London, they'd also serve other British cities as far away as Manchester and Bristol very well.

At present, the only way to for me to attend an all day meeting in, say, Frankfurt, is to fly and spend at least one night in a hotel. Likewise anyone on the continent to a meeting in Manchester. All the existing high-speed continental trains have not changed that and neither will HS2. Overnight trains through the tunnel could.

I completely agree with you. Night trains seem to be the missing link here. The extensive network of night trains is staggering in mainland Europe e.g. Hamburg to Chur. I have always wondered why the tunnel does not have a night train option especially for places like Frankfurt, Geneva or Bordeaux etc. If I were D Bahn, I would be rethinking their plans to offer high speed routes and maybe shift some rolling stock to the Channel Tunnel as a trial.

There is also the long forgotten fact that Stagecoach actually used to run night trains to Scotland from London. They were one of the first privatised services.

The number of nightbus options is staggering and ironically SNCF operate a coach service to London. It shows that people don't mind travelling 8 to 12 hours to get to places in Europe if the price is right!

It was a link (or, an important spoke in the wheel) we had within our grasp. The Nightstar sleeper trains were largely built (here in the UK) in the 1990's, but failed to be pressed into service for a number of mainly technical reasons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightstar_%28train%29 . So that was 139 high spec coaches, sold to Canada. Somebody had a bargain

[CJ]

Nightstar sleeper trains were largely built (here in the UK) in the 1990's, but failed to be pressed into service for a number of mainly technical reasons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightstar_%28train%29 . So that was 139 high spec coaches, sold to Canada. Somebody had a bargain

Perhaps too 'high spec'. Two-berth cabins with en-sute WC, some also en-suite shower, is a waste of space. Four-berth couchette compartments with a couple of WCs at the end of the coach seem more likely to me, to pack in enough people to make money. And speaknig as one who's done both: that's still a whole lot more comfy than spending all night in a so-called reclining seat.

[TonyR]

Seems like Network Rail are planning to spend almost as much over the next five years as the cost of HS2 in upgrading the existing network:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26810369

Only catch is they seem to have announced it several times before.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/ ... tment-plan

http://www.nce.co.uk/network-rail-sets- ... 43.article

[661-Pete]

Well, here's my assessment on the viability of HS2, based on purely anecdotal, non representative evidence, but what of it?

Yesterday it so happened that I needed to take a train from London to Glasgow, via the West Coast main line, returning today. On both trains it seemed to me that half the seats were empty. On the outward leg, a fast train with only one intermediate stop, I estimate there were fewer than a dozen passengers in my carriage. On the return leg, slower with more stops, my carriage was at most about 40% full.

Whereas, changing to the Southern region to complete my journey this evening, the train, although outside peak hours, was full to capacity with standing passengers when it set out from Victoria.

Based on this admittedly small and subjective sample, I'd say that London-to-Glasgow, at any rate, is not where the extra capacity is needed. I can't answer for London-to-Birmingham since I haven't been that way by train for some years.

However, the short leg from London Victoria to East Croydon, at any rate, does need plenty of extra capacity. At least, I've done that journey many times and I can't recall a recent occasion when there weren't standing passengers.

[Tonyf33]

So..it's being decided, starting as of 2017 £50billion TAX PAYERS MONEY wasted on something the nation just does not need
Well done, only 41 MPs had a backbone, and we are borrowing £16bn from the Chinese for a power station..you couldn't make it up!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27184269

[Psamathe]

So..it's being decided, starting as of 2017 £50billion TAX PAYERS MONEY wasted on something the nation just does not need :twisted:

London needs it (at least London thinks it needs it so all those hedge fund managers can commute in from their distance country estates). And what London wants, London gets (and everybody else pays for).

Ian

[Mick F]

60million people live in UK
15million of them in London.

[Tonyf33]

60million people live in UK
15million of them in London.

well you're out by around 40% but whatever the figure how many of those do you think can afford or need to travel on HS2, just curious?

Given it would take almost an hour for some 'Londoners' to travel to a hub you can exclude those for starters as they are extending their travel time at greater expense..so we are left with a very tiny fraction of a % whom will save about 20 minutes either way...and that's worth £50billion

[Mick F]

According to the figures available, the greater London area has a population of 13.6 million.

Twice the size of the whole of Scotland, and nearly a quarter of the size of the the whole of the UK.

[recumbentpanda]

OK, I've let this thread go on long enough, I can't hold back any longer!

I am biassed you see, by having experienced 'Shinkansen' travel in Japan.

Four hours for a journey the equivalent of London to Aberdeen, and you step off fresh as a daisy. Comfortable, spacious seats, and whisper-smooth travel. You can actually just walk down the aisle without bouncing from seat to seat like a three-day drunk. The train staff are a revelation, with fabulous uniforms, and taking such a terrific pride in their jobs it made me want to cry. The whole train spotless, inside and out, (unlike Eurostar, which although a proper Hitachi-built shinkansen is allowed to get disgracefully dirty in a way that would probably get several Japanese rail staff summarily sacked - if they hadn't resigned out of shame already!).

During a reception at our northern destination, one of our Japanese hosts asked me an interesting question: "It's fairly unusual for British people to come to Japan, but it's extremely unusual for them to come all the way up here - so what made you come?" Being on my best behaviour socially, I of course said, 'Because it's such a nice place!' Which was true. But I could with equal justice have said, 'Because it was so damn easy and painless to get here!'

There is none of our British advance ticketing nonsense either. You stride up to a desk in the station and buy an actual ticket from an actual person, there and then, without paying any massive fine for having the temerity to want to travel the same day - or even the same hour. Your ticket is for a reserved seat, and the trains arrive with what is to a Britisher, astonishing punctuality and regularity.

Once aboard moreover, you are treated as a house-guest in a family, rather than as a criminal suspect, which generally seems to be the case on UK rails. No one wants to see your ticket because you already checked in at the station when you bought it and went through the barriers. When the train guard, (in naval officer's full-dress tropical uniform!) does come down the carriage he is updating the numbers of unoccupied seats into a handheld device for forwarding to the next ticket office up the line.

Of course it isn't cheap to ride, and getting it built was an absolute bear, financially and politically, but the improvement to the quality of life has to be experienced to be appreciated. Of course, a good deal of its finer points are to do with the culture, but if we can reproduce even half of the good qualities I believe it will be a great benefit to the country.

Over and over, British railways have been starved of investment by politicians kow-towing to the mighty road lobby. It's a revelation to see what a 'real' modern railway is like, as opposed to the collection of antique rattletrap preservation societies that hoodwink the British public into believing that we actually have a railway system.

It's as if the UK bicycle industry were assiduously hushing up all those rumours about fabulous French and Italian racing bikes, wonderfully solid and reliable Dutch and German utility bikes, and thrilling American mountain bikes, and convincing us instead that a 'real bike' was a rusty Halfords BSO with components made of silver cheese and a threadbare saddle.

I take the fact that Hitachi has moved its train building headquarters to the UK as a very good sign for the future. The days of the 'Train-Shaped Object' might finally be coming to an end!

Rant over. Sigh.