National Transport Strategy

Biospace
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Re: National Transport Strategy

Post by Biospace »

Stevek76 wrote: 20 Mar 2023, 8:36pm Literally nobody (ok well there's probably a few out there) does daily long distance commutes.

Are you suggesting that you don't value these people's trips such that you'd deliberately build a new rail line far slower than it could be
I know plenty who commute from York into London by train, most days of the week. It's a good service, taking from as little as 1h47m.

HS2 is deliberately slower than it could be. We could build 300mph railways, but that would be even dafter than 200mph in our geographically and geologically diverse, London-centric and small nation.

Nearholmer wrote: 20 Mar 2023, 8:27pm Interesting that nobody has specifically mentioned the transport of goods.
It is - railway design is based on the need to reliably and economically carry heavy loads at low to medium speed, where rapid acceleration is neither necessary nor desirable. In contrast, passenger transport requires the opposite, with multiple stops.

Should we be considering rebuilding rail lines abandoned in the 50s and 60s wherever possible, for the creation of light rail rapid transit systems?
Jdsk
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Re: National Transport Strategy

Post by Jdsk »

Biospace wrote: 21 Mar 2023, 6:37pm ...
HS2 is deliberately slower than it could be. We could build 300mph railways, but that would be even dafter than 200mph in our geographically and geologically diverse, London-centric and small nation.
...
My emboldening.

Sometimes I go to other countries. And there's already a high-speed connection to their rail networks.

Jonathan
Nearholmer
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Re: National Transport Strategy

Post by Nearholmer »

It is - railway design is based on the need to reliably and economically carry heavy loads at low to medium speed, where rapid acceleration is neither necessary nor desirable. In contrast, passenger transport requires the opposite, with multiple stops.
Given that there are multiple sorts of “railway design” for multiple purposes, by no means all of them focused on freight transport, that doesn’t really hold together.

Neither does the idea that passenger transport always requires high acceleration and multiple stops: sometimes it requires only one stop, at the end, and in cases of long distance travel, where most of the trip is at a constant, high, cruising speed, a fairly relaxed acceleration to that speed is perfectly good for the job because it has very little impact on overall transit time.

And still I don’t think anyone here has mentioned the transport of goods as part of a national plan.
Last edited by Nearholmer on 21 Mar 2023, 7:33pm, edited 1 time in total.
Jdsk
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Re: National Transport Strategy

Post by Jdsk »

Nearholmer wrote: 21 Mar 2023, 7:02pm ...
And still I don’t think anyone here has mentioned the transport of goods as part of a national plan.
I will!

Jonathan
Biospace
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Joined: 24 Jun 2019, 12:23pm

Re: National Transport Strategy

Post by Biospace »

Jdsk wrote: 21 Mar 2023, 6:42pm
Biospace wrote: 21 Mar 2023, 6:37pm ...
HS2 is deliberately slower than it could be. We could build 300mph railways, but that would be even dafter than 200mph in our geographically and geologically diverse, London-centric and small nation.
...
My emboldening.

Sometimes I go to other countries. And there's already a high-speed connection to their rail networks.

Jonathan
Good point!
Biospace
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Joined: 24 Jun 2019, 12:23pm

Re: National Transport Strategy

Post by Biospace »

Nearholmer wrote: 21 Mar 2023, 7:02pm
It is - railway design is based on the need to reliably and economically carry heavy loads at low to medium speed, where rapid acceleration is neither necessary nor desirable. In contrast, passenger transport requires the opposite, with multiple stops.
Given that there are multiple sorts of “railway design” for multiple purposes, by no means all of them focused on freight transport, that doesn’t really hold together.

Neither does the idea that passenger transport always requires high acceleration and multiple stops: sometimes it requires only one stop, at the end, and in cases of long distance travel, where most of the trip is at a constant, high, cruising speed, a fairly relaxed acceleration to that speed is perfectly good for the job because it has very little impact on overall transit time.

And still I don’t think anyone here has mentioned the transport of goods as part of a national plan.
My point being that the rail-way (metal wheels on metal tracks tied to sleepers in ballast) came about to move freight more economically than by road and at relatively slow speeds. It wasn't designed to move humans around at high speed or for economy of acceleration, more a legacy from the past which we've adapted to make work for our modern needs. A testimony in particular to the skills of the Japanese and French engineers who made their high speed trains work so beautifully well.

What percentage of British train journeys involve a constant, high cruising speed with few or no stops?
Nearholmer
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Re: National Transport Strategy

Post by Nearholmer »

If I may be so bold, I think you’re missing the USP of railways, which is very low rolling resistance. Yes, that was first spotted and applied to shift goods about, but once locomotives had been invented the potential to use it for rapid passenger transport was realised very quickly ….. By the time the L&M opened, rapid passenger transit was firmly in the picture, the London and Birmingham was designed and built as much, more in fact, as a passenger carrier as a goods carrier*; the Great Western was envisaged as part of a London to New York route for passengers; and, multiple other early main lines were also focused as much on passengers as on goods. There was a lot of money to be made by killing off stage coaches and growing the travel market!

I’m afraid I still really don’t get your acceleration point. Except in urban passenger transport, where the acceleration and braking phases constitute a high proportion of a very short start-to-stop duration, acceleration has never been a genuinely significant issue in transport or travel (unless you are Mister Toad or Mister Clarkson), and for those urban uses the technology of trams and metros has progressed to a point where acceleration rates are comparable with buses - the practical limits are around what is called “jerk rate”, rate of change of acceleration, to avoid flinging the passengers back and forth down the cars, rather than the coefficient of friction between wheel and rail.

As to constant high cruising speeds on railways in this country, I suppose that depends upon the definition of “high”, but there are plenty of trains zipping about at close to 200kph with distances between stops of 80 - 150km.

If your point is that zipping about quickly is a generally bad idea from an energy use point of view, that I understand, but if you are going to allow it at all, then railways are probably the most energy efficient way of going about it ….. because of their USP.

*The prospectus put passenger travel second, but in a practical sense they actually didn’t get a grasp of freight transport until several years after it was opened. In the Act that authorised construction, passengers were listed before “goods, and merchandize.”, and in the year after opening through they made five and a half times as much money from passengers as from goods.
Biospace
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Re: National Transport Strategy

Post by Biospace »

Missing the USP? <Splutters>! Not at all, it's the LRR which makes rail so well suited to heavy freight transport.

Frictional losses due to air resistance will become greater than those due to axle and wheel friction at some speed, likely above the speed used to transport most freight. And the more stops/acceleration from rest made, the greater the energy requirement. On average, every 3.8 miles of British railway, there's a passenger station. Of course not all trains stop at many, but many do.

India’s National Transport Development Policy Committee suggests that rail transport consumes 75 to 90% less energy for freight and 5 to 21% less energy for passenger traffic compared to road based transport.

At speed, I see the single greatest efficiency of rail travel is that it is in a train rather than many separate vehicles. However, stopping/restarting an entire train weighing hundreds of tonnes to drop off/collect a handful of passengers is not so efficient.


Regarding transport strategies, Britain has deeper and more numerous problems than many because of our early industrialisation, relatively high population densities and more. I would be pleased if -
  • The rail capacity required to carry 90% of existing freight were identified, +50% for future volume increase
  • Existing Victorian rail infrastructure were set aside for this freight use, once a new passenger network was built -
  • with new Maglev express passenger routes along original proposed HS2 including Scotland + Exeter
  • regional and inter-regional transport using existing railway routes where not required for freight carriage, new rail created for more heavily used routes as necessary perhaps using Beeching lines where possible, in addition tram trains also using more existing roads.
  • The use of aerial ropeways - using large gondolas - should be considered for public transport where there are low peaks but constant pressure on existing networks and little scope for new ground routes
  • A railway company should be able to operate bus routes which feed tram and train networks.

AI will changing everything, although I don't expect the transport unions to support nationwide driverless trains just yet...
Nearholmer
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Re: National Transport Strategy

Post by Nearholmer »

Missing the USP? <Splutters>! Not at all
Apologies.

Regarding each of your proposals/ideals, I would ask: why?

Put another way: what strategic objectives do they serve?
Biospace
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Re: National Transport Strategy

Post by Biospace »

Nearholmer wrote: 22 Mar 2023, 4:45pm
Missing the USP? <Splutters>! Not at all
Apologies.
Not expected or needed, but graciously accepted. It's not often I contemplate our transport systems, but when I do it's a stark reminder of just how neglected the country, perhaps London excepted, has become in this respect. A friend tried to travel to York from Manchester a few weeks ago, in the evening, and he said that after France it was like returning to the Dark Ages.
Biospace
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Re: National Transport Strategy

Post by Biospace »

Nearholmer wrote: 22 Mar 2023, 4:45pm Regarding each of your proposals/ideals, I would ask: why?

Put another way: what strategic objectives do they serve?
Will reply when back in
Stevek76
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Re: National Transport Strategy

Post by Stevek76 »

Maglev, seriously? Even the countries with working maglev aren't building more. Might as well talk about hyperloop. The acceleration of a modern EMU is ample, part of the appeal of modern high speed rail is smooth movement sickness free travel, it's not a rollercoaster.

Railway companies can operate bus services, though most find it easier to simply pay an existing operator to do it. However bus based links and stops form part of the official timetable schedule feed from network rail.
Biospace wrote: 21 Mar 2023, 6:37pm I know plenty who commute from York into London by train, most days of the week. It's a good service, taking from as little as 1h47m.
'plenty', good anecdata there! :)
Nearholmer wrote: 20 Mar 2023, 10:09pm If you look in the stats, the average rail commute is 63 minutes, which on some routes gets you a good long way.
NTS0409 suggests the mean surface rail commute is around 20 miles and the median will be lower given the long tailed nature of these distributions. It also shows commute accounts for less than a third of rail miles and business even pre covid about a sixth. Less than a tenth in 2021 but i suspect that will revert.

I'd take that 63min with a pinch of salt as the Labour Force Survey it's from only asks about 'usual' commute which is likely to have some odd interpretation issues when it comes to people who either go in only one or two days a week, it those that travel, stay and then return. The NTS is a more reliable and detailed dataset when it comes to travel in England.
Carlton green wrote: 20 Mar 2023, 9:13pm Not at all, we once got by with trains for which 80mph was fast and cross country services are rarely fast but they are effective - effectively is what we need, but instead we have a vanity project.
We got by on horse and cart once too, how wonderful. Some of us prefer not to be stuck in the past. The rest of the post is just more of the same bingo card of hs2 opposition. These points have all been answered in even the earliest pre reports and studies on hs2, we're not getting improved local services (or freight paths!) without getting the inter city services into their own tracks and hs2 (in full) with NPR massively improves Northern and Midlands connectivity. It may have been hijacked as a showcase project by various governments of the day and the economics may have seen built in business users because that's what you need to do to get the treasury to pay for things, but the scheme itself has a solid planning and engineering basis and always has done. It was not borne from political desires but from a clinical assessment of the rail networks future that concluded a new line was needed, once you're there there is literally no reason and no benefit to making it some archaic 80mph effort just because that was 'good enough in my day'

Also fwiw, the cross country service is appalling, have you even been on it recently? Always rammed, annoyingly slow, still smells of bogs, and still noisy and polluting DMUs
The contents of this post, unless otherwise stated, are opinions of the author and may actually be complete codswallop
Nearholmer
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Re: National Transport Strategy

Post by Nearholmer »

NTS0409 suggests the mean surface rail commute is around 20 miles and the median will be lower given the long tailed nature of these distributions. It also shows commute accounts for less than a third of rail miles and business even pre covid about a sixth. Less than a tenth in 2021 but i suspect that will revert.

I'd take that 63min with a pinch of salt as the Labour Force Survey it's from only asks about 'usual' commute which is likely to have some odd interpretation issues when it comes to people who either go in only one or two days a week, it those that travel, stay and then return. The NTS is a more reliable and detailed dataset when it comes to travel in England.
None of which alters the fact that on some routes 63 minutes gets you a long way, or that some people commute a long way to work. I spent forty years of mornings and evenings sitting next to them while they did it, so I do have a real stack of relevant anecdata to contribute.

Nobody has contended that a high proportion of the workforce do it, mainly I guess because it’s obvious that they don’t, but some do, even nowadays. The season ticket market has certainly contracted in recent years, and very much so since Covid, but it hasn’t as you asserted in an earlier post been “killed off”. It will probably take a year or two after the industry has resolved its present arguments over pay and conditions to understand what the market now really is, for all ticket-types, seasons included.
Biospace
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Re: National Transport Strategy

Post by Biospace »

Biospace wrote: 22 Mar 2023, 3:12pm
  • The rail capacity required to carry 90% of existing freight were identified, +50% for future volume increase
  • Existing Victorian rail infrastructure were set aside for this freight use, once a new passenger network was built -
  • with new Maglev express passenger routes along original proposed HS2 including Scotland + Exeter
  • regional and inter-regional transport using existing railway routes where not required for freight carriage, new rail created for more heavily used routes as necessary perhaps using Beeching lines where possible, in addition tram trains also using more existing roads.
  • The use of aerial ropeways - using large gondolas - should be considered for public transport where there are low peaks but constant pressure on existing networks and little scope for new ground routes
  • A railway company should be able to operate bus routes which feed tram and train networks.
AI will changing everything, although I don't expect the transport unions to support nationwide driverless trains just yet...
Nearholmer wrote: 22 Mar 2023, 4:45pm Regarding each of your proposals/ideals, I would ask: why?

Put another way: what strategic objectives do they serve?
Bearing in mind the 75 to 90% less energy demand for (rail) freight and 5 to 21% less energy for (rail) passenger traffic compared to road based transport.

Objectives:
  • Reduce carbon emissions and air pollution in a 'virtuous circle' of events
  • Reduce reliance on the motor car by improving rapid tranport to millions more people's homes
  • Improve the nation's economy, the quality of life and safety of individuals

An integrated, high-functioning network would encourage people to leave their cars behind and travel by rail. At present, many only travel by train if there is no other option, if travelling alone, if paid for or if travelling on a concession ticket. It's seen by many as dirty, uncomfortable and unpleasant - see Steve76's comments above. A car is seen as a private extension of your living room. Many journeys are considerably faster and more comfortable by car.

Removing HGVs from our roads would greatly reduce the viscious circle of pollution and carbon emissions they create, reduce casualties (they account for around 5% of motor vehicle traffic but are involved in 15% of cycling fatalities), greatly improve traffic flow and reduce damage and wear to roads.


Our 19th century rail network requires greater and greater effort to cope with 21st century levels and expectations. Through the 20th century, person-miles are estimated to have increased by a factor of 10. While this rise may tail off a little with emphasis on carbon footprints, unless we build more and more roads, conditions will deteriorate even with the use of AI to improve traffic density. For freight, rail transport is several times more efficient and less damaging to our environment than sending it by road.
Nearholmer
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Re: National Transport Strategy

Post by Nearholmer »

CO2 emissions from freight transport is quite a complicated topic, and it can lead to some quite counterintuitive conclusions.

Goods often make complex multi-modal trips, especially in respect of the UK, so it’s often necessary to think about road, rail, and deep sea, or air and road, for the same item.

Unsurprisingly, shifting anything, even a single mango, by air is dreadful in emission terms, not just CO2. Deep sea is generally pretty good per mile, but again turns into something of an issue because the distance tend to be huge.

For land “trunk haul”, electrified rail is best, then diesel rail, then road, but the margins between them are not huge, and perhaps surprisingly coastal shipping and inland waterway are not an order of magnitude better (I don’t quite understand why!).

Where things start getting really bad is local distribution, smaller trucks, and vans, running on less-than-motorway roads, which are pretty poor on an emissions per tonne.km basis.

So, the places to aim in freight are probably:

- to slice right down on the use of air transport, even for high value, low volume/mass goods, just don’t do it except for truly urgent things (aid to s disaster zone?);

- don’t ship stuff we can manage without half way round the globe, and try to manage with less tonnage/volume of the stuff we do need ship across the oceans;

- get really active on decarbonising distribution downstream of major depots adjacent to with rail terminals or motorway junctions …… to me, this is something that seems to have received far too little attention, with 99% of vans still being diesel, and 100% of lorries of all sizes.

In parallel, but not in isolation, attend to the thing that people tend to shoot for first: trunk haul. Greater use of electrified rail is an obvious, but given that the vast majority of logistics is now road-focused, and that it will take donkeys years to significantly re-shape towards rail, if doing that actually proves to be the best idea, far, far more thought needs to go into “road trunking”.

Overhead electrification of motorways is definitely feasible, there are demonstrator projects on the continent, and it might be worth rolling that out, along with much more autonomous driving of lorries, and changing motorway operation to give much higher priority/protection to goods transport. A road vehicle on rock-hard tyres on a smooth surface, without perturbations in traffic, running at 60mph, can be surprisingly efficient. A lot of the characteristics of rail can be moved across to road,, even the use of “trains”, without the need to create a whole other set of railways ….. just use the motorways intelligently, and not ram them full of cars containing people making trips that could be better done by other means, or not at all.

In a sense, motorways are grossly under-utilised for goods transport, in that using autonomous driving it would be possible to run three lanes of trucks, almost nose-to-tail, possibly even joined into road-trains, all trundling along at a steady 60mph ….. I’m not suggesting that we should seek to fill them to capacity, but what I am saying is that capacity is sltreadyvthere for the grabbing.

as a life long railwayac, and a 40+ year railway engineer/manager, I’m not actually convinced that simply “more railways” would be the best strategy, for passenger or for freight. For some applications, road has more potential, if exploited wisely, not stupidly as it is now.
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