High Speed Two

[orudge]

Released by the Department for Transport this past couple of days, this may make for interesting reading - a new strategy document on the potential for building a second high speed line in Britain.

[jvassie]

A very interesting read indeed

Looks like we have a lot in plan for the future!

[ostlandr]

Was just reading today that, despite objections, a third runway at Heathrow has been approved. Some of the opponents are pushing for high-speed rail instead, as many of the flights at Heathrow are domestic.

[John]

as many of the flights at Heathrow are domestic.

Data from 2007

Total Passengers through Heathrow: 67 852 000
Total Domestic through Heathrow: 5 753 476

Which is 8.5% of all passengers. However 703792 of these domestic passengers won't be connected to high speed rail (Belfast and Jersey). So you could only get a maximum reduction of 7.5% (7.3% if you ignore Inverness as well).

However, passenger numbers aren't proportional to runway usage.

Total Aircraft Movements through Heathrow: 481 476
Total Domestic Movements through Heathrow: 59 561
Which is 12.4%.

Now, using either set of measuring usage, I can't see how 8.5% or 12.5% could be described as "many of the flights".

Going a little further:
If you ban all domestic flights from Heathrow that can be reached by train, you will reduce runway usage by 10%*
If you aren't so draconian and allow competition, and at best emulate the success of the Shinkansen (80% of traffic) you get an 8% reduction.
If you are more realistic, and assume the average success of the Eurostar (68% of traffic) you get a 6.8% decrease in runway useage.

Now a maximum theoretical reduction of 6.8% runway usage by building a vast highspeed network really isn't that much (and is a lot less then certain environmental groups would let you believe).

However, this only takes into account Heathrow airport (although I suspect all london airports have similar international/domestic levels) and while you won't get many more flight slots by eliminating domestic flights - you will get rid of an unnecessary source of pollution (2% of our national traffic carbon emissions) - and if you look after the pennies, the pounds count themselves.


Notes
*(assuming the percentage of passengers to Belfast and Jersey has the same percentage as aircraft movements to those destinations). Actual figure is 10.5%
Data is either from the CAA or the Times, links given in both cases. 2% carbon emissions figure is from the report above.
All data is 2007. 2008 Annual summaries aren't available yet.
Heathrow domestic travel reduced from 2006 to 2007 by 4%, it is likely that this trend will continue for 2008, probably reducing the domestic aircraft movements that would be stopped due to rail competition to nearer 6%.

[ostlandr]

Thanks for the additional info. We're in the same boat in New York City with Kennedy and La Guardia airports. Some popular (and profitable) routes have been cut due to shortages of landing slots, as the airlines (like any for-profit business) are concentrating on the most profitable routes. I see the Heathrow-Inverness route is being cut for the same reason.

NYC is trying to shift some air traffic to the nearby Stewart Airport (formerly Stewart Air Force Base) but it's not well connected to the region's transportation network- no rail connection whatsoever, but they just commissioned a "feasibility study" to extend a rather slow and crowded commuter service (New Jersey Transit) to the airport. Big help, that.

If we assume that Heathrow is currently at or near capacity, then the case might be made for spending pounds on high-speed rail rather than a third runway. Diverting 6% of the runway usage would reduce the congestion at the airport, as well as opening up more slots for international travel. Based on what happens here in the US (and I deal with this stuff for a living) if capacity is added to a single transportation mode, then usage shifts to the least congested route(s) until it balances out. Also, reduced congestion makes that mode more attractive. So if you increase capacity at Heathrow, then traffic will likely increase until the added capacity is filled, and you're back in the same situation you were in before (see above with NYC airports.)

Over here, we're belatedly learning that "multi-modal" is the way to go. Given a choice, some people will drive, some will fly, some will take buses, some will ride trains, some will take water taxis, some will combine modes, etc. This also provides backup in case of a problem with one of the modes (bad weather closes the airport, or a derailment shuts a train line, etc.) And we need to work on connecting all these modes together- "park and ride" lots for commuters, bicycle racks on buses and trains, etc.

We have another problem over here in the US- we're just too darn big. London to Inverness is roughly 1/5th the distance from NYC to Los Angeles. So a high-speed train (average 100 mph) could make the London-Inverness trip in about 6 hours, while it would take the same train 30 hours to get from NYC to LA.
Currently by Amtrak, the trip takes 61 hours, 45 minutes. Not counting a 5 hour 30 minute layover in Chicago. And count on the train being very, very, very late. Call it three days. You can fly in under four hours, nonstop NYC to LA, for not much more money.

[Kevo00]

Those statistics are pretty valid, but the passenger numbers assume all of the aircraft are of the same size and run at the same frequency. Anyone who has ever flown from Heathrow knows that the plane has to taxi a very long way from the gate to the runway, and then queue for absolutely ages behind the planes waiting to take off.

And guess what? The planes waiting to take off onfront of yours are usually pretty small efforts in BA colours which presumably are internal flights or flights to cities nearby on the continent which land and take off at the airport more frequently than long-haul or middle distance flights, but which require exactly the same runway time and the same block of space in the air as the long haul flights. So it seems to me that those 12.4% of movements are somewhat inefficient compared to many of the rest. It would be interesting to see the statistics for runway time and how many passengers go through that.

[John]

If we assume that Heathrow is currently at or near capacity, then the case might be made for spending pounds on high-speed rail rather than a third runway.

Runway usage is at 98% Terminal usage isn't that high as T5 gave loads of capacity, Heathrow East will also increase terminal capacity and the third runway also comes with a terminal.

Diverting 6% of the runway usage would reduce the congestion at the airport, as well as opening up more slots for international travel. Based on what happens here in the US (and I deal with this stuff for a living) if capacity is added to a single transportation mode, then usage shifts to the least congested route(s) until it balances out. Also, reduced congestion makes that mode more attractive.

Yes, except we have a slight problem in London (and the rest of the UK to some extent) - our roads are congested, our trains are congested and our airports are congested. Unfortunately our government(s) never seem to want to invest properly in infrastructure, not since the motorways got build anyway...

We have another problem over here in the US- we're just too darn big. London to Inverness is roughly 1/5th the distance from NYC to Los Angeles. So a high-speed train (average 100 mph) could make the London-Inverness trip in about 6 hours,

Indeed, Britain is the perfect size and shape for a high speed rail network. The only domestic air travel we need is to our islands (Jersey, Orkney etc.). Even Belfast could be connected - as a map suggests a tunnel the same length as the eurotunnel could connect Northern Ireland to Scotland. Yet a high speed rail network would require some serious investment in infrastructure, which our government doesn't like doing for some reason.

However, being in a recession is possibly the best time to do this - especially if you are going to spend your way out of it. While giving benefit to those who can't pay their bills sounds wonderful and humanitarian, it means the next generation is stuck with a massive debt which only benefited the last generation. If you pump money into the economy indirectly by building stuff, you will be creating lots of jobs and more crucially, the next generation (and generations to come) has something useful.

The best example of spending your way out of a recession is the Hoover Dam - build just before the trough of the great depression.

[edit]Changed "yet this" for clarification

[Ameecher]

The best example of spending your way out of a recession is the Hoover Dam - build just before the trough of the great depression.

Hitler had it right, just build a load of motorways.
I'm gonna get flamed for 2 reasons for that comment!

[John]

Those statistics are pretty valid, but the passenger numbers assume all of the aircraft are of the same size and run at the same frequency. ...

And guess what? The planes waiting to take off onfront of yours are usually pretty small efforts in BA colours which presumably are internal flights or flights to cities nearby on the continent which land and take off at the airport more frequently than long-haul or middle distance

Well if you look at the statistics - 8% of passengers on 12% of planes suggests that these planes carry less then the average number of passengers - this could be because the planes are smaller, or don't have as many people on board. And little planes can actually have quite a range.

With regards to short haul being more frequent then long haul, I know of at least one exception - London to New York. I have heard that BA flies this route 22 times a day - from which airports to which airports I don't know, but they fly a lot! Some other key business destinations also see insane numbers of flights per day.

It would be interesting to see the statistics for runway time and how many passengers go through that.

Yes, unfortunately you have to use the statistics out there, which are rather basic...

Interestingly the conservatives seem to think 66430 domestic flights will be cut with a high speed network. My calculations above give this figure at 32740. Now, I used 2007 data, as 2008 was unavailable (however traffic through Heathrow fell by 1.4% from 2007 to 2008). So quite where the conservatives got their statistics from I don't know. But it certainly appears they are being a little colourful with the truth...


Unfortunately all London airports suffer from another problem - demand far outstrips supply. There is no competition between the airports - you go from the one which has the flights. This in turn means that BAA is maximising profit, and is the reason why Heathrow is the passenger hell it is today...

[Kevo00]

Indeed, Britain is the perfect size and shape for a high speed rail network. The only domestic air travel we need is to our islands (Jersey, Orkney etc.). Even Belfast could be connected - as a map suggests a tunnel the same length as the eurotunnel could connect Northern Ireland to Scotland. Yet this would require some serious investment in infrastructure, which our government doesn't like doing for some reason.

I seriously doubt that this would be feasible, even if the government were to foot the entire bill. The Stranraer area is itself quite remote, and any route to it would need to go quite a long way through difficult terrain from the Glasgow-London HSL, even before the actual tunnel. Tbh if a tunnel were to cross the Irish Sea I would imagine that Holyhead to Dublin would be a far more economically feasible route as Dublin itself includes as many people as the whole of Northern Ireland, and this could act as an impetus for an upgrading of the Belfast-Dublin line to provide connections (electrification etc.) - the HSL could run under Dublin to Heuston via Connolly thus meaning passengers could just zoom up an escalator.

I am aware that Belfast-Glasgow does generate quite a bit of traffic itself, but there seems to be no great demand for upgrading the current rail route to Stranny, which BR abandoned direct services from Euston to some years ago. Perhaps a cheaper way to improve these services would be to electrify and double Ayr-Stranraer, and perhaps in future some of the HSL trains could run Euston-Glasgow Central-Stranraer, linking Paisley, Prestwick Airport and Ayr into the system.

Not in my lifetime though!

[John]

I said "could happen" for a reason
I was more speculating from an engineering point of view then an economic one - I will clarify though that the "Yet this" is referring to a network on mainland Britain, not a tunnel across the Irish Sea


I just choose the thinnest section of sea (and was aiming for Belfast, a domestic destination) - and yes, connecting to Dublin would make more sense.

It all depends on passenger numbers and the bed rock - both of which I have very little knowledge. However given that the island has a smaller population then London, I suspect there is very little demand.

Although I would have thought container traffic would form a major part (even going through both tunnels) of traffic. Unless they charge the same as eurotunnel does per train...

And no, I doubt that a rail connection across the Irish Sea will happen in our lifetimes - however a proper highspeed train network looks like it might .

[Kevo00]

Dont worry, I know its all extremely hypothetical.

Container traffic to Ireland would be a big source, infact probably the main source of traffic, as Dublin, Rosslare, Belfast, Larne, Warrenpoint and (London)Derry all remain very active ports, probably among others that I don't know about, and which receive lots of truck and container traffic from the UK and continent via truck ferries and connecting container ships. But the container case again reinforces the tunnel to Dublin argument, because the existing line to Holyhead could be upgraded without needing to be almost rebuilt to take the freight trains, unlike the Stranraer line, and the container trains would be going straight into Ireland's main consumer market, Dublin, and exchange sidings could easily be built to take containers on to Belfast. I would imagine more trucks and cars would be around to use a shuttle to Dublin too, as road links to Stranraer would also need improving, as both A75 and A77 are single carriageway.

Having actually read the document, have to say its all very non-committal as I expected. I'm not against HSL 2, I just don't think it will get built as I don't see any politicians on the horizon with the will to actually get the thing built. The London-North East graph is a pretty clear statement of the advantages of rail over road in that corridor however, and should serve as a clear demonstration of the benefit in terms of modal shift from fast rail connections. But as the DoT themselves note that both Crossrail (yet to materialize - I'm old enough to remember Krishnan Guru-Murphy announce this on Newsround) and CTRL have had very long gestation periods, and so I would expect any HS2 to be subject to such government procrastination. And the Tories will drop it from policy once they get in if Boris' public transport investment policy is anything to go by. If I were in government I'd stop throwing money at banks which need to learn from their mistakes, and build projects like HS2 right away. But I know what politicians are like, especially with rail (or even road) related projects.

So like all rail related schemes, I'll believe it when I see it.

[Parkey]

I hope it happens, and I think it will....... eventually.

[ostlandr]

Caution: contains a rant

As part of our current "economic stimulus" plan, the Government is putting some money into (so-called) High Speed Rail. One plan that is now being "studied" is to add a 3rd track connecting Albany, NY with Buffalo, NY and the cities in between. Wow! What a novel idea!

Of course, this track was originally the New York Central's "Water Level Route". There were at one time FOUR tracks- with the passenger tracks having superelevated curves to allow high speed running. The signal bridges that still exist on this line are four tracks wide. Yet somehow millions of dollars have to be spent to "study" the matter. Of course it's "feasible", you thundering morons! Let a design/build contract, and R J Corman or some other railroad contractor will get right to work. Or better yet, give CSX (current owner of the tracks) the money and let them take care of all the details.

The NYC was running crack passenger trains at over 100 mph on this line before 1900, on stick rail, without modern materials or electronic signaling systems, etc.

The proposed upgrades will allow trains to run up to- gasp! 120 miles per hour (the mandated limit on tracks with at-grade crossings.)

A dedicated right of way with actual high-speed trains? Too complicated, too expensive, too many NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) and Green objections. Never mind that most of the ROW of the old South Shore Line (on the South bank of the Mohawk River rather than the North) still exists, and could support a high speed line with elevated sections through the towns on the route.

This current crop of political and business leaders can't even get their act together enough to get train speeds between Albany, NY (the State capital) and NYC (the Capital of the world) up to what they were in the 1940s, despite having squandered close to US $100 million on it. $77 million alone went to a failed rebuilding of RTL Turboliner train sets, which would have been subject to all the slow orders on the tracks even if successful. That money would have bought brand-new conventional locomotives to pull the big-windowed Turboliner coaches, and fixed up the tracks to boot.

[Fizzy Mash]

I just choose the thinnest section of sea (and was aiming for Belfast, a domestic destination) - and yes, connecting to Dublin would make more sense.

That is the shortest distance across the Irish sea, but regatrdless of the stranraer route being isolated, the sea is also far too deep for a tunnel to be feasible. The main reason there'll never be a rail link between the british mainland and Ireland (North or South) is that Ireland uses broad gauge.

Also, the traffic that could (& has) transfer to High Speed Rail from London's Airports includes flights to Paris, Brussels, and with a relatively modest upgrade for Eurostar sets (how about the 373/3 NoL sets that have been idle since GNER stopped using them), this could also be the case for Amsterdam, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Marseilles, Lyon, Strasbourg (and on to Munich), Milan, Rome... Even Barcelona & Madrid, seeing as Spain's HS network is standard gauge...
Admittedly, bypass routes would be needed to avoid Paris & link the various existing LGV routes to keep journey times down, but surely that's one of the things the European Commission is there for.

[andel]

how about the 373/3 NoL sets that have been idle since GNER stopped using them

SNCF now have them on lease and use them for Paris to Nice services.

[Ameecher]

how about the 373/3 NoL sets that have been idle since GNER stopped using them

SNCF now have them on lease and use them for Paris to Nice services.

Indeed and gave the front of them a facelift: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9487343@N05/724061473/

[John]

That is the shortest distance across the Irish sea, but regatrdless of the stranraer route being isolated, the sea is also far too deep for a tunnel to be feasible. The main reason there'll never be a rail link between the british mainland and Ireland (North or South) is that Ireland uses broad gauge.

Amusingly there is a wikipedia article on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Sea_Tunnel and tunnel depth is not mentioned at all - for the northern tunnels the sea looks like it has a depth of around 200m, and the channel tunnel was build at a depth of around 100m. On the southern the depth looks like it reduces to 100m - which, in theory, shouldn't be a problem.

The gauge difference, while a technical difficulty, is by no means a major reason why this won't go ahead - if anything it will be a minor reason, especially given Victoria, Australia currently has exactly the same difference in gauge on its infrastructure.

Also, the traffic that could (& has) transfer to High Speed Rail from London's Airports includes flights to Paris, Brussels, and with a relatively modest upgrade for Eurostar sets (how about the 373/3 NoL sets that have been idle since GNER stopped using them), this could also be the case for Amsterdam, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Marseilles, Lyon, Strasbourg (and on to Munich), Milan, Rome... Even Barcelona & Madrid, seeing as Spain's HS network is standard gauge...
Admittedly, bypass routes would be needed to avoid Paris & link the various existing LGV routes to keep journey times down, but surely that's one of the things the European Commission is there for.

Yes, but over long distance high speed rail starts losing its advantage over airplanes. And building a high speed rail network across Britain won't effect the number of people the travel from London to Europe by train and so is fairly irrelevant in the 3rd runway/hs2 debate.*

*Well actually it might, as if you have a huge network even more people may use it, and you will get some of the passengers who fly to europe via heathrow from britain (although I suspect most fly direct rather then connecting at heathrow).

[audigex]

Britain is exactly the right shape for high speed rail, and the basic infrastructure is already there in most cases.

Two main lines following loosely
cornwall-birmingham-manchester/liverpool-lancaster-carlisle-glasgow
and
(Europe)-london-stevenage-peterborough-york-newcastle-edinburgh-aberdeen

Essentially, the current east and west coast main lines upgraded. Minimum re-routing would be needed.

Between these two, virtually everone in the UK is within an hour of the main line. If we assume 4 hours on each route, that should put the whole of the uk at a maximum of 6 hours travel time. Add in a few fairly high speed links accross the country (london-birmingham, york/sheffield/leeds to lancaster/manchester, glasgow-edinburgh, carlisle-newcastle), along the south coast and southeast and into wales. Then populate the rest of the country with feeder services timed to match the mainline activity (say arriving at any mainline terminus 15 mintes before the mainline service)... job done.

Okay, it's not exactly a plan, but the basis is there already - it wouldn't take that much effort to put it into practice. A bit of investment and common sense and the UK rail system could at least match the German and French systems - which frankly put us to shame in many cases, considering their topology doesn't lend itself so well to a nice tidy two-corridor system.

[JamieLei]

Actually I would argue the opposite that Britain is the wrong shape! - Big blobby countries like France or Spain with a capital in the centre and provincial cities at the edge mean that the routes are fairly obvious - in Britain, it's evident that a North - London line is the way forward but all we've done in the last two years or so is squabble over which cities itl'd pass through!