UK high speed 1 gets the Media Outting...

[andel]

see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6977211.stm

Apparently did 195MPH in the UK.

Discuss... or froth - s'up to you lot.

[Parkey]

High Speed Rail... is great!

'nuff said.

[orudge]

Shame it's currently limited very much to the south east of the country at present.

[Kevo00]

And has even been reduced in Ashford.

[Ameecher]

Only the services to Brussells from Ashford are being cut, I believe, the Paris services will stop.

Or so I've been lead to believe.

[Kevo00]

Anyone know why this is? Lack of useage?

However despite this congratulations to Eurostar, finally the Channel Tunnel should be able to live up to its potential.

When do revenue earning services begin?

[Ameecher]

Yeah lack of usage, it was something like only 10% of passengers from Ashford were actually going to Brussells, although I can't actually remember to be honest.

[atomicdanny]

Only the services to Brussells from Ashford are being cut, I believe, the Paris services will stop.

Or so I've been lead to believe.

Its the other way round (Brussels services are being stopped and the services to paris are being reduced

[Ameecher]

By stop I mean that the eurostars will call at Ashford while en route to Paris, isn't the stopping pattern going to 50/50 Ebbsfleet and Ashford?

[Parkey]

I've heard that it'll only be something like 3 trains a day from Ashford, and they'll all be for Paris. From 2009 though it'll be possible to get a SouthEastern Javelin train from Ashford to Ebbsfleet to make a connection there without having to buy an additional ticket thanks to an agreement between Eurostar and SouthEastern.

There are plenty of news report videos on the Eurostar available on the BBC website.

I'm pleased to notice that every time Eurostar or the Javelin trains appear in the news the question of more high speed lines in the UK comes up. Makes me feel confident that the government in spite of its best efforts won't be able to suppress them indefinitely.

[Kevo00]

Don't hold your breath. If the government does decide to announce a high speed line, no doubt it will mysteriously never get round to starting it!

[Parkey]

My favourite bit is when they claim they're focusing on congestion and punctuality instead as though that's a completely seperate issue.

A DfT spokeswoman added: "Our focus now is on improving congestion and reliability, which is why, in our recent White Paper, we outlined a network that will cope with more than 20% growth in the next seven years, and improve performance and safety."

They're going to improve congestion by running 13% more carriages on a network that's no bigger than it is now and this will also result in fewer delays? 20% growth is also a severe underestimation given the current rate of annual growth. Then of course you reach the point in 7 years time where there's no more capacity can be squeezed out of the network by costly piecemeal upgrades and what then?

The Atkins study had two solutions for avoiding complete and utter saturation of the rail network by 2030: High speed rail, or rail fares being double what they are now.

They will have to rethink this at some point. They're handling it so abysmally badly it may work its way to political centre stage.

[Dave]

I do think it's worth pointing out that the government is trying to get as much from the original rail structure as possible for the uproar it would create.

I'm not being funny but if I was a typical 35 year old who made, say, 5 train journeys a year, I'd be a bit miffed that my taxes were funding a new high speed rail project in light of the fact I'd spent the last 15 years spending taxes improving other areas of the rail network.

I don't know if HSR is feasible in this country, I'd like to doubt so, but even if it was, why would a government take the risk of losing support in announcing it?

I'm not sure how much support it would rouse. Since we're nearing an apparent snap election, things that don't win votes are bottom of the list.

[Parkey]

I get the impression that most of the country, especially the Labour heartland in the north, is fed up with most of the country's transport funding being spent on London and the south east. Eurostar, Thameslink, Crossrail, M25 widening, Terminal 5, etc.

In a recent BBC poll a lot of people complained that Eurostar was great, and they would use it but for the fact that they lived so far north or west that it wouldn't make any sense.

This is just about politicians lacking any kind of backbone. Instead they have a kind of exoskeleton that separates them from the same world that the public live in and deflects the advice of experts. [/cynicism]

[Kevo00]

In a recent BBC poll a lot of people complained that Eurostar was great, and they would use it but for the fact that they lived so far north or west that it wouldn't make any sense.

Anyone remember regional Eurostar?

I really don't think we'll see the so called HS2 ever get built. People may want to see transport improvements, but lets be honest a High Speed Line is unlikely to be very high up many people's wishlists. Plus people tend to be very cynical about large spending projects after things like the Dome and the Scottish Parliament, and now the Olympics is causing similar cynicism.

Plus, is there really the economic need for this? Most GNER trains are already practically empty north of Newcastle and the present Newcastle-London journey time is competitive with flying; I suspect a similar situation probably exists on the WCML north of Manchester/Preston. I think people in the 'regions' would rather see government money spent on bringing back local trains, getting rid of the nodding donkeys where they are on crappy local trains, building decent Stadtbahn networks and getting more frequent inter-regional and regional services, perhaps provided by EMUs. I sit writing this in Durham, and quite frankly the links to London are the only bits that don't need more money ta very much (and I commute to London on a regular basis). There is a definite need to diversify transport spending away from London, but I'm not sure a big-bang HSL project is the way to deliver it; we would end up like in France where you have flashy TGVs on the radial routes to Paris but crappy railcars on everything else.

[Parkey]

Well I think you're right and you're wrong.

With Didcot Parkway being my closest station I get rather a different view of rail links to London. This is where we need the extra capacity adding to the network. The trains with passengers standing all the way up the aisles are evidence enough really that that capacity is needed, and horrible enough to suggest that there's a heck of a lot of suppressed demand too. A high speed 2 type proposal adds that extra capacity where it's needed by allowing the fast trains to bypass the congested southern section but using the existing lines at the northern end where the infrastructure isn't so overstretched. Fares would come down too if all the trains weren't sardine cans in the peak. That's the capacity argument.

There's also the economic argument for them. The HS2 proposal puts Birmingham 45 minutes from London and Heathrow airport, three hours from Paris. Can you even begin to imagine what that would do for Birmingham's economy? The amount of investment it would attract to the city would be huge and you could probably expect a docklands like regeneration of the area near the HS2 terminal. Manchester would also benefit a lot.

Then there's the modal shift argument. The extra speed makes the train much more competitive with the train and the plane. That's for the layperson by the way, I know you and I would take the train out of preference anyway.

Then there's the image argument. High speed trains are a brand that sells rail travel to the public. It worked for Intercity with the HST, it works for SNCF with the TGV. A lot of people have a skewed view of our rail system. Usually it's not deserved, but often enough it is. A high speed service would sell the rail system as a whole much better than it currently is.

You're absolutely right that the importance of good suburban and light rail networks can't be understated. Trams and bus links too. There's no point in having a good intercity service if the terminals aren't integrated with local services. Investing in high speed rail would also help suburban trains because of cross-subsidisation. The big intercity franchises already subsidise regional traffic a lot.

Ooops, went on a bit there...

Right, must be off. I have a sardine can to catch

[Dave]

There's also the economic argument for them. The HS2 proposal puts Birmingham 45 minutes from London and Heathrow airport, three hours from Paris. Can you even begin to imagine what that would do for Birmingham's economy? The amount of investment it would attract to the city would be huge and you could probably expect a docklands like regeneration of the area near the HS2 terminal. Manchester would also benefit a lot.

That's assuming that these cities will need such regeneration. Birmingham is one of the fastest regenerating cities in Europe - I don't think it needs to be 45 minutes from Heathrow for that. It already has an international airport, thanks.

Although I think Kevo00 is wrong in terms of northern usage, at least on the West Coast. If anything, trains fill up more between Crewe and Preston for Glasgow and the North than they do for services into Birmingham.

The East Coast might be dead in terms of North of Newcastle services, but the same doesn't apply on the West Coast.

I agree with him, however, that enough money has been ploughed into links into London.

All I can say now is, bluntly, f*** London. I want to get to Birmingham in twenty minutes on an express. Not spend 40 minutes p***ing around on a 150 all-shacking it.

[Kevo00]

IMO the best solution for London commuters from places like Didcot is more commuter routes into London on new alignments to give commuter traffic alternative options, not HSLs. Its not that I don't want to see an HSL, just that as resources are limited an HSL may not be the best use of them. This is particularly sensible if we are thinking about modal shift, as people in the south east are already more likely to use public transport than those in the 'regions', so it makes sense to target the 'regions' from a CO2 perspective at least. Of course more local/regional trains would solve the HST overcrowding problem on all main lines, because the Intercities would need to make fewer stops, and this could probably be achieved in many cases by restoring track capacity taken out in the past.

I am clearly wrong about usage on the northern West Coast lol, but the fact that the train is getting busy with Manchester/Preston-Glasgow usage rather than London-Glasgow usage suggests that the distances people are travelling are relatively short, and also that in that area rail is already a desirable alternative to flying or the M6/M74 corridor. Meanwhile building an HSL north of Preston on that corridor could be extremely pricey.

A thought I had earlier was that the Government should set aside £1bn a year and allow local authorities to compete for the funds to build local/light rail projects. This would encourage imaginative schemes and could allow a gradual roll out of schemes at a rate of maybe 1-2 a year. I think the effort has to be put into making new journeys possible by public transport, not enhancing ones that people make by public transport anyway. Remember that if more people are making journeys by public transport then in the longer run they are more likely to become receptive to ideas like an HSL.

[Dave]

I think the effort has to be put into making new journeys possible by public transport, not enhancing ones that people make by public transport anyway. Remember that if more people are making journeys by public transport then in the longer run they are more likely to become receptive to ideas like an HSL.

Spot on.

[Parkey]

You won't find me arguing that local networks aren't worth of funding. It was Beeching's big mistake to concentrate on the profitable trunk routes and ignore the fact that the rail network is an integrated system, so chopping away the tributaries will always cause the main routes to suffer.

That said, I read yesterday that if we wanted to shift 5% of road journeys to rail we'd need a 65% increase in rail capacity. Now, tinkering with the existing network is not going to provide that order of extra capacity.

Yes we need new or re-opened local lines as well as more trams and tram-trains, but where existing lines are at capacity it is more cost effective to shift long distance traffic onto HSLs than to keep plugging away at trying to improve the existing lines. The HSL argument is all about adding capacity to the network as a whole, so that space is freed up for more local services and freight.

All I can say now is, bluntly, f*** London. I want to get to Birmingham in twenty minutes on an express. Not spend 40 minutes p***ing around on a 150 all-shacking it.

F*** London indeed! Hugely expensive projects like Thameslink and Crossrail make no real difference to me or indeed most of the UK population, but I notice how the extremely inexpensive proposed East-West rail link barely ever gets a mention. When the trackbed is intact and most of it is already open to freight it's absolutely barking mad not to re-open that line. I personally would love to be able to travel from Oxford to Nottingham changing at Bedford. Such a line might even offer direct trains as part of the XC franchise.