7 ms·

I don't like the soundbite about it only shaving X minutes off the trip to Birmingham. That's practically the first stop. The thing goes all the way to Leeds. I

by Neil44 7y ago

I don't like the soundbite about it only shaving X minutes off the trip to Birmingham. That's practically the first stop. The thing goes all the way to Leeds. It's a disingenuous soundbite. I realise the authour here is using it as a construct to argue against but I head this soundbite a lot.

growlist 7y ago
HSTs are cool, but I think it's a valid criticism - would it really make so much difference to run at 125mph and the journey take a little longer? And would the project be cheaper if it didn't need to be so super-straight in order to be able to achieve the high speeds? If they were proposing express trains that would really gain the benefit of the line I could see the justification, but they're not are they?
- jnty 7y ago
  Yes - the speed is required for capacity, to minimise journey times to Scotland and ensure competitiveness with air travel and other existing links. Even for closer destinations like Birmingham 35 minutes is a huge improvement on a ~1h20m journey.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    Firstly, there isn't all that much of anything in Birmingham that makes this worthwhile. At best there might be some new business development in 10-20 years, but it's not at all obvious that Birmingham is somehow going to become London's second business centre because of HS2. Most of the claims in this piece are simply nonsense. The Euston to Crewe train that's mentioned doesn't go anywhere near Birmingham, so it's not obvious that HS2 would make much of a difference to traffic on it. And even if it did, it's merely one of a large number of routes heading out of London in all directions that are ridiculously overcrowded. At best, HS2 might reduce a small proportion of that overcrowding, but it's certainly not going to eliminate it. The idea that HS2 can make Birmingham airport competitive with Heathrow for Londoners is clearly wrong. Birmingham doesn't have the flights, the destinations, or the capacity. London also has Heathrow Express for quick train journeys from Paddington to Heathrow - concourse to concourse. Even with a shorter journey time, HS2 can't match that. And HS2 doesn't start to make sense until Phase 2 is built, linking Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds. You might see some benefits then - but the realistic total cost is likely to be the far side of £100bn. Which is madness. It's actually five years of the total NASA budget, which is supposed to pay for development of the next Lunar program, as well as everything else NASA does. It would be much better to spend a much smaller sum making the UK's broadband the best in Europe, set up a world-leading incubator fund for digital startups outside of London, with next-generation training and education, and try to persuade existing corporates to consider home working options. The return on that would be huge. This is just a giant train set for rail nostalgists.
    - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
      Firstly, there isn't all that much of anything in Birmingham that makes this worthwhile. If you let that be a guide then you wouldn't invest in anything outside of London.
    - DanBC 7y ago
      > there isn't all that much of anything in Birmingham that makes this worthwhile. The UK has a weird chicken and egg thing going on. Everything is in London because everything is in London. HS2 is an attempt to break out of that. By developing better rail links across England we allow companies to start moving out of London. > The idea that HS2 can make Birmingham airport competitive with Heathrow for Londoners is clearly wrong. But that's not the aim. The aim is that we shouldn't have everyone in the country using Heathrow for all journeys. Currently we have about 80 million people going through Heathrow which is stupid if a chunk of them are only using it to get into the UK. London doesn't just have Heathrow and Gatwick. London has six international airports. Heathrow alone at 80m people currently carries the equivalent of Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Bristol combined. We urgently need to fix this.
      - growlist 7y ago
        > The UK has a weird chicken and egg thing going on. Everything is in London because everything is in London. HS2 is an attempt to break out of that. One of the criticisms of HS2 is that it will just facilitate centralisation in London, by helping people get there more quickly!
        isostatic 7y ago
        It means that a business that needs to occasionally meet people face to face in London can instead be based in Crewe, saving £10k a month in rent and saving in salaries.
        jbb123 7y ago
        Except that it's more likely to have people saying why do we need a crewe office at all when people can be at the main office in an hour anyway. It will just drag even more resources to london
  - deadbunny 7y ago
    > and ensure competitiveness with air travel Good one. I can hop on a plane from London to Edinburgh tomorrow for £35 and be there in an hour and a half, call it 3 hours all in. By comparison I can hop on a train and it'll cost me £146 and take about 5 hours. Hell, just last week I hopped on a ferry to France and back on a whim for less than it would have cost to go 20 miles by train.
    - jnty 7y ago
      Cost is a different issue - I'd be very surprised if the subsidy profile of planes vs. trains vs. motoring stays the same over the coming decade. Unless you live airside at Heathrow and your destination is the Edinburgh duty free shop, I sincerely doubt your journey will take 1.5 hours total. More realistic timings allowing for 30mins travel either end and arriving an hour early for your flight bring it up to 3.5h - the fastest current London-Edinburgh expresses are just over 4 hours. At those timings, high speed rail starts to look quite attractive, considering it's much easier to work and relax on a train and you don't have to waste time shuffling through the airport and waiting in queues.
      - isostatic 7y ago
        I used to fly regularly from Manchester (Near Altrincham) to London (Near Hammersmith) t+0 leave office t+45 arrive Heathrow t+90 wheels up t+145 wheels down t+150 in taxi t+160 home Compare to t+0 leave office t+45 arrive Euston t+60 train departs t+170 arrive Wilmslow t+175 in taxi t+195 home On the way down it was even quicker by plane t+0 leave home t+7 arrive manchester t+10 arrive gate t+25 wheels up t+85 wheels down t+145 arrive office
        smcl 7y ago
        If it took you 15 minutes from the plane hitting the ground in Manchester to get to your house, I think that says more that you live really near to (or next to? inside?) Manchester airport. And 10 minutes between leaving your front door to arriving at the gate!? That's either a slight exaggeration or an impressive feat
  - growlist 7y ago
    Will there be any true express trains though? Surely the stops along the way reduce the reduction in travel time significantly. If there are going to be non-stop trains from London to Scotland it's a different proposition.
    - isostatic 7y ago
      Currently the trains out of euston to use HS2 are typically (there's occasional extra stops in the peak) 1tph First Stop Warrington (2h20) 1tph First Stop Crewe (1h40) 1tph First Stop Stafford (1h20) 1tph First Stop Stoke (1h30) 2tph First Stop Rugby (1h) 1tph First stop Coventry (1h10) There's other trains that stop at Milton Keynes that will move too (Wales, Manchester), with far more additional trains stopping at MKC Some make additional stops in the peak, but that won't happen with HS Typical HS2 service will be Euston (for Crossrail2/Northern Line) OOC (for Crossrail/GWR/Heathrow) -- 5 miles Birmingham Interchange -- 100 miles Crewe -- 160 miles Or Euston (for Crossrail2/Northern Line) OOC (for Crossrail/GWR/Heathrow) -- 5 miles Birmingham Interchange -- 100 miles Birmingham Central -- 150 miles With some trains non stop from OOC to Manchester Airport (175m)
      - Reason077 7y ago
        Birmingham Central isn't 50 miles from Birmingham Interchange. More like 10 miles?
        isostatic 7y ago
        Doh, yes, sorry copy and paste. I suspect Curzon Street to Interchange will be relatively slow (7 minutes for 10 miles), like OOC to Euston
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- isostatic 7y ago
  > would it really make so much difference to run at 125mph and the journey take a little longer? It's halving the time from Crewe to London from 100m to 50m, so that's a big plus. Every train going to Manchester, Liverpool, North Wales, North West England and Scotland will be an hour quicker - that's a 2 hour saving on a day trip. > And would the project be cheaper if it didn't need to be so super-straight in order to be able to achieve the high speeds No, the extra cost for high speed is negligable in the open country. If it's not straight it's using more land.
pjc50 7y ago
What people keep overlooking is that HS2 is not a replacement for the existing line, but will run along side it. It's a capacity doubler as much as anything else. Some people will get faster trips to Birmingham, but a lot more people will get to make that trip - and also to the commuter stops along the existing line, as all the direct-to-Birmingham people take HS2.
- afarrell 7y ago
  It also means that the smaller trips in the midlands and north don't need to get out of the way of a direct line from Manchester->London.
  - switch007 7y ago
    There is a lot of North north of Manchester and Leeds
    - detritus 7y ago
      As someone from the North who considers themself ‘British’ rather than Scottish or English, I've always viewed Yorkshire as the ‘midlands’ :) Joking aside, if Britain is every to grow beyond being quite so London-centric, we do really have to focus on the belt from Manchester to Hull more, North East too.
- sweeneyrod 7y ago
  The question is to what extent increasing capacity like this will actually be useful. Trains from regional cities to/from London at non-peak times usually don't run at capacity in my experience, so they shouldn't be affected. For peak times, I'm not sure there are many people who would travel at approximately the current prices (this may be changed by HS2 but not immediately). Therefore assuming an efficient market I would expect the main benefit of increasing supply to be a drop in price at peak times. But assuming anything about British public transport is efficient is a risky bet.
  - 7y ago
C1sc0cat 7y ago
Its a massive Saving in time

by Neil44 7y ago

growlist 7y ago

HSTs are cool, but I think it's a valid criticism - would it really make so much difference to run at 125mph and the journey take a little longer? And would the project be cheaper if it didn't need to be so super-straight in order to be able to achieve the high speeds? If they were proposing express trains that would really gain the benefit of the line I could see the justification, but they're not are they?

jnty 7y ago
Yes - the speed is required for capacity, to minimise journey times to Scotland and ensure competitiveness with air travel and other existing links. Even for closer destinations like Birmingham 35 minutes is a huge improvement on a ~1h20m journey.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  Firstly, there isn't all that much of anything in Birmingham that makes this worthwhile. At best there might be some new business development in 10-20 years, but it's not at all obvious that Birmingham is somehow going to become London's second business centre because of HS2. Most of the claims in this piece are simply nonsense. The Euston to Crewe train that's mentioned doesn't go anywhere near Birmingham, so it's not obvious that HS2 would make much of a difference to traffic on it. And even if it did, it's merely one of a large number of routes heading out of London in all directions that are ridiculously overcrowded. At best, HS2 might reduce a small proportion of that overcrowding, but it's certainly not going to eliminate it. The idea that HS2 can make Birmingham airport competitive with Heathrow for Londoners is clearly wrong. Birmingham doesn't have the flights, the destinations, or the capacity. London also has Heathrow Express for quick train journeys from Paddington to Heathrow - concourse to concourse. Even with a shorter journey time, HS2 can't match that. And HS2 doesn't start to make sense until Phase 2 is built, linking Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds. You might see some benefits then - but the realistic total cost is likely to be the far side of £100bn. Which is madness. It's actually five years of the total NASA budget, which is supposed to pay for development of the next Lunar program, as well as everything else NASA does. It would be much better to spend a much smaller sum making the UK's broadband the best in Europe, set up a world-leading incubator fund for digital startups outside of London, with next-generation training and education, and try to persuade existing corporates to consider home working options. The return on that would be huge. This is just a giant train set for rail nostalgists.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    Firstly, there isn't all that much of anything in Birmingham that makes this worthwhile. If you let that be a guide then you wouldn't invest in anything outside of London.
  - DanBC 7y ago
    > there isn't all that much of anything in Birmingham that makes this worthwhile. The UK has a weird chicken and egg thing going on. Everything is in London because everything is in London. HS2 is an attempt to break out of that. By developing better rail links across England we allow companies to start moving out of London. > The idea that HS2 can make Birmingham airport competitive with Heathrow for Londoners is clearly wrong. But that's not the aim. The aim is that we shouldn't have everyone in the country using Heathrow for all journeys. Currently we have about 80 million people going through Heathrow which is stupid if a chunk of them are only using it to get into the UK. London doesn't just have Heathrow and Gatwick. London has six international airports. Heathrow alone at 80m people currently carries the equivalent of Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Bristol combined. We urgently need to fix this.
    - growlist 7y ago
      > The UK has a weird chicken and egg thing going on. Everything is in London because everything is in London. HS2 is an attempt to break out of that. One of the criticisms of HS2 is that it will just facilitate centralisation in London, by helping people get there more quickly!
      - isostatic 7y ago
        It means that a business that needs to occasionally meet people face to face in London can instead be based in Crewe, saving £10k a month in rent and saving in salaries.
        jbb123 7y ago
        Except that it's more likely to have people saying why do we need a crewe office at all when people can be at the main office in an hour anyway. It will just drag even more resources to london
- deadbunny 7y ago
  > and ensure competitiveness with air travel Good one. I can hop on a plane from London to Edinburgh tomorrow for £35 and be there in an hour and a half, call it 3 hours all in. By comparison I can hop on a train and it'll cost me £146 and take about 5 hours. Hell, just last week I hopped on a ferry to France and back on a whim for less than it would have cost to go 20 miles by train.
  - jnty 7y ago
    Cost is a different issue - I'd be very surprised if the subsidy profile of planes vs. trains vs. motoring stays the same over the coming decade. Unless you live airside at Heathrow and your destination is the Edinburgh duty free shop, I sincerely doubt your journey will take 1.5 hours total. More realistic timings allowing for 30mins travel either end and arriving an hour early for your flight bring it up to 3.5h - the fastest current London-Edinburgh expresses are just over 4 hours. At those timings, high speed rail starts to look quite attractive, considering it's much easier to work and relax on a train and you don't have to waste time shuffling through the airport and waiting in queues.
    - isostatic 7y ago
      I used to fly regularly from Manchester (Near Altrincham) to London (Near Hammersmith) t+0 leave office t+45 arrive Heathrow t+90 wheels up t+145 wheels down t+150 in taxi t+160 home Compare to t+0 leave office t+45 arrive Euston t+60 train departs t+170 arrive Wilmslow t+175 in taxi t+195 home On the way down it was even quicker by plane t+0 leave home t+7 arrive manchester t+10 arrive gate t+25 wheels up t+85 wheels down t+145 arrive office
      - smcl 7y ago
        If it took you 15 minutes from the plane hitting the ground in Manchester to get to your house, I think that says more that you live really near to (or next to? inside?) Manchester airport. And 10 minutes between leaving your front door to arriving at the gate!? That's either a slight exaggeration or an impressive feat
- growlist 7y ago
  Will there be any true express trains though? Surely the stops along the way reduce the reduction in travel time significantly. If there are going to be non-stop trains from London to Scotland it's a different proposition.
  - isostatic 7y ago
    Currently the trains out of euston to use HS2 are typically (there's occasional extra stops in the peak) 1tph First Stop Warrington (2h20) 1tph First Stop Crewe (1h40) 1tph First Stop Stafford (1h20) 1tph First Stop Stoke (1h30) 2tph First Stop Rugby (1h) 1tph First stop Coventry (1h10) There's other trains that stop at Milton Keynes that will move too (Wales, Manchester), with far more additional trains stopping at MKC Some make additional stops in the peak, but that won't happen with HS Typical HS2 service will be Euston (for Crossrail2/Northern Line) OOC (for Crossrail/GWR/Heathrow) -- 5 miles Birmingham Interchange -- 100 miles Crewe -- 160 miles Or Euston (for Crossrail2/Northern Line) OOC (for Crossrail/GWR/Heathrow) -- 5 miles Birmingham Interchange -- 100 miles Birmingham Central -- 150 miles With some trains non stop from OOC to Manchester Airport (175m)
    - Reason077 7y ago
      Birmingham Central isn't 50 miles from Birmingham Interchange. More like 10 miles?
      - isostatic 7y ago
        Doh, yes, sorry copy and paste. I suspect Curzon Street to Interchange will be relatively slow (7 minutes for 10 miles), like OOC to Euston
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
isostatic 7y ago
> would it really make so much difference to run at 125mph and the journey take a little longer? It's halving the time from Crewe to London from 100m to 50m, so that's a big plus. Every train going to Manchester, Liverpool, North Wales, North West England and Scotland will be an hour quicker - that's a 2 hour saving on a day trip. > And would the project be cheaper if it didn't need to be so super-straight in order to be able to achieve the high speeds No, the extra cost for high speed is negligable in the open country. If it's not straight it's using more land.

pjc50 7y ago

What people keep overlooking is that HS2 is not a replacement for the existing line, but will run along side it. It's a capacity doubler as much as anything else. Some people will get faster trips to Birmingham, but a lot more people will get to make that trip - and also to the commuter stops along the existing line, as all the direct-to-Birmingham people take HS2.

afarrell 7y ago
It also means that the smaller trips in the midlands and north don't need to get out of the way of a direct line from Manchester->London.
- switch007 7y ago
  There is a lot of North north of Manchester and Leeds
  - detritus 7y ago
    As someone from the North who considers themself ‘British’ rather than Scottish or English, I've always viewed Yorkshire as the ‘midlands’ :) Joking aside, if Britain is every to grow beyond being quite so London-centric, we do really have to focus on the belt from Manchester to Hull more, North East too.
sweeneyrod 7y ago
The question is to what extent increasing capacity like this will actually be useful. Trains from regional cities to/from London at non-peak times usually don't run at capacity in my experience, so they shouldn't be affected. For peak times, I'm not sure there are many people who would travel at approximately the current prices (this may be changed by HS2 but not immediately). Therefore assuming an efficient market I would expect the main benefit of increasing supply to be a drop in price at peak times. But assuming anything about British public transport is efficient is a risky bet.
- 7y ago

C1sc0cat 7y ago

Its a massive Saving in time