IanB2 said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Good morning, everyone.

Mr. B2, how hot is it, and where are you?

Just over 13, and down in the south by the sea

Currently 13 here and expected to rise to 20

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. B2, ah. Around 9C here. Probably going to get into the 20s for the next few days.

Got to say I prefer cooler weather.

That's a key advantage of having the sea nearby; it takes the edge off both cold and heat, at the cost of a fair bit more wind and occasional fog.

@kateferguson4: Nervtag boffin on the Today programme says “we are seeing the beginning of a new wave” thanks to Indian Covid #today

@nickeardleybbc: Prof Ravi Gupta from Nervtag suggests 21 June relaxations should be delayed by "a few weeks"

"If you look at the c… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1399248259546324992

Leon said:

Pro_Rata said:

MaxPB said:

williamglenn said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Andy_JS said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

What was the problem with the Camden Spur? (Apart from those who happened to have properties where it would have been built).

It meant a huge, decade-long ordeal of demolition and disruption across some of the priciest/most profitable resi and business property in north London, to achieve about 3 trains a day which might go straight from Birmingham to Paris etc

Fuck off, Brummies, northerners and Jocks. Walk from Euston to St Pancras. It's about 300 yards. Sorted

I liked the underground walkway idea that could connect them in the same way airport terminal buildings are. Not sure why they didn't do it in the end.

It's not much further than between the RER and metro platforms at Châtelet–Les Halles in Paris.

It's a shorter distance than Bank to Monument I think.

It's not just 900yds, it's a change.

I've done Leeds to Ashford International a few occasions, 2tph both n inbound and outbound, and that is typically a 45 min change with family (15 min too tight even though 99% of the distance is on concourse). I reckon if I was doing it monthly and fully oriented I'd have the 15 minute change off pat, but let's say relatively few travellers reach that level of instant orientation . A direct train would probably sit in London for a bit, but I reckon the transfer just from KGX to St Pancras is a 35 minute loss compared to what direct would be.

I reckon for North of London to the continent, that is at least an hour loss compared to a theoretical direct train, plus Eurostar is a bit less walk-up in nature for through ticketting compared to a Javelin.

It would've been really good, well beyond 900yds or moving walkway good, to have a direct route for even just a few trains a day, but hey-ho.

Yeah but for that you had to knock down my part of london, so fuck that

I always thought it was a huge mistake not to connect the North to the continent with direct trains. Who knows, perhaps we wouldn't have had Brexit if we had. But that would have required either expensive security and customs arrangements at some northern stations or the UK to have joined Schengen. (I also think we should have joined Schengen).

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Leon said:

Pro_Rata said:

MaxPB said:

williamglenn said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Andy_JS said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

What was the problem with the Camden Spur? (Apart from those who happened to have properties where it would have been built).

It meant a huge, decade-long ordeal of demolition and disruption across some of the priciest/most profitable resi and business property in north London, to achieve about 3 trains a day which might go straight from Birmingham to Paris etc

Fuck off, Brummies, northerners and Jocks. Walk from Euston to St Pancras. It's about 300 yards. Sorted

I liked the underground walkway idea that could connect them in the same way airport terminal buildings are. Not sure why they didn't do it in the end.

It's not much further than between the RER and metro platforms at Châtelet–Les Halles in Paris.

It's a shorter distance than Bank to Monument I think.

It's not just 900yds, it's a change.

I've done Leeds to Ashford International a few occasions, 2tph both n inbound and outbound, and that is typically a 45 min change with family (15 min too tight even though 99% of the distance is on concourse). I reckon if I was doing it monthly and fully oriented I'd have the 15 minute change off pat, but let's say relatively few travellers reach that level of instant orientation . A direct train would probably sit in London for a bit, but I reckon the transfer just from KGX to St Pancras is a 35 minute loss compared to what direct would be.

I reckon for North of London to the continent, that is at least an hour loss compared to a theoretical direct train, plus Eurostar is a bit less walk-up in nature for through ticketting compared to a Javelin.

It would've been really good, well beyond 900yds or moving walkway good, to have a direct route for even just a few trains a day, but hey-ho.

Yeah but for that you had to knock down my part of london, so fuck that

I always thought it was a huge mistake not to connect the North to the continent with direct trains. Who knows, perhaps we wouldn't have had Brexit if we had. But that would have required either expensive security and customs arrangements at some northern stations or the UK to have joined Schengen. (I also think we should have joined Schengen).

What's the point in connecting the North by train to the Continent when air flights are much cheaper than rail fares would be?

When I went to Paris to watch Arsenal a few years ago I drove to Luton and flew to Paris Orly. It was about £150 cheaper than the train.

That said, train prices are always inflated when there’s football. The big benefit of the train is that you arrive in city centres. As with HS2, the cost of tickets would go on the company account so I’m sure there would have been demand for Birmingham or even Manchester to Paris and Brussels.

Philip_Thompson said:

A rise in cases was predicted as part of lifting lockdowns.
The difference though is vaccinations prevent cases becoming hospitalisations and deaths.
74.5% of all adults have had a vaccine.
48.1% of all adults have had two vaccines.

No excuses to delay lifting lockdown.

It also frankly makes no real sense. Implicit within the “warnings” is clearly a belief that the restrictions have already been lifted far too much. If there is an exponential wave (or infections) going on due to the extreme high transmissibility of the ‘India variant’ then further easing post June 21st will create no real difference to outcomes. The only thing that would make a difference to infections would be some reversion to tighter measures...

So the drumbeat that lockdown are the answer drones on - and even if the Govt resists now, but definitely if they concede the “few weeks” point - we’ll be hearing the calls all winter as the strain on the NHS grows and new variants get identified. The UK’s excellent genome sequencing programme becomes a curse...

tlg86 said:

Interestingly, I noticed a Tory MP asking a question at PMQs last week about the viability of East-West Rail:

https://www.anthonybrowne.org/news/minister-confirms-covid-impact-tests-anthony-asks-prime-minister-east-west-rail-review

The PM was insistent that commuting will come back and that "it needs to come back".

That’s an interesting quote from the PM, and similar to his comments last autumn about going back to offices.

I’m not sure government yet understands, how much of a permanent step-change in working patterns has occurred in the last 15 months. It has profound implications for areas such as transport and housing that will not be thought about, if the assumption is that 2022 work and life patterns look exactly the same as 2019 did.

People actually don’t like spending three hours a day commuting, productivity isn’t massively suffering as a result, and companies are realising they don’t need quite so many city centre offices.

Mr. Sandpit, when I was in China some years ago it was 35-40C for quite a lot of the time. Not fantastic, although thankfully drier heat than the UK, and plenty of AC.

People wanting to use HS1 to the continent from the Midlands and North are probably better served by using Midland Main Line into St Pancras, and just going down the escalator. Far nicer than the walk from Euson with luggage. Far more locations served too.

Cookie said:

Andy_JS said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

Don't agree. I'm really annoyed I can't get to, say, Orange without having to stop in London and get out and lug all the luggage. Utterly barbaric.

Agree 100%.

Just dialling back two or three comments; to be clear, the point of High Speed 2 isn't High Speed. Of all the problems with rail in this country, the adrquacy of journey times between London and Manchester is not high up the list.
What HS2 is about is capacity. We do not have enough capacity on our rails - especially the WCML - to run all the services we would like (inter-city, local and freight), In particualr, mixing high speed and low speed kills capacity (freight and local can mix reasonably well as both average a similar speed). So what we need is new track. If we are doing this, why not engineer it so that it can go as fast? But speed is not the driver.

It’s all about capacity, and a massive amount of that is freight and the need to get lorries off the roads as much as possible. It’s expensive and inefficient to move containers one at a time across the country, not to mention that the various climate targets - whatever we think of them - require a lot fewer lorries on the roads than we have now.

The Camden link will almost certainly happen eventually, whether as a viaduct or more likely a tunnel. When the Chilterns tunnelling is finished, they need to move the machine to the Pennines to work on speeding up the East > West routes.

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Leon said:

Pro_Rata said:

MaxPB said:

williamglenn said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Andy_JS said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

What was the problem with the Camden Spur? (Apart from those who happened to have properties where it would have been built).

It meant a huge, decade-long ordeal of demolition and disruption across some of the priciest/most profitable resi and business property in north London, to achieve about 3 trains a day which might go straight from Birmingham to Paris etc

Fuck off, Brummies, northerners and Jocks. Walk from Euston to St Pancras. It's about 300 yards. Sorted

I liked the underground walkway idea that could connect them in the same way airport terminal buildings are. Not sure why they didn't do it in the end.

It's not much further than between the RER and metro platforms at Châtelet–Les Halles in Paris.

It's a shorter distance than Bank to Monument I think.

It's not just 900yds, it's a change.

I've done Leeds to Ashford International a few occasions, 2tph both n inbound and outbound, and that is typically a 45 min change with family (15 min too tight even though 99% of the distance is on concourse). I reckon if I was doing it monthly and fully oriented I'd have the 15 minute change off pat, but let's say relatively few travellers reach that level of instant orientation . A direct train would probably sit in London for a bit, but I reckon the transfer just from KGX to St Pancras is a 35 minute loss compared to what direct would be.

I reckon for North of London to the continent, that is at least an hour loss compared to a theoretical direct train, plus Eurostar is a bit less walk-up in nature for through ticketting compared to a Javelin.

It would've been really good, well beyond 900yds or moving walkway good, to have a direct route for even just a few trains a day, but hey-ho.

Yeah but for that you had to knock down my part of london, so fuck that

I always thought it was a huge mistake not to connect the North to the continent with direct trains. Who knows, perhaps we wouldn't have had Brexit if we had. But that would have required either expensive security and customs arrangements at some northern stations or the UK to have joined Schengen. (I also think we should have joined Schengen).

What's the point in connecting the North by train to the Continent when air flights are much cheaper than rail fares would be?

Global warming.

And that would have meant we wouldn't have Brexited how?

Beside the only solution to climate change is clean technologies like clean planes. 🤦‍♂️

Without clean planes the planet can't realistically reach Net Zero. With clean planes, there's no reason to use an inferior, more expensive, slower technology.

The advantage of high speed rail over "clean planes" is that the former exist.
I think that giving the rest of the UK better links to the rest of the EU might have helped them see the point of it. In London, you can get to Paris quicker than to many places in the North, and I think that is part of the reason that for Londoners it always looked so daft to cut our connections with the continent. Would it have swung the vote? Perhaps. Perhaps not. It was pretty close as I am sure you recall.

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:

Andy_JS said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

Don't agree. I'm really annoyed I can't get to, say, Orange without having to stop in London and get out and lug all the luggage. Utterly barbaric.

Agree 100%.

Just dialling back two or three comments; to be clear, the point of High Speed 2 isn't High Speed. Of all the problems with rail in this country, the adrquacy of journey times between London and Manchester is not high up the list.
What HS2 is about is capacity. We do not have enough capacity on our rails - especially the WCML - to run all the services we would like (inter-city, local and freight), In particualr, mixing high speed and low speed kills capacity (freight and local can mix reasonably well as both average a similar speed). So what we need is new track. If we are doing this, why not engineer it so that it can go as fast? But speed is not the driver.

It’s all about capacity, and a massive amount of that is freight and the need to get lorries off the roads as much as possible. It’s expensive and inefficient to move containers one at a time across the country, not to mention that the various climate targets - whatever we think of them - require a lot fewer lorries on the roads than we have now.

The Camden link will almost certainly happen eventually, whether as a viaduct or more likely a tunnel. When the Chilterns tunnelling is finished, they need to move the machine to the Pennines to work on speeding up the East > West routes.

Rail freight makes a lot more sense in an era of electric vehicles. Long distance electric HGV don't sound very viable.

Scott_xP said:

@kateferguson4: Nervtag boffin on the Today programme says “we are seeing the beginning of a new wave” thanks to Indian Covid #today

@nickeardleybbc: Prof Ravi Gupta from Nervtag suggests 21 June relaxations should be delayed by "a few weeks"

"If you look at the c… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1399248259546324992

Consistent but provide the evidence

Hospital admissions, vaccine status, age profile, and outbreak areas are essential information

Yesterday an argument was being put forward that as the NHS has such a backlog which they are starting to address, they cannot accept any rise in covid patients

Now that is turning the narrative on its head, and on that basis the Country will be locked down for months, even years, and it is just not acceptable

I was angry and a rebel yesterday, largely because the media and independent sage have taken over the narrative with their zero covid, eliminate covid strategy, which is just not feasible and in order to convince many millions of citizens, including myself, that we have to have further delays there has to be far more transparent figures on hospital admissions

Of course I would comply with restrictions if it is proven they are needed, but I am not persuaded by those who seem to have taken over the agenda

Let us not forget that there are many opponents of Boris driven by many who have not come to terms with Brexit, that to prevent the 21st June opening would see it as a political win to their cause, and it is not being driven by the actual clinical reality

I would include Independent Sage and large parts of the broadcast media in that category

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:

Andy_JS said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

Don't agree. I'm really annoyed I can't get to, say, Orange without having to stop in London and get out and lug all the luggage. Utterly barbaric.

Agree 100%.

Just dialling back two or three comments; to be clear, the point of High Speed 2 isn't High Speed. Of all the problems with rail in this country, the adrquacy of journey times between London and Manchester is not high up the list.
What HS2 is about is capacity. We do not have enough capacity on our rails - especially the WCML - to run all the services we would like (inter-city, local and freight), In particualr, mixing high speed and low speed kills capacity (freight and local can mix reasonably well as both average a similar speed). So what we need is new track. If we are doing this, why not engineer it so that it can go as fast? But speed is not the driver.

It’s all about capacity, and a massive amount of that is freight and the need to get lorries off the roads as much as possible. It’s expensive and inefficient to move containers one at a time across the country, not to mention that the various climate targets - whatever we think of them - require a lot fewer lorries on the roads than we have now.

The Camden link will almost certainly happen eventually, whether as a viaduct or more likely a tunnel. When the Chilterns tunnelling is finished, they need to move the machine to the Pennines to work on speeding up the East > West routes.

But you still need lorries to take individual containers from Daventry, Lawley Street or Trafford Park to their final destination. It’s because we’re a small country that road haulage makes sense.

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Scott_xP said:

@kateferguson4: Nervtag boffin on the Today programme says “we are seeing the beginning of a new wave” thanks to Indian Covid #today

@nickeardleybbc: Prof Ravi Gupta from Nervtag suggests 21 June relaxations should be delayed by "a few weeks"

"If you look at the c… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1399248259546324992

Consistent but provide the evidence

Hospital admissions, vaccine status, age profile, and outbreak areas are essential

Yesterday an argument was being put forward that as the NHS has such a backlog which they are starting to address they cannot accept any rise in covid patients

Now that is turning the narrative on its head and on that basis the Country will be locked down for months, even years, and it is just not acceptable

I was angry and a rebel yesterday largely because the media and independent sage have taken over the narrative with their zero covid, eliminate covid strategy which is just not feasible and in order to convince many millions of citizens, including myself, that we have to have further delays there has to be far more transparent figures on hospital admissions

Some of the arguments put yesterday were even worse than that. They were arguing that further loosening of restrictions would lead to a rise in non-Covid related admissions, and that the current lack of NHS capacity means they couldn’t cope with that. It is setting the ground work arguments for restrictions on personal freedoms even in a world without Covid - to be told we can’t do things every time there are winter shortages in flu season or whatever.

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Leon said:

Pro_Rata said:

MaxPB said:

williamglenn said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Andy_JS said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

What was the problem with the Camden Spur? (Apart from those who happened to have properties where it would have been built).

It meant a huge, decade-long ordeal of demolition and disruption across some of the priciest/most profitable resi and business property in north London, to achieve about 3 trains a day which might go straight from Birmingham to Paris etc

Fuck off, Brummies, northerners and Jocks. Walk from Euston to St Pancras. It's about 300 yards. Sorted

I liked the underground walkway idea that could connect them in the same way airport terminal buildings are. Not sure why they didn't do it in the end.

It's not much further than between the RER and metro platforms at Châtelet–Les Halles in Paris.

It's a shorter distance than Bank to Monument I think.

It's not just 900yds, it's a change.

I've done Leeds to Ashford International a few occasions, 2tph both n inbound and outbound, and that is typically a 45 min change with family (15 min too tight even though 99% of the distance is on concourse). I reckon if I was doing it monthly and fully oriented I'd have the 15 minute change off pat, but let's say relatively few travellers reach that level of instant orientation . A direct train would probably sit in London for a bit, but I reckon the transfer just from KGX to St Pancras is a 35 minute loss compared to what direct would be.

I reckon for North of London to the continent, that is at least an hour loss compared to a theoretical direct train, plus Eurostar is a bit less walk-up in nature for through ticketting compared to a Javelin.

It would've been really good, well beyond 900yds or moving walkway good, to have a direct route for even just a few trains a day, but hey-ho.

Yeah but for that you had to knock down my part of london, so fuck that

I always thought it was a huge mistake not to connect the North to the continent with direct trains. Who knows, perhaps we wouldn't have had Brexit if we had. But that would have required either expensive security and customs arrangements at some northern stations or the UK to have joined Schengen. (I also think we should have joined Schengen).

What's the point in connecting the North by train to the Continent when air flights are much cheaper than rail fares would be?

Global warming.

And that would have meant we wouldn't have Brexited how?

Beside the only solution to climate change is clean technologies like clean planes. 🤦‍♂️

Without clean planes the planet can't realistically reach Net Zero. With clean planes, there's no reason to use an inferior, more expensive, slower technology.

The advantage of high speed rail over "clean planes" is that the former exist.
I think that giving the rest of the UK better links to the rest of the EU might have helped them see the point of it. In London, you can get to Paris quicker than to many places in the North, and I think that is part of the reason that for Londoners it always looked so daft to cut our connections with the continent. Would it have swung the vote? Perhaps. Perhaps not. It was pretty close as I am sure you recall.

If you actually want to help the environment and not just virtue signal then the only solution is to make clean planes exist.

If you can't do that then countries around the world aren't going to abandon flights and for trains.

Helping to ensure leaps forward in technology for things that don't exist yet but are needed for the nation is one thing the state can actually get involved in reasonably well. A vaccine challenge style investment in clean plane technologies will do more than any pissing in the wind trying to get people to abandon flights.

Major Poblem for Lib Dems. I expect them to win Chesham on a landslide, all the vibes are currently indicating that could happen. However within 2 weeks Batley and Spen votes and they will struggle to get into a double figure percentage. So Chesham will leave the public mind with the media going overboard if the Tories win "up north". Best result at Batley for the Libs would be a Labour win.

Foxy said:

tlg86 said:

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:

Andy_JS said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

Don't agree. I'm really annoyed I can't get to, say, Orange without having to stop in London and get out and lug all the luggage. Utterly barbaric.

Agree 100%.

Just dialling back two or three comments; to be clear, the point of High Speed 2 isn't High Speed. Of all the problems with rail in this country, the adrquacy of journey times between London and Manchester is not high up the list.
What HS2 is about is capacity. We do not have enough capacity on our rails - especially the WCML - to run all the services we would like (inter-city, local and freight), In particualr, mixing high speed and low speed kills capacity (freight and local can mix reasonably well as both average a similar speed). So what we need is new track. If we are doing this, why not engineer it so that it can go as fast? But speed is not the driver.

It’s all about capacity, and a massive amount of that is freight and the need to get lorries off the roads as much as possible. It’s expensive and inefficient to move containers one at a time across the country, not to mention that the various climate targets - whatever we think of them - require a lot fewer lorries on the roads than we have now.

The Camden link will almost certainly happen eventually, whether as a viaduct or more likely a tunnel. When the Chilterns tunnelling is finished, they need to move the machine to the Pennines to work on speeding up the East > West routes.

But you still need lorries to take individual containers from Daventry, Lawley Street or Trafford Park to their final destination. It’s because we’re a small country that road haulage makes sense.

That leg would work with electric HGV as much shorter range. Long distance not so much.

The UK doesn't have "long distance". That's rather the problem with this logic.

Electric HGVs make much more sense. You can already get HGVs that can travel hundred of miles and the technology is only going to improve from here.

Plus you can get charging infrastructure in the depot.

Foxy said:

tlg86 said:

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:

Andy_JS said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

Don't agree. I'm really annoyed I can't get to, say, Orange without having to stop in London and get out and lug all the luggage. Utterly barbaric.

Agree 100%.

Just dialling back two or three comments; to be clear, the point of High Speed 2 isn't High Speed. Of all the problems with rail in this country, the adrquacy of journey times between London and Manchester is not high up the list.
What HS2 is about is capacity. We do not have enough capacity on our rails - especially the WCML - to run all the services we would like (inter-city, local and freight), In particualr, mixing high speed and low speed kills capacity (freight and local can mix reasonably well as both average a similar speed). So what we need is new track. If we are doing this, why not engineer it so that it can go as fast? But speed is not the driver.

It’s all about capacity, and a massive amount of that is freight and the need to get lorries off the roads as much as possible. It’s expensive and inefficient to move containers one at a time across the country, not to mention that the various climate targets - whatever we think of them - require a lot fewer lorries on the roads than we have now.

The Camden link will almost certainly happen eventually, whether as a viaduct or more likely a tunnel. When the Chilterns tunnelling is finished, they need to move the machine to the Pennines to work on speeding up the East > West routes.

But you still need lorries to take individual containers from Daventry, Lawley Street or Trafford Park to their final destination. It’s because we’re a small country that road haulage makes sense.

That leg would work with electric HGV as much shorter range. Long distance not so much.

A Trafford Park in every town and city? There’s some evidence of a trend in that direction:

https://www.railfreight.com/railfreight/2021/05/10/sheffield-sees-iconic-marshalling-yard-reborn-as-intermodal-terminal/?gdpr=accept

tlg86 said:

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:

Andy_JS said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

Don't agree. I'm really annoyed I can't get to, say, Orange without having to stop in London and get out and lug all the luggage. Utterly barbaric.

Agree 100%.

Just dialling back two or three comments; to be clear, the point of High Speed 2 isn't High Speed. Of all the problems with rail in this country, the adrquacy of journey times between London and Manchester is not high up the list.
What HS2 is about is capacity. We do not have enough capacity on our rails - especially the WCML - to run all the services we would like (inter-city, local and freight), In particualr, mixing high speed and low speed kills capacity (freight and local can mix reasonably well as both average a similar speed). So what we need is new track. If we are doing this, why not engineer it so that it can go as fast? But speed is not the driver.

It’s all about capacity, and a massive amount of that is freight and the need to get lorries off the roads as much as possible. It’s expensive and inefficient to move containers one at a time across the country, not to mention that the various climate targets - whatever we think of them - require a lot fewer lorries on the roads than we have now.

The Camden link will almost certainly happen eventually, whether as a viaduct or more likely a tunnel. When the Chilterns tunnelling is finished, they need to move the machine to the Pennines to work on speeding up the East > West routes.

But you still need lorries to take individual containers from Daventry, Lawley Street or Trafford Park to their final destination. It’s because we’re a small country that road haulage makes sense.

Of course, but moving them a hundred at a time from Southampton Docks to Trafford or Daventy reduces the number of road miles significantly - with positive implications on the environment, traffic levels and road maintainance.

tlg86 said:

Foxy said:

tlg86 said:

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:

Andy_JS said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

Don't agree. I'm really annoyed I can't get to, say, Orange without having to stop in London and get out and lug all the luggage. Utterly barbaric.

Agree 100%.

Just dialling back two or three comments; to be clear, the point of High Speed 2 isn't High Speed. Of all the problems with rail in this country, the adrquacy of journey times between London and Manchester is not high up the list.
What HS2 is about is capacity. We do not have enough capacity on our rails - especially the WCML - to run all the services we would like (inter-city, local and freight), In particualr, mixing high speed and low speed kills capacity (freight and local can mix reasonably well as both average a similar speed). So what we need is new track. If we are doing this, why not engineer it so that it can go as fast? But speed is not the driver.

It’s all about capacity, and a massive amount of that is freight and the need to get lorries off the roads as much as possible. It’s expensive and inefficient to move containers one at a time across the country, not to mention that the various climate targets - whatever we think of them - require a lot fewer lorries on the roads than we have now.

The Camden link will almost certainly happen eventually, whether as a viaduct or more likely a tunnel. When the Chilterns tunnelling is finished, they need to move the machine to the Pennines to work on speeding up the East > West routes.

But you still need lorries to take individual containers from Daventry, Lawley Street or Trafford Park to their final destination. It’s because we’re a small country that road haulage makes sense.

That leg would work with electric HGV as much shorter range. Long distance not so much.

A Trafford Park in every town and city? There’s some evidence of a trend in that direction:

https://www.railfreight.com/railfreight/2021/05/10/sheffield-sees-iconic-marshalling-yard-reborn-as-intermodal-terminal/?gdpr=accept

Not quite every town, but yes.

OnlyLivingBoy said:

alex_ said:

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:

Andy_JS said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

Don't agree. I'm really annoyed I can't get to, say, Orange without having to stop in London and get out and lug all the luggage. Utterly barbaric.

Agree 100%.

Just dialling back two or three comments; to be clear, the point of High Speed 2 isn't High Speed. Of all the problems with rail in this country, the adrquacy of journey times between London and Manchester is not high up the list.
What HS2 is about is capacity. We do not have enough capacity on our rails - especially the WCML - to run all the services we would like (inter-city, local and freight), In particualr, mixing high speed and low speed kills capacity (freight and local can mix reasonably well as both average a similar speed). So what we need is new track. If we are doing this, why not engineer it so that it can go as fast? But speed is not the driver.

It’s all about capacity, and a massive amount of that is freight and the need to get lorries off the roads as much as possible. It’s expensive and inefficient to move containers one at a time across the country, not to mention that the various climate targets - whatever we think of them - require a lot fewer lorries on the roads than we have now.

The Camden link will almost certainly happen eventually, whether as a viaduct or more likely a tunnel. When the Chilterns tunnelling is finished, they need to move the machine to the Pennines to work on speeding up the East > West routes.

Interesting counterfactual to wonder how the debate on HS2 would have developed if the HS hadn’t been bolted on as a “nice to have” bonus...

I would have thought that if you're building a brand new long distance rail line the cost-benefit of enabling high running speeds (basically affecting the alignment and signalling) would be pretty unanswerable.

Well of course, but that wasn’t my point. Which, as Sandpit points out above, is that the HS “no brainier” addition has come to dominate the public perception of what the project is all about, allowing opponents to misleading employ arguments completely at odds with the real reasons it is being pursued (whether you agree with those or not).

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

Leon said:

Pro_Rata said:

MaxPB said:

williamglenn said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

Andy_JS said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

What was the problem with the Camden Spur? (Apart from those who happened to have properties where it would have been built).

It meant a huge, decade-long ordeal of demolition and disruption across some of the priciest/most profitable resi and business property in north London, to achieve about 3 trains a day which might go straight from Birmingham to Paris etc

Fuck off, Brummies, northerners and Jocks. Walk from Euston to St Pancras. It's about 300 yards. Sorted

I liked the underground walkway idea that could connect them in the same way airport terminal buildings are. Not sure why they didn't do it in the end.

It's not much further than between the RER and metro platforms at Châtelet–Les Halles in Paris.

It's a shorter distance than Bank to Monument I think.

It's not just 900yds, it's a change.

I've done Leeds to Ashford International a few occasions, 2tph both n inbound and outbound, and that is typically a 45 min change with family (15 min too tight even though 99% of the distance is on concourse). I reckon if I was doing it monthly and fully oriented I'd have the 15 minute change off pat, but let's say relatively few travellers reach that level of instant orientation . A direct train would probably sit in London for a bit, but I reckon the transfer just from KGX to St Pancras is a 35 minute loss compared to what direct would be.

I reckon for North of London to the continent, that is at least an hour loss compared to a theoretical direct train, plus Eurostar is a bit less walk-up in nature for through ticketting compared to a Javelin.

It would've been really good, well beyond 900yds or moving walkway good, to have a direct route for even just a few trains a day, but hey-ho.

Yeah but for that you had to knock down my part of london, so fuck that

I always thought it was a huge mistake not to connect the North to the continent with direct trains. Who knows, perhaps we wouldn't have had Brexit if we had. But that would have required either expensive security and customs arrangements at some northern stations or the UK to have joined Schengen. (I also think we should have joined Schengen).

What's the point in connecting the North by train to the Continent when air flights are much cheaper than rail fares would be?

Global warming.

And that would have meant we wouldn't have Brexited how?

Beside the only solution to climate change is clean technologies like clean planes. 🤦‍♂️

Without clean planes the planet can't realistically reach Net Zero. With clean planes, there's no reason to use an inferior, more expensive, slower technology.

The advantage of high speed rail over "clean planes" is that the former exist.
I think that giving the rest of the UK better links to the rest of the EU might have helped them see the point of it. In London, you can get to Paris quicker than to many places in the North, and I think that is part of the reason that for Londoners it always looked so daft to cut our connections with the continent. Would it have swung the vote? Perhaps. Perhaps not. It was pretty close as I am sure you recall.

If you actually want to help the environment and not just virtue signal then the only solution is to make clean planes exist.

If you can't do that then countries around the world aren't going to abandon flights and for trains.

Helping to ensure leaps forward in technology for things that don't exist yet but are needed for the nation is one thing the state can actually get involved in reasonably well. A vaccine challenge style investment in clean plane technologies will do more than any pissing in the wind trying to get people to abandon flights.

Paris to Marseilles (562 miles drive according to Google maps) takes 3h07 by TGV. Paris to Manchester is just 516 miles. Once you factor in getting to/from the airport and checking in/security, a high speed train service between the two cities looks pretty good. No "virtue signalling" (yawn) required.

Foxy said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Foxy said:

tlg86 said:

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:

Andy_JS said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

Don't agree. I'm really annoyed I can't get to, say, Orange without having to stop in London and get out and lug all the luggage. Utterly barbaric.

Agree 100%.

Just dialling back two or three comments; to be clear, the point of High Speed 2 isn't High Speed. Of all the problems with rail in this country, the adrquacy of journey times between London and Manchester is not high up the list.
What HS2 is about is capacity. We do not have enough capacity on our rails - especially the WCML - to run all the services we would like (inter-city, local and freight), In particualr, mixing high speed and low speed kills capacity (freight and local can mix reasonably well as both average a similar speed). So what we need is new track. If we are doing this, why not engineer it so that it can go as fast? But speed is not the driver.

It’s all about capacity, and a massive amount of that is freight and the need to get lorries off the roads as much as possible. It’s expensive and inefficient to move containers one at a time across the country, not to mention that the various climate targets - whatever we think of them - require a lot fewer lorries on the roads than we have now.

The Camden link will almost certainly happen eventually, whether as a viaduct or more likely a tunnel. When the Chilterns tunnelling is finished, they need to move the machine to the Pennines to work on speeding up the East > West routes.

But you still need lorries to take individual containers from Daventry, Lawley Street or Trafford Park to their final destination. It’s because we’re a small country that road haulage makes sense.

That leg would work with electric HGV as much shorter range. Long distance not so much.

The UK doesn't have "long distance". That's rather the problem with this logic.

Electric HGVs make much more sense. You can already get HGVs that can travel hundred of miles and the technology is only going to improve from here.

Plus you can get charging infrastructure in the depot.

Yes, but international HGV is long distance, and that should be by rail.

If it's high volumes then it can be and probably already is already.

If it's small volumes that fit within a HGV and has multiple stops along the route then it doesn't necessarily make sense to do that.

The market already effectively deals with this. You're never going to have a meaningful removal of all the Eddie Stobart style HGVs on the road as they're on the road for a reason.

Philip_Thompson said:

Foxy said:

tlg86 said:

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:

Andy_JS said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

Don't agree. I'm really annoyed I can't get to, say, Orange without having to stop in London and get out and lug all the luggage. Utterly barbaric.

Agree 100%.

Just dialling back two or three comments; to be clear, the point of High Speed 2 isn't High Speed. Of all the problems with rail in this country, the adrquacy of journey times between London and Manchester is not high up the list.
What HS2 is about is capacity. We do not have enough capacity on our rails - especially the WCML - to run all the services we would like (inter-city, local and freight), In particualr, mixing high speed and low speed kills capacity (freight and local can mix reasonably well as both average a similar speed). So what we need is new track. If we are doing this, why not engineer it so that it can go as fast? But speed is not the driver.

It’s all about capacity, and a massive amount of that is freight and the need to get lorries off the roads as much as possible. It’s expensive and inefficient to move containers one at a time across the country, not to mention that the various climate targets - whatever we think of them - require a lot fewer lorries on the roads than we have now.

The Camden link will almost certainly happen eventually, whether as a viaduct or more likely a tunnel. When the Chilterns tunnelling is finished, they need to move the machine to the Pennines to work on speeding up the East > West routes.

But you still need lorries to take individual containers from Daventry, Lawley Street or Trafford Park to their final destination. It’s because we’re a small country that road haulage makes sense.

That leg would work with electric HGV as much shorter range. Long distance not so much.

The UK doesn't have "long distance". That's rather the problem with this logic.

Electric HGVs make much more sense. You can already get HGVs that can travel hundred of miles and the technology is only going to improve from here.

Plus you can get charging infrastructure in the depot.

Paris-Marseilles - 774km
London-Inverness - 912 km.

Sandpit said:

tlg86 said:

Sandpit said:

tlg86 said:

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:

Andy_JS said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

Don't agree. I'm really annoyed I can't get to, say, Orange without having to stop in London and get out and lug all the luggage. Utterly barbaric.

Agree 100%.

Just dialling back two or three comments; to be clear, the point of High Speed 2 isn't High Speed. Of all the problems with rail in this country, the adrquacy of journey times between London and Manchester is not high up the list.
What HS2 is about is capacity. We do not have enough capacity on our rails - especially the WCML - to run all the services we would like (inter-city, local and freight), In particualr, mixing high speed and low speed kills capacity (freight and local can mix reasonably well as both average a similar speed). So what we need is new track. If we are doing this, why not engineer it so that it can go as fast? But speed is not the driver.

It’s all about capacity, and a massive amount of that is freight and the need to get lorries off the roads as much as possible. It’s expensive and inefficient to move containers one at a time across the country, not to mention that the various climate targets - whatever we think of them - require a lot fewer lorries on the roads than we have now.

The Camden link will almost certainly happen eventually, whether as a viaduct or more likely a tunnel. When the Chilterns tunnelling is finished, they need to move the machine to the Pennines to work on speeding up the East > West routes.

But you still need lorries to take individual containers from Daventry, Lawley Street or Trafford Park to their final destination. It’s because we’re a small country that road haulage makes sense.

Of course, but moving them a hundred at a time from Southampton Docks to Trafford or Daventy reduces the number of road miles significantly - with positive implications on the environment, traffic levels and road maintainance.

Your assuming that capacity is limiting current usage. I’m not so sure it is.

Isn’t whole point of the project is that the WCML is completely full as currently configured, mostly because the fast trains and the slow trains really don’t work well together on the same track?

Yes. And for that to happen, the new line needs to be *at least* as fast as the existing railway. Preferably, for capacity reasons, somewhat faster.

People may find this article of interest.

https://garethdennis.medium.com/high-speed-two-and-the-need-for-speed-91d8c68c5d80

ydoethur said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Foxy said:

tlg86 said:

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:

Andy_JS said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

Don't agree. I'm really annoyed I can't get to, say, Orange without having to stop in London and get out and lug all the luggage. Utterly barbaric.

Agree 100%.

Just dialling back two or three comments; to be clear, the point of High Speed 2 isn't High Speed. Of all the problems with rail in this country, the adrquacy of journey times between London and Manchester is not high up the list.
What HS2 is about is capacity. We do not have enough capacity on our rails - especially the WCML - to run all the services we would like (inter-city, local and freight), In particualr, mixing high speed and low speed kills capacity (freight and local can mix reasonably well as both average a similar speed). So what we need is new track. If we are doing this, why not engineer it so that it can go as fast? But speed is not the driver.

It’s all about capacity, and a massive amount of that is freight and the need to get lorries off the roads as much as possible. It’s expensive and inefficient to move containers one at a time across the country, not to mention that the various climate targets - whatever we think of them - require a lot fewer lorries on the roads than we have now.

The Camden link will almost certainly happen eventually, whether as a viaduct or more likely a tunnel. When the Chilterns tunnelling is finished, they need to move the machine to the Pennines to work on speeding up the East > West routes.

But you still need lorries to take individual containers from Daventry, Lawley Street or Trafford Park to their final destination. It’s because we’re a small country that road haulage makes sense.

That leg would work with electric HGV as much shorter range. Long distance not so much.

The UK doesn't have "long distance". That's rather the problem with this logic.

Electric HGVs make much more sense. You can already get HGVs that can travel hundred of miles and the technology is only going to improve from here.

Plus you can get charging infrastructure in the depot.

Paris-Marseilles - 774km
London-Inverness - 912 km.

There is a difference. People, in their millions want to go from Paris to Marseille. Very few, comparatively, want to go from London to Inverness.

ydoethur said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Foxy said:

tlg86 said:

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:

Andy_JS said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

Don't agree. I'm really annoyed I can't get to, say, Orange without having to stop in London and get out and lug all the luggage. Utterly barbaric.

Agree 100%.

Just dialling back two or three comments; to be clear, the point of High Speed 2 isn't High Speed. Of all the problems with rail in this country, the adrquacy of journey times between London and Manchester is not high up the list.
What HS2 is about is capacity. We do not have enough capacity on our rails - especially the WCML - to run all the services we would like (inter-city, local and freight), In particualr, mixing high speed and low speed kills capacity (freight and local can mix reasonably well as both average a similar speed). So what we need is new track. If we are doing this, why not engineer it so that it can go as fast? But speed is not the driver.

It’s all about capacity, and a massive amount of that is freight and the need to get lorries off the roads as much as possible. It’s expensive and inefficient to move containers one at a time across the country, not to mention that the various climate targets - whatever we think of them - require a lot fewer lorries on the roads than we have now.

The Camden link will almost certainly happen eventually, whether as a viaduct or more likely a tunnel. When the Chilterns tunnelling is finished, they need to move the machine to the Pennines to work on speeding up the East > West routes.

But you still need lorries to take individual containers from Daventry, Lawley Street or Trafford Park to their final destination. It’s because we’re a small country that road haulage makes sense.

That leg would work with electric HGV as much shorter range. Long distance not so much.

The UK doesn't have "long distance". That's rather the problem with this logic.

Electric HGVs make much more sense. You can already get HGVs that can travel hundred of miles and the technology is only going to improve from here.

Plus you can get charging infrastructure in the depot.

Paris-Marseilles - 774km
London-Inverness - 912 km.

An exception to prove the rule.

What percentage of freight on the roads do you think is going direct from London to Inverness or vice versa.?

Philip_Thompson said:

ydoethur said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Foxy said:

tlg86 said:

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:

Andy_JS said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

Don't agree. I'm really annoyed I can't get to, say, Orange without having to stop in London and get out and lug all the luggage. Utterly barbaric.

Agree 100%.

Just dialling back two or three comments; to be clear, the point of High Speed 2 isn't High Speed. Of all the problems with rail in this country, the adrquacy of journey times between London and Manchester is not high up the list.
What HS2 is about is capacity. We do not have enough capacity on our rails - especially the WCML - to run all the services we would like (inter-city, local and freight), In particualr, mixing high speed and low speed kills capacity (freight and local can mix reasonably well as both average a similar speed). So what we need is new track. If we are doing this, why not engineer it so that it can go as fast? But speed is not the driver.

It’s all about capacity, and a massive amount of that is freight and the need to get lorries off the roads as much as possible. It’s expensive and inefficient to move containers one at a time across the country, not to mention that the various climate targets - whatever we think of them - require a lot fewer lorries on the roads than we have now.

The Camden link will almost certainly happen eventually, whether as a viaduct or more likely a tunnel. When the Chilterns tunnelling is finished, they need to move the machine to the Pennines to work on speeding up the East > West routes.

But you still need lorries to take individual containers from Daventry, Lawley Street or Trafford Park to their final destination. It’s because we’re a small country that road haulage makes sense.

That leg would work with electric HGV as much shorter range. Long distance not so much.

The UK doesn't have "long distance". That's rather the problem with this logic.

Electric HGVs make much more sense. You can already get HGVs that can travel hundred of miles and the technology is only going to improve from here.

Plus you can get charging infrastructure in the depot.

Paris-Marseilles - 774km
London-Inverness - 912 km.

An exception to prove the rule.

What percentage of freight on the roads do you think is going direct from London to Inverness or vice versa.?

I don’t think very much freight goes to Inverness, although I could be wrong. There’s a lot on the West Highland Line to Fort William.

Don’t forget however that roughly 40% of all Railfreight travels on the WCML - and more would, if there was room for more trains and lower prices.

Which would considerably ease congestion for you and I on the M6.

Sandpit said:

alex_ said:

Sandpit said:

tlg86 said:

Interestingly, I noticed a Tory MP asking a question at PMQs last week about the viability of East-West Rail:

https://www.anthonybrowne.org/news/minister-confirms-covid-impact-tests-anthony-asks-prime-minister-east-west-rail-review

The PM was insistent that commuting will come back and that "it needs to come back".

That’s an interesting quote from the PM, and similar to his comments last autumn about going back to offices.

I’m not sure government yet understands, how much of a permanent step-change in working patterns has occurred in the last 15 months. It has profound implications for areas such as transport and housing that will not be thought about, if the assumption is that 2022 work and life patterns look exactly the same as 2019 did.

People actually don’t like spending three hours a day commuting, productivity isn’t massively suffering as a result, and companies are realising they don’t need quite so many city centre offices.

I don’t know. Personally I wonder if the supposed “no massive suffering in productivity” hasn’t been stretched to the limit, and the fraying ropes could start to break very soon. As turnover in the jobs market begins to ramp up again and personnel and training gaps start to become increasingly apparent. I think we’ve had a year where many larger organisations will have become very disjointed, with large amounts of work being done in very small teams frozen in March 2020, but with growing levels of disconnectivity to the wider organisation. And that has to start having a big impact at some point.

Yes, there has definitely been an effect on larger businesses, which as you suggest might reach a point where inefficiency becomes an issue. It’s definitely more difficult to integrate new members into a team, for example, and there’s probably less communication between teams than would be the case if everyone were in the office.

But it’s also true that a lot of the recruitment over the past year, has been based on remote working - the new hires don’t ever expect to be told to go to London five days a week, and they live all over the country. The productivity numbers are also fed by salaries and office costs reducing, if people don’t need to commute and buy lunch every day.

The business to invest in, for the next few years, is going to be budget hotels in city business districts. There’s going to be a lot of people working two days a week in the office. Rail use will be more long-distance routes than commuter routes too.

We’ve moved about 60% of our fun money portfolio to specialty property segments - warehousing & logistics, GP surgeries, serviced offices, light industrial, tenanted pubs, etc. Only have one resi holding now but even that is a mixed use site and driven by office to resi conversion.

tlg86 said:

Sandpit said:

Cookie said:

Andy_JS said:

Carnyx said:

Leon said:

ManchesterKurt said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Foxy said:

Gardenwalker said:

ydoethur said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

ydoethur said:

HYUFD said:

As well as pushing against Boris' Brexit in the 55% Remain area, the report also says the LDs are pushing a NIMBY agenda hard.

'In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the government’s approach, writing: “Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over £11m in donations from property developers.

“Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham.”

Clearly there has been a swing to the LDs there but the Tories should hold on unless the LDs can squeeze the Labour and Green vote to near zero

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chesham-amersham-byelection-libdems-davey-b1856301.html

Isn’t HS2 likely to be an issue still as well? Especially given it’s finally under construction.

And Shapps just announced it is to go to Leeds

It is not going to be cancelled and they have started tunnelling in the Chilterns

That is good news, I hadn’t seen that. Although it looks as though they might be reducing the top speed a bit.

But I was thinking that the construction process itself will be disruptive and unpleasant. Lots of extra traffic, road closures, noise and pollution therefrom, etc.

Lines are never popular when being built (just look at how tough it was to build the original Grand Junction and Great Western mainlines, even including mustering private armies to confront recalcitrant companies).

It is really good news for the levelling up process and I agree there is going to be considerable disruption, indeed three years tunnelling under the Chilterns, but that is the price we have to pay to provide a modern high seed railway and at the same time allow the existing East and West coast mainlines to concentrate on more stopping services and services to local communities

It will do absolutely nothing for the levelling up process or the North South divide. Making it quicker to get from the Midlands to London does nothing to help employment or investment in the North. The EU knew this more than 20 years ago when they commissioned an in depth report into the effects of high speed rail links on the provinces, notably in France. All it did was draw more investment away from the regions into Paris.

So what would make a difference then?

Ooh. This is my special subject.

The research seems to suggest:

1. Devolution of powers and tax base
2. Local / public transport infrastructure designed to reduce commuting times and enable a larger commuting catchment pool
3. Local skills development
4. Thriving local chamber of commerce with participation in local economic planning
5. Policies in support of industrial clustering; university/business partnerships; investment financing.

@Richard_Tyndall is correct that high speed rail etc tend to strengthen existing imbalances.

Indeed, is there any evidence that the long established TGV network has helped the old coalfields of Picardy? Or has it just whizzed people through it, going from metropolis to metropolis?

As I mentioned, the EU published a paper about 2 decades ago on this which showed that the TGV system in France has served to suck GDP away from the regions rather than increase it. There was a very small attributable increase in overall GDP for France but the TGV increased the imbalance between Paris and the TGV destinations compared to those regions not served by the system.

I'm sure you're right. But TGV is great. Paris to Montpellier (465 miles) in a little over 3 hours is a journey we love, upstairs on the double decker trains. And it's civilised and quiet - nobody uses their mobile phones in the carriages. And they don't constantly make banal announcements over the tannoy. We should be aiming for something similar in the UK.

But there is nowhere in the UK where significant population centres are separated by 465 miles, unless you want to build HS2 from Penzance to Portree

France is more than twice the size of the UK - France arguably NEEDS high speed trains

We are a much more compact nation, where almost all our major cities are within 2-3 hours of each other. This is an advantage. We don't really need HS trains

Talk to me about increasing commuter capacity into Leeds, Brum and Manc without HS2.

Why, in 13 years, has no one opposed to HS2 come up with a better alternative given the main reason it's being built ?

Either there is no better way or those opposed have still not worked out why it is getting built.

Yes, I get that argument. As I say below. I just don't think the "high speed" by itself is a justification. We don't need it.

Anyway, thank fuck they killed the Camden Spur

Don't agree. I'm really annoyed I can't get to, say, Orange without having to stop in London and get out and lug all the luggage. Utterly barbaric.

Agree 100%.

Just dialling back two or three comments; to be clear, the point of High Speed 2 isn't High Speed. Of all the problems with rail in this country, the adrquacy of journey times between London and Manchester is not high up the list.
What HS2 is about is capacity. We do not have enough capacity on our rails - especially the WCML - to run all the services we would like (inter-city, local and freight), In particualr, mixing high speed and low speed kills capacity (freight and local can mix reasonably well as both average a similar speed). So what we need is new track. If we are doing this, why not engineer it so that it can go as fast? But speed is not the driver.

It’s all about capacity, and a massive amount of that is freight and the need to get lorries off the roads as much as possible. It’s expensive and inefficient to move containers one at a time across the country, not to mention that the various climate targets - whatever we think of them - require a lot fewer lorries on the roads than we have now.

The Camden link will almost certainly happen eventually, whether as a viaduct or more likely a tunnel. When the Chilterns tunnelling is finished, they need to move the machine to the Pennines to work on speeding up the East > West routes.

But you still need lorries to take individual containers from Daventry, Lawley Street or Trafford Park to their final destination. It’s because we’re a small country that road haulage makes sense.

As an aside (not really a response to your post) freight is 9% (and water 13%).

The lower figures are % of freight by weight (freight lifted) but doesn’t take into account the distance travel. Rail tends to be for longer distances.

ydoethur said:

Foxy said:

People wanting to use HS1 to the continent from the Midlands and North are probably better served by using Midland Main Line into St Pancras, and just going down the escalator. Far nicer than the walk from Euson with luggage. Far more locations served too.

Depends where you’re starting from. For Leicester, yes, that probably would work. How about the West Midlands? The nearest connections I have to the Midland main line are Derby or Leicester. To get to Leicester means at least one change - either at Tamworth or Birmingham, depending on where I start from.

When HS2 is built, I can go direct from Stafford, which is seven miles away.

Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds all have direct services to St Pancras.

Foxy said:

ydoethur said:

Foxy said:

People wanting to use HS1 to the continent from the Midlands and North are probably better served by using Midland Main Line into St Pancras, and just going down the escalator. Far nicer than the walk from Euson with luggage. Far more locations served too.

Depends where you’re starting from. For Leicester, yes, that probably would work. How about the West Midlands? The nearest connections I have to the Midland main line are Derby or Leicester. To get to Leicester means at least one change - either at Tamworth or Birmingham, depending on where I start from.

When HS2 is built, I can go direct from Stafford, which is seven miles away.

Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds all have direct services to St Pancras.

Yes, and none of them are easy to get to from Canncok. All would mean at least two changes.

Long time lurker here.
I have 4 year old august born son. He has loves his well run state school whereas he disliked the private nursery he went to before, it is just a world of difference, much more structure, discipline, order, facilities, resources etc.
And the nursery we had was oversubscribed - one of the better ones which we were paying something like £800 a month for.
The issue is whether it is really right to force 4 years olds to read and write the way they do - it might be better that they just spend more time playing and being kids.

darkage said:

Long time lurker here.
I have 4 year old august born son. He has loves his well run state school whereas he disliked the private nursery he went to before, it is just a world of difference, much more structure, discipline, order, facilities, resources etc.
And the nursery we had was oversubscribed - one of the better ones which we were paying something like £800 a month for.
The issue is whether it is really right to force 4 years olds to read and write the way they do - it might be better that they just spend more time playing and being kids.

Welcome. What you are suggesting applies in much of the civilised world. Finland, IIRC, doesn't start 'proper learning' until a child is 7. Children of 3/4/5 of course aren't really 'playing'; they actively learning all sorts of useful, especially social, skills.