Re: HS2
Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:59 pm
Cor, you're right. Maybe they need some sort of way to a) speed intercity trains up, and b) create more local trains too, and c) encourage freight onto the trains the commuters don't need, and d) encourage drivers onto trains because they've become more useful for short journeys by being more frequent.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:44 pmRelying on market forces is all very well if it works. But the UK is currently trying to reduce its carbon emissions by 68% in the next 8.5 years. Flying from London to Birmingham doesn't seem like a realistic part of that.
There is a decent ferry, takes a while thoughBird on a Fire wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:59 pmYeah fair enough, crossing the water is a special case if there isn't a decent ferry service.
The problem is that, as we've seen with Brexit, relatively small delays can have large economic effects. If people in say, Birmingham, Manchester or Leeds can't reliably and quickly get in and out of central London then they may decide that they or their business need to relocate to London.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:44 pmDefine "realistic". I've travelled in the UK a lot and have never taken an internal flight. Trains, buses and cars are all real.Gfamily wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:36 pmThat's a very odd response - France can only realistically do this because they already have their High Speed rail network that gives a realistic alternative to internal flights.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:07 pm
Which is odd, because if they wanted to kill domestic short-haul flights they could just ban them like France has done recently. No need to spunk £100 billion on a trainline.
Relying on market forces is all very well if it works. But the UK is currently trying to reduce its carbon emissions by 68% in the next 8.5 years. Flying from London to Birmingham doesn't seem like a realistic part of that.
One of the biggest factors which affects the willingness of people to travel some of the longer routes in the UK is time to destination. Typical travel time from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh by train is 4h30m. For the same journey, it's a 50 minute trip to Heathrow T5, maybe 20-30 minutes buffer time at the airport, a 1h25m flight, another 20m to get through Edinburgh airport and, say, a 25m taxi to the city centre. That's 3h30m. And that's one of the easiest and fastest routes for trains - other destinations are more complicated. London to Inverness is at least 8h04m and that's if you take a direct train. There's even a sleeper service because it takes so bl..dy long. However, the flight is 1h40m.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:44 pmDefine "realistic". I've travelled in the UK a lot and have never taken an internal flight. Trains, buses and cars are all real.Gfamily wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:36 pmThat's a very odd response - France can only realistically do this because they already have their High Speed rail network that gives a realistic alternative to internal flights.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:07 pm
Which is odd, because if they wanted to kill domestic short-haul flights they could just ban them like France has done recently. No need to spunk £100 billion on a trainline.
Relying on market forces is all very well if it works. But the UK is currently trying to reduce its carbon emissions by 68% in the next 8.5 years. Flying from London to Birmingham doesn't seem like a realistic part of that.
into the future of the UK domestic air market said about HS2:
Not quite a killing, that, but certainly an improvement. I'd argue, given the shape of Great Britain (longer and thinner than Spain), there's probably more opportunity here to reduce the domestic air market than there, where I could well imagine domestic flights were less concentrated in a specific direction.HS2 and the development of other competing surface transport modes
Research into the impact of high speed rail on air/rail mode share in Spain indicates that the development of HS2 from London to the North may impact domestic air transport demand in the UK. Although there is no data available for the UK since it does not have an operational domestic high speed rail network, competition and cooperation between air transport and HSR has been extensively explored in mainland Europe and parts of Asia. Such studies demonstrate that the provision of HSR not only shifts passengers away from air transport but also stimulates new demand (Sun et al., 2017). Research by Jimenez and Betancor (2012) revealed that new high speed rail services in Spain led to a 17% fall in domestic air transport operations.
The continued use and commercial viability of domestic aerial trunk routes for mail and express parcels may be impacted by technological and policy innovations in other surface transport modes including the proposed repurposing of high speed train stock for domestic mail and express parcel delivery by rail and the introduction of electronic, connected and autonomous vehicles (Clewlow et al., 2014; Albalate et al., 2015).
Well no, and neither have many other people, hence why we aren't building a high speed railway between those places. That said, the Cambrian line to Aber is going to be the first part of the national rail network to get moving block signalling installed (as a trial; I think it'll be a hybrid system) so it isn't completely ignored.
Evidence please, especially that banning things is a better option. You’re kind of suggesting that offering people choices, some with advantages, isn’t successful.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 9:41 am
The old-fashioned model of incrementally providing alternatives and hoping people voluntarily use them hasn't delivered good results so far.
East / West is generally a complete pita compared to North / South though. I always assumed it was a historic thing to do with wars.El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 9:43 amWell no, and neither have many other people, hence why we aren't building a high speed railway between those places. That said, the Cambrian line to Aber is going to be the first part of the national rail network to get moving block signalling installed (as a trial; I think it'll be a hybrid system) so it isn't completely ignored.
I'm not aware of any improvements other than HS2 which will have any measurable impact on the journey time to Scotland by 2030. HS2 might commission phase 1 by 2029 (though it might be later), but again I'm not certain of the journey time improvements that will bring north of Birmingham.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 9:41 amHS2 will definitely be a boon for faster travel around the UK.
Nevertheless - and this is a bit of a derail - the scale of the UK's climate commitments may well involve people having to do a bit less of something. To me, shaving a few hours of a journey to Scotland seems like something the world as a whole wouldn't miss, if it's part of a package of measures to seriously limit climate change to 1.5°C.
The old-fashioned model of incrementally providing alternatives and hoping people voluntarily use them hasn't delivered good results so far.
Best case scenario, how much faster will rail to Scotland be by 2030? Equal with flights, or would a ban or massively taxing tickets still be necessary to ensure the modal shift we likely need (unless there's some other package of measures about to be announced by the Johnson administration)?
You are right. Rail journey times are already short enough that there is no material London-Midlands air market, and rail has much the lion's share of the London to Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and even Newcastle air/rail markets. The scope for HS2 to increase the rail market share from air in these markets is limited, because it already has most of it. Air routes like London-Manchester mainly serve the long-haul interline market.El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 8:52 amOne of the biggest factors which affects the willingness of people to travel some of the longer routes in the UK is time to destination. Typical travel time from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh by train is 4h30m. For the same journey, it's a 50 minute trip to Heathrow T5, maybe 20-30 minutes buffer time at the airport, a 1h25m flight, another 20m to get through Edinburgh airport and, say, a 25m taxi to the city centre. That's 3h30m. And that's one of the easiest and fastest routes for trains - other destinations are more complicated. London to Inverness is at least 8h04m and that's if you take a direct train. There's even a sleeper service because it takes so bl..dy long. However, the flight is 1h40m.
I've found it hard to find centralised statistics on which domestic air routes are most popular, but according to this, London-Scotland routes account for eight of the top eleven most popular routes. Just looking at a map of the UK, that seems like it's an obvious thing. So there's clearly a great opportunity, if we get high speed rail right, to make a big dent in that market.
HS2 isn't being planned at present to extend into Scotland, which to my mind is hugely short-sighted (this was originally an ambition for both major parties a decade ago). However, even without that, HS2 will cut half an hour off the time to Edinburgh, and that makes the comparison a little better. There are also discussions about improving that further.
I think it's more a thing to do with where people live and don't live. Not many people live along the line west of Shrewsbury, so the rail line there hasn't been prioritised much. That said, Birmingham to Norwich takes a f.cking age, and whilst the eletrification of almost the complete network is needed, the highest priority lines which haven't yet been done are probably the Midland Mainline north of Kettering, the Chiltern main line, the South Wales main line west of Cardiff, the North Wales coast line, the Great Western main line south west of Bristol (arguably), and the key Cross-Country lines of Bristol to Leeds via Birmingham and Derby, and Birmingham to Peterborough and Ely. Getting those lines sorted would make a massive difference for those sorts of east-west journeys. East West rail will help a little further south, but, of course, Grayling spunked his magic over that and it isn't going to be electrified.plodder wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 9:48 amEast / West is generally a complete pita compared to North / South though. I always assumed it was a historic thing to do with wars.El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 9:43 amWell no, and neither have many other people, hence why we aren't building a high speed railway between those places. That said, the Cambrian line to Aber is going to be the first part of the national rail network to get moving block signalling installed (as a trial; I think it'll be a hybrid system) so it isn't completely ignored.
Classic ‘lots of fiddly little technical solutions’ rather than ‘one big simple one’ territory there, with all the precarious issues around funding / approvals multiplied accordingly.El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 10:06 am
I think it's more a thing to do with where people live and don't live. Not many people live along the line west of Shrewsbury, so the rail line there hasn't been prioritised much. That said, Birmingham to Norwich takes a f.cking age, and whilst the eletrification of almost the complete network is needed, the highest priority lines which haven't yet been done are probably the Midland Mainline north of Kettering, the Chiltern main line, the South Wales main line west of Cardiff, the North Wales coast line, the Great Western main line south west of Bristol (arguably), and the key Cross-Country lines of Bristol to Leeds via Birmingham and Derby, and Birmingham to Peterborough and Ely. Getting those lines sorted would make a massive difference for those sorts of east-west journeys. East West rail will help a little further south, but, of course, Grayling spunked his magic over that and it isn't going to be electrified.
Chris Stokes did an excellent analysis in a lecture to the Transport Economists Group in 2014 https://transecongroup.org/wp-content/u ... t_41-3.pdf (page 8ff) setting out major city pairs with seriously crap rail journey times in comparison to road, where improving the speed of travel of the railway could make a large contribution to modal share of rail and improving the economic connectivity of those major city pairs. Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds/Sheffield, and generally Birmingham to all those stand out as crap. Manchester/Liverpool-Birmingham is also notably crap by road, which probably accounts for the surprisingly low internal trade between W Mids and the NW.Gfamily wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 10:23 amAs far as I can see, the quickest rail route from Liverpool to Leeds takes longer than driving would. (1h 32 compared to 1h 20 ish depending on traffic)
Most daytime trains take 10-15 minutes longer, and add another 25 minutes if you can't get a direct train.
HS2 won't help with that of course, but it shows the scale of the problem with rail in UK
They're less than 65 miles apart
<applause>Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 9:41 amHS2 will definitely be a boon for faster travel around the UK.
Nevertheless - and this is a bit of a derail - ...
+1JQH wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 11:05 am<applause>Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 9:41 amHS2 will definitely be a boon for faster travel around the UK.
Nevertheless - and this is a bit of a derail - ...
For an East-West route which more people would use, try London to Holyhead. It costs £77. According to Google, London Euston to Holyhead is 289 miles. At 30mpg a diesel vehicle will cost £59 in fuel to make the trip. Why doesn't the train, which takes many people together, cost a lot less? For comparison, nationalexpress does London Victoria to Cardiff (shorter at only 174 miles, but that's the closest route I can find) for £11.90 (well, actually, their prices go down to 90p, but that's ridiculous). There's something very wrong about train prices - especially when you consider that road travel is heavily taxed.
plodder wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 9:46 amEvidence please,Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Fri Jun 25, 2021 9:41 am
The old-fashioned model of incrementally providing alternatives and hoping people voluntarily use them hasn't delivered good results so far.
I can't, off the top of my head, think of many case studies where things that contribute to climate change have been outright banned (because of their carbon contributions).