tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30866241281655825102023-11-16T04:37:13.625-08:00njak 100Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-79059396658974008842016-05-25T13:54:00.000-07:002016-05-26T01:21:41.634-07:00Beware the slow train to Inertia Central<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhApemIz_Jf7_9dGvsRrgffw3aaON5SyIYn8ITcB4kr9xYxNT_GkIcpk8HYoguRS4xzgGWhB69-Y-tya952v7zPht62-tdbwAFZnqPeeL26sL5uf9qDbM-yOckag-BvmxcL3xniDhXXxM4F/s1600/gb-BNS+rebuild-credit+NR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhApemIz_Jf7_9dGvsRrgffw3aaON5SyIYn8ITcB4kr9xYxNT_GkIcpk8HYoguRS4xzgGWhB69-Y-tya952v7zPht62-tdbwAFZnqPeeL26sL5uf9qDbM-yOckag-BvmxcL3xniDhXXxM4F/s320/gb-BNS+rebuild-credit+NR.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The £750m rebuilding of Birmingham New Street station has transformed the aesthetic of the station but added no extra platforms or train paths through this notoriously congested hub. Credit: Network Rail</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">High Speed 2, the UK’s nascent national high speed rail network, is on the cusp of tangibility. No less than <a href="http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/single-view/view/hs2-phase-i-civil-works-shortlist-announced.html?sword_list%5B%5D=HS2&no_cache=1" target="_blank">£12bn of civil works contracts</a> for the first phase of the planned 540<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span>km railway await sign off from HM Treasury. But much more important than that, it has started to hint at generating the kind of momentum its detractors long scorned as impossible: it is reportedly inspiring <a href="https://t.co/sOAiP147ZM" target="_blank">school pupils in Crewe</a>, catalysing an <a href="http://www.thechamberlainfiles.com/birmingham-unveils-relocation-service-to-cope-with-inward-investment-surge/" target="_blank">inward investment agency</a> in Birmingham and spurring fashion house Burberry’s <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6cbb887a-83e7-11e5-8095-ed1a37d1e096.html#axzz49hS2ZEsF" target="_blank">production expansion</a> in Leeds.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">At such an important, and indeed delicate, juncture, it can hardly come as a surprise that the advocates of fudge and procrastination are once again mustering their troops in support of a Manifesto of Muddle. They may be encouraged tacitly by the Treasury, which – predictably and unsurprisingly – is bridling at the notion of a long-term, regionally-focused infrastructure programme. To adapt an infamous euphemism said to emanate from number 11 Downing Street, HS2 is not a mini-roundabout. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Today, a group of academics and transport specialists convened by veteran railway timetabling consultant Jonathan Tyler has set out its effort to stymie the progress of HS2 in favour of what its group suggests should be an ‘independent review’ of the project. A <a href="http://www.passengertransportnetworks.co.uk/reports/" target="_blank">10-page dossier</a> has been circulated to the trade press and, presumably, policymakers in advance of the public release on May 26; its contents are a summary of the conclusions of a workshop held at the University of York, my own <i>alma mater</i>, earlier in the year.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Tyler & co’s dossier initially appears to be more akin to an executive summary, yet that would imply that it offers a plan of action, when surely the reverse is true. ‘The Case for a Review’ is more nuanced title, and the document eschews emotive calls for HS2 to be cancelled, deferred or even halted. Work could continue in some form while a ‘review’ on the authors’ preferred terms is completed; this would then assess whether some, all or none of HS2 should continue.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The authors are clearly experts in their field, and clearly their conclusions should not be lightly dismissed. The dossier is as subtle as it is elaborate in its efforts to convince us that ‘alternatives’ to HS2 have not been assessed, that trains on Europe’s busiest mixed-traffic railway are mostly empty, or that scant international evidence exists to support the wider socio-economic objectives of HS2.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Indeed, the dossier, and no doubt the workshop which preceded it, are likely to easily convince those whose view of the rail network is influenced by a career during the years of managed decline, or whose eco-agenda suggests that the best kind of transport policy advocates no movement at all. To them, HS2 is clearly a gold-plated outlier, rather than a further exemplar of a mature and proven technology encompassing more than 20 000 km of successful operation in 18 countries where <a href="http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/single-view/view/world-speed-survey-2015-china-remains-the-pacesetter.html?sword_list%5B%5D=survey&no_cache=1" target="_blank">average speeds exceed 160 km/h</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And if there is a reason why some of the messages in Tyler’s report seem rather familiar, perhaps it’s because they are. Deftly conveyed with a gloss of academic respectability they may be, but there is little here that has not previously been addressed. And where the mask slips, some of the assertions are quite astounding. Under rail capacity, for example, the dossier argues that:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">‘Euston, King’s Cross and Marylebone are the least crowded of all London termini, with a load factor on Virgin West Coast of less than 40%’</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The simplistic use of load factor as a proxy for route capacity has been a standard tactic for attacking HS2 since its inception. The report cites ORR data from 2014-15, just after a programme of train lengthening from nine to 11 cars was completed by VWC, clearly implying a lag in occupancy while the market catches up. Had it not done so, the recent decision to install visual representation of seat occupancy on the departure boards at London Euston would be a curious move.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But more pertinently, the completion of both planned phases of HS2 would bring capacity relief to routes covered by approximately eight passenger franchises, so why would such an earnest report assume evidence of one is somehow representative? And lest we forget, as perhaps Tyler et al have, it is not load factor that has caused the cessation of passenger services at stations in Staffordshire in the last decade, or the axing of through trains at rush hour between mid-Cheshire and central Manchester.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Equally eyebrow raising is the revival of the moribund 51M proposal to increase WCML capacity through train lengthening and a series of incremental interventions along the route. Tyler claims this resulted in a benefit:cost ratio of 5.2, yet a peer review by Atkins subsequently reassessed 51M’s rolling stock assumptions and <a href="http://njak100.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/51m-cut-and-shut-case.html" target="_blank">revised this down to just 1.6</a>. This is not mentioned.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Perhaps most egregiously, the authors suggest that unspecified ‘new construction procedures’ mean that national infrastructure manager Network Rail can undertake ‘large projects without disproportionate changes to the everyday delivery of a train service’. They cite recent work at Norton Bridge (the £250m Stafford Area Improvements Programme) and the rebuilding of Reading station, leaving us to infer that the incremental <a href="http://njak100.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/cp5-cost-crunch-reinforces-hs2-case.html" target="_blank">total route modernisation approach</a> should again be pursued, perhaps on the East Coast Main Line, where Tyler et al worry that investment could be <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">deferred</span>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The isolated citation of Stafford and Reading is an appalling distortion of the context of recent railway investment, and the authors should be ashamed that they have resorted to it. This blog has already outlined the clear lessons of the Great Western Route Modernisation programme, while in the Midlands, the Stafford grade separation and rebuilding of Birmingham New Street have accounted for £1bn of expenditure and yet failed to yield a single extra peak hour train path between them. I find it hard to believe Tyler and his acolytes do not appreciate this.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Similarly predictable are a series of well-trodden tropes around sustainability, most of which focus on macro-policy outcomes (reducing the need to travel, imposing the marginal cost of transport etc), while neglecting specific practicalities (HS2, or any other electric railway service, is going to be much greener if it is powered by renewable energy, yet this is not addressed). The 400 km/h design speed is predictably invoked, alongside an assertion that lower design speeds are applied in France and Germany, and such an approach would permit ‘a less damaging route’. This blog for one remains to be convinced that a more sinuous, and almost certainly longer, alignment would reduce environmental impact, nor that more braking and acceleration would be ‘greener’.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Needless to say, the authors indulge in a well-rehearsed sleight of hand in failing to inform us that the timetabled operating speed is planned to be closer to the current international standard of 300 km/h to 330 km/h, as confirmed on the record by HS2 Ltd Technical Director Prof Andrew McNaughton.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Their report is on more consensual ground when it assesses social and economic impacts and the vagaries of economic rebalancing. But it is surprising to see that it relies strongly on citations from Prof John Tomaney at the Transport Select Committee that are now five years old, and other work – especially the <a href="http://bit.ly/1qL163J" target="_blank">World Bank</a>’s assessments of the economic effects of China’s high speed rail boom – continue to be eschewed.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As a Rochdale native though, it is pleasing to see my home town get a mention, but the assertion that infrastructure designed to connect cities may indeed benefit cities like Manchester or Leeds is self-evident in an era of ongoing urbanisation. The authors seem to believe, as many HS2 critics do, that the railway is somehow an ‘isolated’ entity, rather than one which can plug into diverse networks at key nodes. It is noteworthy, but not mentioned in the dossier, that every one of HS2’s ‘out of town’ stations is planned to be served by urban rail routes.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The economic development of places like Bradford or Rochdale is surely bound into that of the nearest big cities, and it is desirable for new infrastructure investment to facilitate regional mobility by removing capacity-eating long-distance traffic to dedicated routes and releasing capacity on existing corridors. This must remain an overarching objective of HS2.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lastly, our authors offer a salutary lesson about the future, where ‘external factors’ may begin to influence project appraisal processes. These too are a rehash of the eminently predictable: the use of travel time, the rise of digital technology, autonomous vehicles etc. ‘These uncertainties could rapidly multiply to the point where a favourable outcome from such a large project was most unlikely.’</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What an inspiring message for those schoolkids in Crewe. The future’s suddenly become particularly unpredictable, boys and girls, so…er, best not bother.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Treasury must be rubbing its hands in glee at the prospect of such a ringing endorsement of the cult of patch and mend. </span></span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-48992039626974856912015-05-15T08:48:00.001-07:002015-05-18T05:09:58.801-07:00Northern Powerhouse must include HS2<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji0U40_YQjfyRWfJI6SjoRiWKUDUKnViFdbeJpR2PIHIHKbWkPeBVOp0JW4gadL5xRkgE0XFKDfirgAZ1RJ67MDyH8EJDt9iqcwDkVrYzcccm9lAJun6V2wQFK3JHMP_Ic60T3xz0T0auj/s1600/tn_gb-Class+185+at+Ashburys+290406+TM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji0U40_YQjfyRWfJI6SjoRiWKUDUKnViFdbeJpR2PIHIHKbWkPeBVOp0JW4gadL5xRkgE0XFKDfirgAZ1RJ67MDyH8EJDt9iqcwDkVrYzcccm9lAJun6V2wQFK3JHMP_Ic60T3xz0T0auj/s320/tn_gb-Class+185+at+Ashburys+290406+TM.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">There are typically five times more express trains per hour between Manchester and Leeds than there are between Leeds and Birmingham. HS2 Phase 2 would address this imbalance in non-London connectivity. Photo: T Miles.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Few phrases have been uttered more frequently in the wake of May 7’s general election than ‘the Northern Powerhouse’, a package of devolution proposals intended to decentralise government towards cities from Westminster. At the time of writing, transport – and specifically rail – is at the forefront of the plans, having also been a central plank in various policy reports issued over several years by bodies <a href="http://www.ippr.org/publications/transport-for-the-north-a-blueprint-for-devolving-and-integrating-transport-powers-in-england" target="_blank">such as IPPR North</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The role of rail in the Northern Powerhouse focuses less on transport user advantages and instead<a href="http://www.manchester.gov.uk/news/article/6940/one_north_region_s_cities_unveil_joint_plan_for_improved_connections" target="_blank"> accentuates wider economic benefits</a>, such as improved labour market connectivity and agglomeration gains identified in other large semi-integrated conurbations, such as Germany’s Ruhr Valley region and the Dutch Randstad. Such philosophy has led the previous and current governments to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-and-chancellor-give-green-light-to-develop-hs3" target="_blank">back plans</a> to invest up to £15bn on enhanced rail links between northern cities, but in practice this had coalesced into various options for new or very extensively upgraded corridors between Manchester and Leeds. This has, in turn, predictably led to calls for a ‘Crossrail of the North’ to be prioritised ahead of other railway projects, notably the second phase of High Speed 2. Indeed, economists and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2015/may/14/ex-goldman-sachs-man-talks-sense-on-hs2" target="_blank">business commentators</a> now take the benefits of some form of ‘High Speed 3’ advancing while HS2 is gleefully cancelled as almost absolute truths.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The ubiquitous Christian Wolmar aside, few transport commentators are so quick to leap to this conclusion, and with good reason. First, there is the blunt reality that rail’s most established and commercially-viable market is serving London, which is the origin or destination for almost two-thirds of all passenger-journeys. The corollary of this market reality is that the economics of regional railways are much more fragile, since volumes are less and yields lower. This in no sense undermines the case for improving rail links in the regions, but it does mean that major infrastructure works which do not have a ‘baseload’ London market attached to them are going to be more delicate to deliver.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The hurdles facing HS3 can be put into context by the highly unusual bureaucratic intervention required to ensure the replacement of the much-maligned ‘Pacer’ railbuses could be included in the next Northern passenger rail franchise. A <a href="http://t.co/7vzMmmFDGK" target="_blank">letter released by the Department for Transport</a> lays bare just how little of the benefits of new trains can be captured by established transport business case methodology.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which brings us back to wider economic benefits. These ‘WEBs’ form a relatively small part of the economic case for HS2, which would link London with Leeds, Manchester and points north in a 540 km network centred on Birmingham. The chronic shortage of paths (let us not be distracted by load factor, a capacity red herring) on our north-south main lines, and the <a href="http://njak100.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/cp5-cost-crunch-reinforces-hs2-case.html" target="_blank">comparable cost</a> of vastly less effective incremental upgrading schemes have ensured HS2 has made it to the hybrid bill committee stage, for the first phase at least.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some of these issues can help spur the HS3 idea too, but if we are serious about improving non-London connectivity then the merits of HS2’s second phase must not be so routinely overlooked. The most stark comparison is to assess connectivity in the triangle between Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester. Today, there a whopping eight trains per hour linking Leeds and Manchester taking three different routes. Of these, five are express services with a standard timing of around 50 min. Contrast this with the Birmingham – Leeds axis, where only one train typically operates each hour and the journey time is almost 2 h. HS2 would cut that journey in half and offer at least twice as many trains – not that you’d know that from any media outlet whatsoever, including HS2 Ltd’s own communications team.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">More pertinently still, HS2 has a key role to play in fostering the Northern Powerhouse itself by connecting the Sheffield/Barnsley/Rotherham area (assuming a Meadowhall station) with Leeds and York, while connections to the East Coast Main Line at Colton pave the way for a reduction in Newcastle – Birmingham travel times of around an hour, again with improved frequencies. And DfT and rail industry groups have <a href="http://njak100.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/hs2-looking-into-great-beyond.html" target="_blank">long suggested</a> that electrification can enable HS2 to be plugged into the cross-country network too, with trains originating in Bristol or Cardiff and sharing the new railway between Birmingham and York. <span class="ecxApple-style-span" style="color: #2d2d2d;">A link with the conventional network</span><span class="ecxApple-style-span" style="color: #2d2d2d;"> in the Washwood Heath area of Birmingham </span><span class="ecxApple-style-span" style="color: #2d2d2d;">to enable </span><span class="ecxApple-style-span" style="color: #2d2d2d;">this </span><span class="ecxApple-style-span" style="color: #2d2d2d;">should be added to the ongoing legislation for HS2's first phase</span>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Us northerners should nevertheless take heart that the wider economic benefits of rail investment, which for HS2 have been so roundly castigated by some in the <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b4ea9052-f989-11e4-ae65-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=uk#axzz3aDCdu3yC" target="_blank">London commentariat</a>, are after all strong enough on their own to justify some form of HS3. But it would be exceptionally myopic to pursue this bold agenda for cross-Pennine connectivity while at the same time ditching more pressing enhancements, which include electrification, East Coast Main Line works and, yes, the northern sections of HS2.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-7467578785561522082015-02-24T05:51:00.000-08:002015-02-24T05:51:14.618-08:00HS2: McNaughton outlines the released capacity win<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhkiVUxF9znqe7ojVmgjR2LZYATzukgIp_rJojTA-64FUI5EM4gVn4_LCBtEZIDeJBjuLZzzo39_n1t2rKEspHs_wsDWUrFyhYeIQk2xLYvwKoCTEFGB9db6b7OM1_ef5fYCPY_Xciqcg3/s1600/A_McNaughton_Presentation_11_02_15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhkiVUxF9znqe7ojVmgjR2LZYATzukgIp_rJojTA-64FUI5EM4gVn4_LCBtEZIDeJBjuLZzzo39_n1t2rKEspHs_wsDWUrFyhYeIQk2xLYvwKoCTEFGB9db6b7OM1_ef5fYCPY_Xciqcg3/s1600/A_McNaughton_Presentation_11_02_15.jpg" height="226" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite suggestions to the contrary by HS2 opponents, Prof McNaughton's slides made clear the increases in services which could be provided using capacity released by the first phase of the project.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Professor Andrew McNaughton, Technical Director of the government's project delivery company HS2 Ltd, called it a ‘something of a canter’. But in reality, his appearance on February 11 before the committee of MPs scrutinising the first phase of the planned High Speed 2 railway network was a(nother) landmark moment, as it shone a light on one of the project’s most important assets.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In short, over <a href="http://bit.ly/1JGUbRm" target="_blank">these eight pages</a> (pp41-49), McNaughton attempted to set out to MPs the nebulous, fraught and technocratic issue of ‘released capacity’. We hear it quoted so often as an advantage of HS2, but rarely do we see precisely how the hard bitten rail traveller – he or she with no inclination to board a long-distance train to London or Newcastle or Rotterdam or anywhere – might stand to benefit. And benefit a lot.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>‘In each hour in the peak, because of HS2, there is the opportunity for the stations served by the West Coast Main Line to have around 6 000 to 7 000 extra seats. That is what released capacity equates to.’</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">McNaughton, not for the first time, sought to illustrate the issue by outlining, subtly yet effectively, how inefficiently our ‘patch and mend’ policies have led us to use our most strategic infrastructure, in the case the (notionally-upgraded) West Coast Main Line. In doing so, he drew a parallel with the country’s most capacious railway, London Underground’s Victoria Line.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>‘If you recall, a few minutes ago, I said, in theory this is all non-stopping trains all going at the same speed, two minutes apart. You could end up with 30 trains an hour or, if they’re all stopping like the Victoria Line in the London Underground, 30 trains an hour. The practical limit on the WCML [fast tracks] today is 11 long-distance trains and four outer commuter trains, and there are trains on the slow lines as well. I’m going to concentrate on the fast lines. 11 plus 4 is 15.</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>'What does HS2 release? We take off the main line most of the long-distance non-stop services, because the purpose of HS2 is to serve cities on the long-distance network. That means in the peak we see at least 10 totally new services are available in the capacity that we released on the WCML.’</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, in a nutshell, we have a situation where we have a very old, but very expensively modernised, railway operating significantly below its theoretical capacity. That’s path occupancy of course, whereas much media brouhaha has focused on the question of seat occupancy or load factor. McNaughton addressed this too, noting that the provision of seating is a function of the number of train paths the railway is able to offer up. So needless to say, more seats might be occupied if more intermediate stops were inserted into long-distance trains on the WCML. Easy, right? Wrong:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>‘The practical capacity is an operational capacity and this is not a fixed function for any particular railway; it is a function of how train services are planned on that infrastructure. I give some examples of how the way train services are planned affects the number of trains, the number of seats per hour, the number of stations, whatever, that can be served on a route.’</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And the problem with the WCML – and the three other principal rail arteries HS2 would relieve in its second phase – is that, as McNaughton <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/hs2/A_McNaughton_Presentation_11_02_15.pdf" target="_blank">showed in his slides</a>, it has to serve places en route, the ‘points A, B, C and D’ he cited. In commercial reality, B, C and D get a pretty raw deal: very few Virgin Trains expresses heading to or from London stop much south of Stoke, Crewe or Warrington. If they did, McNaughton reported, they would compromise the available paths for the two or even three trains behind. Then of course, any perceived load factor deficit would immediately evaporate.</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpZRuvcB7ctyiHrf9DK4UcpT5OInVR9riN1ItYIPKwrbEBI8N-GhIBCbLaB9ZUgoJMm8SmISRC5-3bxFc1JE-3Jskct2FYta-E2G94fuLvVKHuCkQhQh1ND9L3FCyTvfZCArxheRHC0gvV/s1600/A_McNaughton_Presentation_p9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpZRuvcB7ctyiHrf9DK4UcpT5OInVR9riN1ItYIPKwrbEBI8N-GhIBCbLaB9ZUgoJMm8SmISRC5-3bxFc1JE-3Jskct2FYta-E2G94fuLvVKHuCkQhQh1ND9L3FCyTvfZCArxheRHC0gvV/s1600/A_McNaughton_Presentation_p9.jpg" height="226" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As this blog <a href="http://njak100.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/cp5-cost-crunch-reinforces-hs2-case.html" target="_blank">pointed out</a> recently, there is no longer any regular direct rail service between Watford and any destination in northwest England. A clear opportunity for the kind of inter-regional service which could (and in my view should) be offered in one of the 10 freed-up paths indicated by McNaughton.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It cannot be repeated enough that the fundamental usage of HS2 is already established. The services that will use it will in fact look remarkably familiar: faster and much, much more reliable, but still three fast trains from London to Birmingham and three fast trains to Manchester. The business case is a transferral and enhancement, not the dreaming up of a new market.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Indeed, of the 30 stations proposed to be served by HS2 trains once both phases are open, 21 are exactly the same stations as served by the equivalent services today (Warrington, Glasgow, York, Newcastle, London Euston and Manchester Piccadilly are among those in this group).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unsurprisingly, and without reference to the slides that accompanied McNaughton’s presentation, those who remain dogmatically opposed to the HS2 programme <a href="http://stophs2.org/news/13115-13115" target="_blank">leapt</a> before looking. <a href="http://bit.ly/1wjHF4z" target="_blank">Others have highlighted</a> the gross misrepresentation of Stop HS2’s description of McNaughton’s presentation, but such heat and light obscures the reality that our time-honoured patch and mend philosophy has led us to spend £10bn on a railway which afterwards defies efficient or reliable operation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As we near the frenzy of a General Election campaign, primary evidence of a technically-credible nature is sure to be in short supply. Like Chris Gibb’s <a href="http://bit.ly/1EMieYL" target="_blank">landmark report</a> before it, McNaughton’s contribution is a vital one. HS2 can herald not just a highly-effective railway in its own right, but it can also unlock the potential of our legacy network. It must be built.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-4776741704822700712014-12-18T05:27:00.000-08:002014-12-18T05:27:05.890-08:00CP5 cost crunch reinforces HS2 case<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWvUR_6IxOEKrQP5fUJxoiqlZkvHydB5HfiF2LnLlIAKhmendL3KnS1SZsxT2-mdqOcYh4uxYKsXa7n7H4ikfQzrDZQNFlAqNUeYjW6gzfvWI5Iw1cZmQjbhiDUaloKdFUB1jigdgc2URK/s1600/_DSC4012.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWvUR_6IxOEKrQP5fUJxoiqlZkvHydB5HfiF2LnLlIAKhmendL3KnS1SZsxT2-mdqOcYh4uxYKsXa7n7H4ikfQzrDZQNFlAqNUeYjW6gzfvWI5Iw1cZmQjbhiDUaloKdFUB1jigdgc2URK/s1600/_DSC4012.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Concerns about the cost and complexity of the Great Western Route Modernisation echo the problems of the incremental upgrading on the WCML. Photo: A Benton</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In July 2011, then Transport Secretary Philip Hammond went to London’s Paddington station to formally launch the start of a <a href="http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/infrastructure/single-view/view/hammond-launches-pound5bn-great-western-main-line-upgrade.html?sword_list%5B%5D=hammond&no_cache=1" target="_blank">£5bn programme</a> to modernise the Great Western Main Line, including electrification, remodelling of the bottleneck at Reading and resignalling with the latest ETCS in-cab train control equipment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But by the middle of last summer, train operator First Great Western was running a high-profile <a href="https://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/About-Us/greater-west" target="_blank">advertising campaign</a>, adorned with images of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, which touted a ‘massive’ £7.5bn investment by Network Rail in the route. Yet when newly-appointed NR Chief Executive Mark Carne spoke to parliament's <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/transport-committee/news/network-rail---evidence-session/" target="_blank">Transport Select Committee</a> on June 9 last year, he was forced to admit that he ‘did not have a fully-defined cost’ for the investment programme.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some details of the problems are starting to emerge, and it is already apparent that other enhancements to the conventional rail network are also imperilled by a spiralling cost control issue. According to reports last August by <em>The Sunday Times</em> newspaper and industry newsletter <em><a href="http://www.railwaygazette.com/publications/rail-business-intelligence/about.html" target="_blank">Rail Business Intelligence</a></em>, the cost of electrifying (some of) the Great Western Main Line has already grown from £1bn at the outset to £1.5bn as detailed design work has proceeded. Industry insiders suggest that other wiring schemes, covering the trans-Pennine and Midland Main Line routes, could be similarly affected.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This salutary tale ought already to bring back memories of Railtrack’s ill-starred efforts to modernise the West Coast Main Line from 1998 onwards at a supposed cost of £1.4bn. The out-turn cost was more than £9bn by the time of the project’s formal completion, but another £1bn has been spent subsequently on improving the resilience of the route. For the avoidance of doubt, NR is doing and will continue to do a vastly better job of managing Britain’s rail infrastructure than Railtrack ever did. But there is equally no doubt that that the cost and complexity of upgrading legacy railways to deliver more capacity is continually and routinely downplayed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is remarkable that the GW programme’s budgetary transition from £5bn to £7.5bn to ‘unknown’ in just three years appears to have been somewhat blithely overlooked. Claims that there are a plethora of ‘cheaper and easier’ alternatives to the High Speed 2 project remain common currency, despite the emphatic passage of the HS2 Phase I hybrid bill through its second reading in parliament earlier this year. In reality, the overwhelming body of evidence is that the true ‘blank cheque’ rail projects are those ‘patch and mend’ options which this blog has always insisted are unsuitable for the busiest rail arteries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The limitations of the incremental upgrading are especially acute where there is need to deliver real-terms increases in capacity. Despite the now familiar wrangling about load factors (the relevance of which has been dented by the metric being ignored in Sir Howard Davies' aviation capacity reports), this in practice almost always means more train paths, whether for passenger or freight. It cannot be right that this is achieved overwhelmingly by ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’. On the upgraded WCML for example, paths are so scarce that an engineering-led scheme to raise the maximum speed of commuter trains to 110 mile/h was required to flight an extra train per hour to and from London Euston between Virgin Pendolinos. And to that extent, it worked. But the unintended consequence was to deprive Watford of the direct services to northwest England which it had enjoyed throughout the 20th Century. Whatever advantages this confers, improving non-London connectivity is clearly not one of them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the Great Western meanwhile, whatever improvements are made to the main line to Bristol and south Wales (note that the ‘Berks & Hants’ line route to Devon and Cornwall gets only a stub-ended electrification and almost no capacity or speed enhancements, which is a story in itself), there is a crux looming at the London end, as longer-distance traffic vies for capacity with <a href="http://www.londonreconnections.com/2014/crossrail-reading/" target="_blank">intensive Crossrail suburban trains</a> between Reading and London. Only a fool would bet against more messy capacity compromises, which is understandable since significant net gains in paths on the busiest sections of the route are simply not deliverable, despite the scale of the enhancement works.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All of which leads to fairly obvious conclusion. First, that the challenges faced during the ill-starred West Coast upgrading were not, as some HS2 critics claimed, an aberration. Stories of shifting specifications and engineers ‘not finding what they expected on the ground’ continue to swirl around the Great Western and other projects where major capacity enhancement is expected from an existing corridor. Second, with the GWML project in all its various elements now likely to reach a capital outlay comparable to WCRM, how can anyone rationally believe that replacing HS2 with a further plethora of ‘incremental’ upgrades represents fiscal prudence? With HS2 providing guaranteed capacity relief to at least four main line corridors, the implications of Network Rail being tasked with the same job are daunting. With NR’s debt now officially on the government’s books, the long-term cost of backing politically-expedient ‘patch and mend’ projects has just gone up a bit more.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With a general election looming, some observers are already stretching credulity by <a href="http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/the-debt-dangers-of-britain%E2%80%99s-infrastructure-craze" target="_blank">calling for HS2 to be halted</a>. It is already clear that this would be rank bad policy.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-72130793037206362332014-04-28T05:21:00.000-07:002014-06-24T07:20:43.186-07:00Why MPs should back HS2 today<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFcAzHKeboAq2Z3-aynLlN-xf1Cp5lwfXzGzQdEJy3DBqE2WKTFsyqMfg3Vyaz9kiOZmRqs6k7pethQJ_LRY92ZiIfCC_K7VKwY4Rl4LsxkgUR3XcVDMST9C0tcffQ_wOlPW0wckKFIGKB/s1600/Bham+Curzon+St+departure+board.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFcAzHKeboAq2Z3-aynLlN-xf1Cp5lwfXzGzQdEJy3DBqE2WKTFsyqMfg3Vyaz9kiOZmRqs6k7pethQJ_LRY92ZiIfCC_K7VKwY4Rl4LsxkgUR3XcVDMST9C0tcffQ_wOlPW0wckKFIGKB/s1600/Bham+Curzon+St+departure+board.jpg" height="164" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">All about London? A possible departure board at Birmingham Curzon Street after both phases of HS2 are completed. Image: Birmingham City Council</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Four key questions answered:</span><br />
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<em><strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Will the project benefit the north, the south or both?</span></strong></em><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Both. Much attention has been focussed on the notion that the project might 'suck business activity from the north towards London', yet there is in reality no consensus on these effects, not least because there can be no direct comparison between the UK's economic geography and that of any other country. Taken to its logical conclusion, the notion of London 'winning out' from HS2 would imply that those cities with inferior connectivity with the capital would somehow be insulated from these negative effects. That rather contorted argument has been put firmly in context by the recent campaign to restore rail links between London and southwest England – there were few suggestions that rebuilding the railway through Dawlish might somehow drain the economy of Devon and Cornwall.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The lessons from the 17 000 km of high speed railway in use internationally show that few if any cities claim to have been damaged by being connected to the network. In some locations the high speed railway has acted as a catalyst for regeneration or reorientation of a local economy, and there is emerging evidence from the world’s largest high speed experiment, China, that </span><a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/03/13/1209247110.full.pdf+html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">smaller cities are benefitting</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> as pressure mounts on overheating metropolises.</span><br />
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<em><strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do we need more rail capacity?</span></strong></em><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unequivocally yes. Rail capacity, like air capacity, is defined by the ability of the network to handle more vehicle movements. That capacity no longer exists for rail services to be introduced between London, Blackpool, Shrewsbury and so forth, which is comparable to issues facing London Heathrow airport with its shortage of landing slots. More than £10bn has been spent on refurbishing the West Coast Main Line in the past 15 years, yet much of the capacity gains this programme anticipated have proved illusory. Particularly damaging are the cuts to local trains and station closures which have been made to accommodate more fast trains to London.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The legacy rail network has become more London-centric in the past decade as more high-yield long-distance trains have been introduced, but this has come at the expense of intermediate towns and smaller cities. HS2 is an opportunity to move a sizeable proportion of inter-city traffic to dedicated infrastructure, liberating the conventional network. However, this is not a simple or straightforward process, and reallocating the capacity released by HS2 is one of the biggest tasks facing rail network planners.</span><br />
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<em><strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What are the viable alternatives, if any?</span></strong></em><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The main alternative is further incremental upgrading of the three main north-south rail axes. Investment in lines which don't go to London is a tougher proposition -- none of the groups opposed to HS2 have to my knowledge proposed significant spending on links between Birmingham and northern England, which is one of the most underappreciated assets of the HS2 plans. Upgrading of busy conventional railways, as the West Coast Main Line renewal proved beyond doubt, would cost many billions of pounds per corridor, for capacity gains which are at best uncertain.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Reliability of upgraded railways is also in doubt, since the fabric of the infrastructure (bridges, tunnels, embankments) cannot meaningfully be updated. The WCML, despite the near £10bn investment since 1998, is the least reliable route in the UK, as evidenced by industry punctuality figures, with the King's Cross - Edinburgh line not far behind. Both would benefit from HS2 taking some of the strain. This issue is of course highly nuanced – nobody is suggesting that enhancements to the existing railway should not happen, but rather that they are least effective where the capacity shortfall is greatest and the 19th century network is at its most fragile.</span><br />
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<strong><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What are the economic benefits?</span></em></strong><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In short railway investment of any kind brings wider economic and social benefits -- if we as a nation did not collectively believe this, we would not provide the level of funding for the whole network that we do. Rail is a vector of economic activity, trade and tertiary industry (the impact of weekend rail disruption on the service economy has not been quantified for example -- perhaps it should be). HS2's main economic benefits are transport related: primarily capacity, but also speed and reliability. Compare the reliability of HS1 in Kent to any other part of the network and the resilience of new infrastructure is immediately apparent.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In certain locations we can expect HS2 to act as a catalyst for development of business and residential zones; more generally, we should expect inward investors to view the country beyond London as a more appealing place in which to develop their activities.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">HS2 should also deliver on improving labour market connectivity and productivity. I expect this to be most apparent not on London journeys, but on routes like Birmingham - Newcastle, which would be 55 min quicker by rail under HS2 than at present, with trains potentially running every 30 min. Sir David Higgins’ recent ‘HS2 Plus’ report goes some way to striking the right balance between links to/from the capital and those between regions, within the context that London is the origin or destination of two-thirds of British rail journeys.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Moreover, MPs should ask themselves if they feel 'patch and mend' infrastructure is good enough for our largest regional cities, while London's rail network luxuriates in more than £20bn of capital investment in the 2008-18 period, <em>excluding</em> spending on London Underground.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By that measure, we can certainly afford HS2. There is no option to simply spend £43bn on ‘other stuff’. MPs should back infrastructure investment which is internationally-standard, proven and safe when they vote. HS2 must be built.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><em>This post is based on answers supplied to Sanderson Weatherall for their HS2 blog post, which appears <a href="http://bit.ly/1miVXef" target="_blank">here</a>.</em></span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-47550090776719031462014-01-30T09:16:00.001-08:002014-01-30T09:16:52.120-08:00Northern rail passengers should welcome High Speed 2<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8YBQ3Nudt3I2tSKhcdH8Y9b72M0RLDXUBkx50vB5z-yV2vgFpD-jM0YL9U4w56j8Pg4cYlZ0s3QUHxq_ZKdfoFwFKzUTSXK0qqTxeOah4tWZpubm0rCCzRlqsGx7uPEA53tTzK9VPQy0_/s1600/IMG_1638.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8YBQ3Nudt3I2tSKhcdH8Y9b72M0RLDXUBkx50vB5z-yV2vgFpD-jM0YL9U4w56j8Pg4cYlZ0s3QUHxq_ZKdfoFwFKzUTSXK0qqTxeOah4tWZpubm0rCCzRlqsGx7uPEA53tTzK9VPQy0_/s1600/IMG_1638.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Manchester Metrolink's expansion shows that high-quality rail infrastructure in northern England can be funded and delivered successfully.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When the first trams in decades rolled into the town centre of Oldham on the morning of January 27, the North West Green Party was <a href="http://bit.ly/1fAfvVA" target="_blank">there to meet them</a>, with a couple of activists bedecked in rosettes handing out leaflets. ‘Cancel the wasteful High Speed 2!’ these pamphlets blared, exhorting instead increased spend on unspecified ‘local’ rail projects instead.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The irony of the Green Party traipsing to Oldham’s shiny new light rail alignment was seemingly lost on its pamphlet writers, since the £1.7bn expansion of Greater Manchester’s Metrolink light rail network is a tangible embodiment of the HS2 philosophy – a strong reliance on new-build infrastructure and rolling stock, a mix of new and reopened route alignments, and operating principles borrowed heavily from international best practice. Essentially, the objective is ‘do what works’.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Depressingly, some of the most high-profile calls for HS2 funding to be diverted towards ‘the north’ have come from London. This, of course, has much more to do with ridding affluent quarters of north London and the Home Counties of the spectre of construction work than with an altruistic desire to help passengers in Scarborough or Southport. But, as this blog has noted before, it is local services (those with the lowest yield and greatest reliance on peak-hour patronage, when more passengers are paying full fares) which suffer most when rail capacity becomes scarce. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hence why – as Shadow Rail Minister Lillian Greenwood pointed out in a <a href="http://t.co/kR9oZ70h3s" target="_blank">House of Commons debate</a> on HS2 earlier this month</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> – the ill-fated £9bn West Coast Route Modernisation programme led to the closure of a score of local stations in rural Staffordshire, and why precious slots on the Stockport – Manchester corridor were taken from Mid-Cheshire Line trains and handed to Virgin expresses.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For those of us who advocate the development of regional railways across northern England and beyond, the notion that axing HS2 would improve the outlook for local rail spending needs to be debunked. Indeed, if northern rail travellers really want better access between a rural and post-industrial hinterland and a clutch of thriving cities, they should be egging on HS2. Why? Because HS2 brings more local rail capacity ‘bundled in’ with it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fortunately, policymakers across northern England have worked together over several years to campaign and finally secure a package of investment in rail infrastructure around Manchester (the Northern Hub) and gain a slice of the belated national programme of electrification. This is to be fervently welcomed, and it belies the claim (again, heard most vocally in London and the Chilterns) that HS2 is an ‘all or nothing’ scheme. In any case, a glance at the <a href="http://bit.ly/MfZmLZ" target="_blank">committed spending for the 2014-19 Control Period</a> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">immediately confirms what a daft assertion this is.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But equally, Northern Hub is a relatively modest programme involving precious little actual construction of new or expanded railway assets. With a plan to reopen the Standedge tunnel apparently obviated by plans for electrification, the majority of the building work is now concentrated on Salford and Manchester, with the Ordsall Chord and two new platforms on the far western side of Piccadilly station. As Warrington Borough Council <a href="http://bit.ly/L9o13V" target="_blank">made clear in 2012</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, numerous questions remain about how and where the resulting capacity gains might be used, and just how bountiful they are going to be.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Electrification, meanwhile, is a long overdue intervention that will, over a multi-year timeframe, reduce the cost of operating any half-busy railway. That’s why both the Northwest Triangle and trans-Pennine schemes have been approved, and a taskforce is <a href="http://bit.ly/1fn5gWy" target="_blank">examining the potential for more routes to follow</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. But electrification alone has only a very marginal benefit in terms of rail capacity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In practice, it seems inevitable that most of the benefits of the Northern Hub investment will be felt on the higher-volume Liverpool – Manchester – Leeds corridor, where notable speed and frequency enhancements are already in view. Some intermediate markets stand to benefit too – notably Huddersfield, whose MP, Barry Sheerman, is <a href="http://bit.ly/1jO7XDT" target="_blank">a noted HS2-sceptic</a>. As an aside, it is strange that Sheerman has not yet voiced his fears over the Northern Hub ‘sucking business activity’ from his constituency to Leeds or Manchester, since its rationale of wider economic benefits is essentially the same as that for HS2.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Less clear are the tangible benefits for local trains on the same routes, already characterised by erratic stopping patters and elderly rolling stock. There is a risk that Flixton and Mossley passengers could face the same scrabble for access rights into Manchester and Leeds as their counterparts in mid-Cheshire already have. Why? Because any serious infrastructure spending <strong><em>dedicated to them</em></strong> has to overcome the hurdle that, typically, regional trains in northern England cover less than 40% of their fixed costs, compared to around 80% for commuter routes in the southeast. This isn’t a surprise: rail does not have as central a role in peak time travel outside London (more than two-thirds of all rail journeys are to or from the capital), and the local economy tends to preclude pricing that would alleviate this investment challenge.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cancelling HS2 would not alter this paradigm, and it is naïve of the Green Party to suggest that it would. Leaving aside the inevitable reality that the £28bn target cost of HS2 would barely cover further WCRM-style upgrading of the three main lines to/from London, burdening our most cost-sensitive rail services with their own infrastructure overheads would only serve to render their economics more fragile, and risk alienating their ridership as well. Is that what the Green Party and others are really suggesting?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Capacity released by HS2 to enhance as broad a palette of regional services as possible is essential to enhance rail’s share of journeys to and from smaller towns across northern England. A more attractive frequency, timetable and journey time to hubs like Manchester and Leeds, plus interchanges with more reliable HS2-compatible inter-city services at places like York and Crewe, should put local rail on a more cost-effective footing. This hypothesis is not fantasy, either: local authorities in North and West Yorkshire have developed a <a href="http://bit.ly/1hRp5VD" target="_blank">business case</a> for electrifying the Harrogate Loop line in which connections to HS2 at both Leeds and York feature prominently</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unlike local rail services, Manchester Metrolink receives no operating subsidy, and as a result it has found it <a href="http://bit.ly/LoxXYd" target="_blank">easier to secure funding</a>, from local and national sources</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, for its capital programme. The Green Party is right to welcome Metrolink to Oldham, yet it appears not to understand how it got there.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-23029522863908050392013-09-09T05:04:00.000-07:002013-09-09T13:59:15.741-07:00HS2: PAC grandstanding obscures welcome scrutiny<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYGD2dXN2W-IJOvqlBxdIjFx-eHbeZAbqTmBYXz12fG79itz3w5DuRHdX4suxbVOgrCKahCpdnIw8kwHGiY8-6Ch2gh_Km9jtozTmIk-44WrD4rmq2LjYpeYotTOvoVS5tdQlXqktzvMiG/s1600/130908_Parallelfahrt_NIM-credit+S+Telforth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYGD2dXN2W-IJOvqlBxdIjFx-eHbeZAbqTmBYXz12fG79itz3w5DuRHdX4suxbVOgrCKahCpdnIw8kwHGiY8-6Ch2gh_Km9jtozTmIk-44WrD4rmq2LjYpeYotTOvoVS5tdQlXqktzvMiG/s320/130908_Parallelfahrt_NIM-credit+S+Telforth.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Nürnberg - Ingolstadt high speed line opened in 2006, as part of the phased construction of a high speed corridor between Berlin and Munich. Photo: S Telforth</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1991, the German government unveiled a series of ‘national unity’ projects intended to stitch the country back together in the wake of the fall of the former DDR. Among them was a plan to link the re-crowned capital, Berlin, with Munich, economic powerhouse of the <em>Land</em> of Bavaria, by high speed railway. The ‘strategic case’? To ensure that the two cities shall be no more than 4 h apart by rail [1].</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But what followed was not entirely a story of fabled Teutonic efficiency. Indeed, local opposition to new railway construction of any sort in Germany is usually vociferous, largely owing to concerns about the noise of freight trains. So it proved with the Berlin – Munich project, which proceeded piecemeal and narrowly survived cancellation on several occasions. Today, around 230 km is still under construction, requiring huge tunnelling efforts through the Thüringer Wald between Halle and Ebensfeld, north of Nürnberg. Completion of the corridor is not expected until the end of 2017 at the earliest, more than 25 years on from the first proposal.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the continued backing of the federal government for such a locally-controversial programme offers an interesting insight into the ongoing debate over High Speed 2 in the UK. Connecting two of Germany’s most significant cities by international-class transport infrastructure is seen as an economic good in its own right; there was, as far as I can tell, no florid talk of ‘bringing Munich closer to Berlin’, or of ‘rebalancing’, and no pin-head procrastination about how much German business people work on trains.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which brings us to more sub-tabloid hectoring from Margaret Hodge, the chair of the Public Accounts Committee, whose <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/public-accounts-committee/news/high-speed-2-report/" target="_blank">latest report</a> into the preparations for the HS2 programme has just been issued. To be abundantly clear, this blog is not going to attempt to rebut the measured and valid questions raised by the National Audit Office and the related PAC report, which rightly scrutinises the Department for Transport and HS2 Ltd’s resources and their ability to navigate the project through the tricky Hybrid Bill process.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Especially important is the PAC report’s analysis of the significant contingency applied to HS2 in the current cost estimates, where PAC recommends that DfT ‘should allocate its allowance to specific risks to the programme’. The report also highlights issues of parliamentary timetabling, and DfT’s own resourcing and staffing levels. The latter matters acutely, since DfT and HS2 Ltd are required by the nature of the project to manage a raft of global engineering consultancies which are responsible for the basic design of the railway. If such designs prove to be over-ambitious (as they seemingly were for the first draft rebuild of London Euston), it is HS2 Ltd and DfT, not the consultancy, which gets it in the neck. This interface is worthy of further scrutiny, and PAC/NAO are well placed to do so.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But you wouldn’t know much about any of these details from the grandstanding comments from Ms Hodge issued alongside the report. Instead of sober analysis, we get a thinly-veiled rant which appears to lean rather too much on playing to the gallery. This is important, as it is these comments which have flown immediately into the press and, as a consequence, influenced public perception. Most heinous of these misapprehensions is the suggestion that ‘£50bn would be spent on rail investment in these constrained times’.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is precisely the opposite of what the government proposes: the whole point of HS2 is to deliver long-term investment over numerous economic cycles, both constrained and otherwise. A funding stream of approximately £1.5bn per annum is already in place from the Crossrail programme; and indeed if Ms Hodge believes spending on transport infrastructure in a downturn is bad thing, where are her headline-grabbing quotes about the £21bn spent on main line rail projects in London in the 2008-18 period?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The government is belatedly adapting its message on HS2 to make more of the rail capacity benefits, which this blog has long viewed as the strongest argument with which to advocate the project. Clearly the government and those it has employed to disseminate this message have struggled to make headway in the wider media, but that shouldn’t excuse a serious failure to listen on the part of Ms Hodge and her colleagues. PAC recommends: ‘The government should publish detailed evidence why it considers High Speed 2 to be the best option for increasing rail capacity <em>into London</em>’ (my italics).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is a remarkably inaccurate suggestion: HS2 is not purely a ‘London rail capacity project’, since – as I’ve just mentioned – we’ve got quite a few of those taking priority already, although it will benefit commuters using routes from the north into the capital. But equally pressing are capacity constraints elsewhere, notably south of Manchester, in the West Midlands and on key freight axes, all mentioned by this blog <em>passim</em>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lastly, we have the sadly predictable monomania about ‘the iPad businessman’. I’m happy to be corrected of course, but as far as I am aware there is no line in the HS2 Economic Appraisal that states ‘the government does not believe that people work on trains’. According to PAC’s report, the benefits of faster journeys to business travellers are based on a series of ‘simplified assumptions’ in line with international practice. PAC dismisses these assumptions as ‘absurd’ given advances in digital technology.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But PAC offers little or no explanation for its own rather extreme view. As transport consultancy SKM Colin Buchanan pointed out recently, it is surely not credible to suggest that working on trains is a particularly new phenomenon. Indeed, it seems a rash assumption indeed that the challenges of connecting to wi-fi, getting a data signal, or charging electronic devices have not some extent suppressed the supposed advantages of working onboard. That’s before we assess external factors such as pricing or overcrowding.</span><br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<a href="https://twitter.com/RichardWellings">@RichardWellings</a> people worked on trains before invention of wifi, mobiles, laptops and even the biro pen! never understood this argument<br />
— SKM Colin Buchanan (@cbuchanancubed) <a href="https://twitter.com/cbuchanancubed/statuses/372338548839436288">August 27, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, it is likely that these issues will have been largely resolved by the time HS2 opens in 2032-33, which suggests that updating the survey work now in this area would be of largely academic interest. More worrying on this occasion however is Ms Hodge’s assertion during a PAC hearing that she personally finds the train an ideal place to work. Bully for her, I say, but let us not pretend this is a sound basis for the deliberations of a parliamentary spending committee.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The often-emotive assertions attached to HS2’s status as a ‘high speed’ railway tend rather to overlook the reality that a conventional railway confers almost no benefit, not least because its capacity-enhancing effects would be much reduced, as would its ability to take share from domestic aviation on longer routes (HS2 Ltd estimates that 33% of all Anglo-Scottish journeys on HS2 would transfer from air). Nor is there any evidence to suggest that the long-established correlation between faster journeys and higher revenue is broken.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Both PAC and DfT should reconsider the importance attached to the issue of working on trains, lest we find ourselves endorsing a position where passengers ride trains purely to get some work done. A desire to know how often each passenger toggles between corporate and personal Twitter feeds cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the provision of international-standard transport infrastructure. If it does, PAC, and in particular its chairman, will be required to share some of the responsibility.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">------------------------------------------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">1. See <em>Railway Gazette International</em>, September 2012, pp54-56.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-68232938926293243922013-07-07T04:49:00.000-07:002013-07-07T04:49:34.007-07:00Mandelson is wrong on High Speed 2 – the ‘railway deserts’ are already here<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>This article appeared on </em><a href="http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2013/07/05/comment-mandelson-is-wrong-on-hs2" target="_blank"><em>politics.co.uk</em></a><em> on July 5.</em></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnXui0r55ZvuQV-W0e0QdtfrWpD8GvCD6qUIwoGRDMP_p07LzAXVCUAi4zvy7hHsCbNyAMGfL5j4IosHYrSSzWzZlngb1bWV4bpAF8H8i48tu4c0G5lJQ1hEN9GLa-btdTWVK7TMNfqJLK/s1600/Transrapid-emsland-wiki.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnXui0r55ZvuQV-W0e0QdtfrWpD8GvCD6qUIwoGRDMP_p07LzAXVCUAi4zvy7hHsCbNyAMGfL5j4IosHYrSSzWzZlngb1bWV4bpAF8H8i48tu4c0G5lJQ1hEN9GLa-btdTWVK7TMNfqJLK/s320/Transrapid-emsland-wiki.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maglev: dismissed by Sir Rod Eddington in favour of steel-wheel options.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A week or so before Lord Mandelson supposedly <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk-news/2013/jul/02/lord-mandelson-hs2-expensive-mistake" target="_blank">shattered the consensus</a> on political backing for High Speed 2 on July 3, the planned inter-city railway between London, Birmingham and the North, some 1,200 business and community leaders in Blackpool <a href="http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/business/local-business/support-growing-for-rail-campaign-1-5801505" target="_blank">signed a petition</a> to demand reinstatement of rail services lost around a decade ago. At the same time, the <em>Shropshire Star</em> newspaper <a href="http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/transport-news/2013/06/26/county-mps-to-meet-rail-boss-on-city-link/" target="_blank">launched a similar campaign</a> for Shrewsbury.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why? Because Network Rail, which manages our existing railway infrastructure, had refused a request from train operator Virgin Rail Group to introduce direct services to both towns from London Euston, declaring that capacity for such services was unavailable. In any case, NR said, more trains on the trunk West Coast Main Line (the spine which connects London to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow) would lead to unacceptable unreliability.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The cases of Blackpool and Shrewsbury are not isolated examples of the capacity crunch our railway network faces. But they do graphically illustrate the limitations of the ‘patch and mend’ approach advocated by so many commentators as supposedly ‘better value’ than the HS2 proposals. The West Coast line was <a href="http://njak100.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/we-have-been-wrestling-with-wcml.html" target="_blank">upgraded at enormous cost</a> (officially £9bn) under a project lasting 11 years, most of them during the Blair administration. But despite the cost to taxpayers being twice that of the entire construction of the High Speed 1 link to the Channel Tunnel, the West Coast line is currently Britain’s least reliable. Worse still, upgrading work continues to complete investment deferred from the initial programme on cost grounds, meaning more disruption looms for the 40 million-plus passengers who use the route each year.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In contrast, HS2 injects capacity and reliability into rail services by serving up to 18 cities under current plans – it is not, and has never been, about getting from London to Birmingham a few minutes faster. Lord Mandelson appears to believe that Labour approved the HS2 concept on a whim, and that it may cause significant harm to local rail services in the regions; these would become ‘railway deserts’, he fears.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But recent history supports neither point. Contrary to widespread perception, Sir Rod Eddington in 2006 <a href="http://www.greengauge21.net/blog/eddington-supported-high-speed-rail/" target="_blank">told the Transport Select Committee</a> that his study of national transport strategy supported the case for a high speed railway ‘in the busiest corridors’, which he suggested to be London to Birmingham and Manchester, although he dismissed commercially-unproven options like ‘maglev’ technology.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Labour’s Transport Secretary Lord Adonis then started a meticulous planning process, including convening a global summit in London in 2009 to garner international expertise, which I attended. The coalition, meanwhile, has issued a number of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/high-speed-rail-strategic-alternatives-study-update-following-consultation" target="_blank">strategic alternative</a> analyses, which have assessed HS2 against various road and conventional rail investment options.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of HS2’s greatest selling points is that gives us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to liberate our ageing railway network by using its capacity most effectively. It cannot be right, for example, that a £9bn ‘enhancement’ of the main line from London can result in the Cheshire town of Northwich losing two-thirds of its morning commuter trains to Manchester. Transport authorities across the Midlands and the North are itching for more capacity for local trains, and that is why they continue to give strong backing to HS2. Nowhere are cuts on the agenda – although if HS2 allows us more time to look after our ageing legacy railway, much of which is reliant of 19th century structures and alignments, then efficiency savings could follow. But railway deserts? Emphatically not.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The blunt truth is that there is no option which would allow us to spend the HS2 cash on ‘other stuff’. Upgrading our existing transport networks is unlikely to be any cheaper than building new, but it is unlikely to deliver even a fraction of the benefits. No crystal ball is required; the proof is there already.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-68207467403293297812013-07-05T05:37:00.000-07:002013-07-05T05:37:41.332-07:00Capacity arguments in favour of High Speed 2 still stand<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>This letter appeared in the </em><a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5216ef3c-e317-11e2-bd87-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2YAlNbUQM" target="_blank">Financial Times</a> <em>on July 4, in response to comments about the proposed High Speed 2 project in the newspaper the previous day.</em></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em></em></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em></em></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipk4yK1PuT4BEKdH_aD2kYV1Yjtsq_oapbO22pkNElTR2_SHR_kpzz4qW1A4NHbKd-rKp71G1IaYJCF5ypXVVkhhGg128Gr8B-enCBvLpG-kdfYYRg67aXSDMdBShY4GxE-RO8pFt5y1QH/s800/800px-Mid-Cheshire_Line_at_Chester.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipk4yK1PuT4BEKdH_aD2kYV1Yjtsq_oapbO22pkNElTR2_SHR_kpzz4qW1A4NHbKd-rKp71G1IaYJCF5ypXVVkhhGg128Gr8B-enCBvLpG-kdfYYRg67aXSDMdBShY4GxE-RO8pFt5y1QH/s320/800px-Mid-Cheshire_Line_at_Chester.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The Mid-Cheshire Line has seen a reduction in direct commuter trains to Manchester since completion of the West Coast Route Modernisation in 2009.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sir,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is telling that your high-profile editorial package highlighting supposedly mounting opposition to High Speed 2 (July 3), led by comments from Lord Mandelson, makes little or no attempt to rebut the capacity arguments underpinning the project. Indeed, as your article makes clear, HS2 retains strong support in regional centres precisely because there is a recognition that the capacity issues we face on the rail network are intractable, and any infrastructure intervention intended to deliver long-term benefits is going to prove very expensive.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lord Mandelson’s comments about the risk of creating ‘railway deserts’ are especially surprising, since analysis of recent history suggests that it is the policy of upgrading existing corridors which poses the more obvious threat to local services. It was his Labour government which oversaw the ill-starred upgrading of the West Coast Main Line from 1998 to 2009 at a cost of more than £9bn, the speed and capacity objectives of which have never been met, despite running approximately six times over budget. More troubling have been the subsequent effects, including significant cuts to local rail services around Manchester to squeeze in more fast trains to London, and the closure on capacity grounds of several local stations in Staffordshire. Similar results have been noted around Leeds, where the main station was rebuilt a decade or so ago, but the resulting gains in capacity were largely swallowed up by the introduction of more trains to London over existing tracks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Equally puzzling is Lord Mandelson’s failure to note the example offered in his own former constituency of Hartlepool, where a rail service to London has been successfully reintroduced by Grand Central at no cost to the taxpayer under so-called ‘open access’ provisions. Plans for similar services running from other regional centres, including Huddersfield, Barrow-in-Furness and Stalybridge, have been on the drawing board for many years, but never introduced. Capacity released by HS2 would permit such an operation, but as there would be no public subsidy or DfT control; these savings can thus hardly be described as ‘cuts’.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Close inspection of the capacity challenge facing our rail network shows that there is almost certainly no option that allows circa £40bn to be spent on ‘other stuff’. It is rather a choice between repeating hugely expensive upgrading of ageing legacy assets (on several axes, not solely the West Coast Main Line described above) which may, experience shows, result in cuts to local provision and chronic unreliability on the trunk route, or investing in internationally-proven technology, expensive though that undoubtedly would prove.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yours etc,</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nick</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-39323153765449562442013-06-16T06:34:00.003-07:002013-06-16T07:36:29.112-07:00HS2: fog over Hampstead, Shrewsbury cut off<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYJsqluT0SCHNlAWIBYVSjUM5gPPQGSr5r_IuqHlsdla-lmiBfjEAPiWA08ruHP1ZeCQ6EhxROrdKhDmLSFL7VTNq8F-H0PvtbCeo7g-DXAV1BeW9W9A86QiTL4JsDFC_TBNuQMHHvhxMA/s1600/130616_GC+Class+180+pic-credit+Arriva.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYJsqluT0SCHNlAWIBYVSjUM5gPPQGSr5r_IuqHlsdla-lmiBfjEAPiWA08ruHP1ZeCQ6EhxROrdKhDmLSFL7VTNq8F-H0PvtbCeo7g-DXAV1BeW9W9A86QiTL4JsDFC_TBNuQMHHvhxMA/s320/130616_GC+Class+180+pic-credit+Arriva.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Several inter-city services to destinations off the core north-south main lines have been introduced since rail privatisation, including this London – Sunderland service operated by Grand Central, a subsidiary of German national operator Deutsche Bahn. Photo: DB</span><span style="font-size: small;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This blog is hesitant to say ‘I told you so’. But the news this week that Virgin Rail Group’s proposals to operate more inter-city services to and from London Euston have been <a href="http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/transport-news/2013/06/11/direct-shropshire-to-london-rail-link-rejected/" target="_blank">rebuffed by Network Rail</a> highlights yet again the infrastructure crisis which so blights the long-term outlook for our principal rail axes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">NR’s decision to reject, for now at least, Virgin’s request to operate direct trains between Blackpool, Shrewsbury and London is in part seen as a response to the operator’s <a href="http://bit.ly/16PEww4" target="_blank">recent decision to take enforcement action</a> against the infrastructure manager for what it perceives as NR’s failure to deliver a reliable, robust main line railway. But to characterise this dispute as merely ‘tit for tat’ is to grossly underplay its significance. For years now, we have been told that the West Coast Main Line would be ‘full by the mid-2020s’, as evidenced by NR’s long-term planning processes. But it now seems NR was far too cautious, and this blog’s view that the WCML is already on the point of overuse is being borne out by events in unprecedented fashion.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Taking a longer term view, the cause for concern grows even more: ‘Shrewsbury-gate’ is the latest episode in a sorry soap opera which includes such misadventures as the permanent cessation of passenger services at several stations in Staffordshire in 2003, and the ongoing failure to facilitate <a href="http://www.alliancerail.co.uk/gnwr/" target="_blank">long-planned inter-city services</a> from Huddersfield, Barrow and Rochdale. This saga has utterly undermined the supposed benefits of the £9bn+ West Coast Route Modernisation, and indeed the whole ‘incremental upgrading’ concept – industry-leading reliability and capacity for reasonable service expansion should surely be the minimum we expect from the refurbishment of <strong><em>one</em></strong> railway at that price.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These arguments have always been the most compelling in the case for High Speed 2, not least because the capacity and reliability crises which are most high profile on the WCML nevertheless manifest themselves time and time again on main line and suburban routes across the corridors served by the HS2 ‘Y route’. In its <a href="http://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Full-Report.pdf" target="_blank">recent examination</a> of the Department for Transport’s early preparatory works on HS2, the National Audit Office expressed reservations about the ‘articulation of the strategic case’ for the new line. But with events on the ground moving so fast, that already seems like an academic discussion: if we value our entire rail network as a strategic asset to the country and its economy, then surely we cannot endure the sort of capacity and reliability threats that we are battling on the WCML and elsewhere.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Add in the undisputed reality that incremental upgrading of essentially 19th Century assets is often as difficult and as costly as new build, yet it delivers demonstrably fewer benefits, then a compelling strategic narrative begins to emerge. A raft of environmental and wider economic benefits can then follow, but of course the extent to which these are maximised is dependent on wider government policy which is beyond the remit of transport planners.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In any case, it is most encouraging that those making the strategic case for HS2 are communities themselves, like Shrewsbury and Blackpool. They’ve seen the opportunities offered to other regional centres like Halifax, Hull or Hartlepool (and other places, not beginning with ‘H’ too) by inter-city rail services in recent years, and rightly want to see the links they enjoyed in British Rail days restored, in keeping with the resurgence in long-distance passenger rail growth seen consistently since privatisation.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_-ZEwNcEaQCY9HBiy10yekwOL1ksbEZqBWDTFyn96c9meJoKpbuFY2Cqsf8eyvMeo89JcgEZG_v83GR5g1z3M3YzxfxM_OQcNHEaUdAOdcUj-kK3wXRJ4uTDEFXbDroz73D8UeFK-h1rh/s1600/130430_UK+main+line+psgr+journeys.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_-ZEwNcEaQCY9HBiy10yekwOL1ksbEZqBWDTFyn96c9meJoKpbuFY2Cqsf8eyvMeo89JcgEZG_v83GR5g1z3M3YzxfxM_OQcNHEaUdAOdcUj-kK3wXRJ4uTDEFXbDroz73D8UeFK-h1rh/s320/130430_UK+main+line+psgr+journeys.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">UK main line rail passenger-journeys have grown substantially in recent years. Source: Brown Review into Rail Franchising</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This ‘bottom up’ trend for better connectivity is, like HS2 itself, anything but London-centric however. Coventry, for example, luxuriates in a train every 10 min to London six days per week, which puts in context the absurd suggestion that it might be ‘sidelined’ by HS2. But with the Department for Transport recently <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/kenilworth-new-station" target="_blank">pledging a funding contribution</a> towards a new station at Kenilworth as part of a package of enhancements to the cross-country routes passing through the city, it is perhaps understandable that the city council has <a href="http://t.co/3CW913SjPB" target="_blank">ditched its dogmatic opposition</a> to HS2 in favour of a more pragmatic approach to connectivity which looks at its rail links in all directions, not just to London. As we have seen time and time again, enhancements made to fast services on existing lines to London almost always require a diminution in the quality of regional services, and Coventry has set a welcome example in recognising this.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All of which is lost on the London commentariat of course; witness arch-panjandrum Andrew Gilligan’s concern about a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/10066219/True-harm-of-HS2-hidden-by-minister.html" target="_blank">phantom threat</a> to the (excellent) London Overground service which passes through Camden en route from leafy Richmond to even-leafier Hampstead. Who gives a toss about Shrewsbury, or 30-odd million WCML passengers, when that’s your definition of a nationally-important railway? And to think, there are those in Manchester and Leeds who would see Gilligan as an ally. Frightening.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">HS2 must be built.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-42804824191587049802013-04-11T12:30:00.000-07:002013-04-12T05:31:30.552-07:00HS2: less spin, more substance<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwCYg5GAAukLOp4WSfa6xbq3VtVqi5bt-2Fi0wO6xwNbbR7h1a4FVJ44kVAkfLFSEL0VwRWzRBR2_0FmwAqFR7YY7RVTAyATCnUyOvAJe2k-Mk3u_pXy-U98Rx6cXZJlfj2TD3IJJC_RiE/s1600/Rail_and_road,_Milton_Keynes_-_geograph_org_uk-credit+P+Harrop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwCYg5GAAukLOp4WSfa6xbq3VtVqi5bt-2Fi0wO6xwNbbR7h1a4FVJ44kVAkfLFSEL0VwRWzRBR2_0FmwAqFR7YY7RVTAyATCnUyOvAJe2k-Mk3u_pXy-U98Rx6cXZJlfj2TD3IJJC_RiE/s320/Rail_and_road,_Milton_Keynes_-_geograph_org_uk-credit+P+Harrop.jpg" width="258" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Destination Milton Keynes: direct services from Aylesbury are expected to begin by 2019. Credit: P Harrop</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The headline is probably a touch naïve, as public relations and lobbying are an integral aspect of modern political life, for good or ill. But the recent spat over comments attributed to public relations firm Westbourne Communications and its Campaign for High Speed Rail have shone a light onto the shadowy world of lobbyists and ‘spin doctoring’ which inevitably swirls around government and major government-led projects.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to Anna Minton’s <a href="http://www.spinwatch.org/images/Reports/Scaring_the_living_daylight_final_27_March_13.pdf" target="_blank">report for Spinwatch</a>, the primary source of the controversy is ‘an interview with [an unnamed] academic present at the March 2012 Penn Studio London workshop’ -- a somewhat flimsy basis for an apparently serious critique. Minton’s report goes on to list examples of what it calls ‘astroturfing’, before clarifying that:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>‘Most of the activities of councils, developers and lobbyists are not actually illegal, although instances of planning meetings packed with actors and fake letter writing campaigns from non-existent supporters of controversial schemes are undoubtedly unethical.’</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The clear inference to the reader is that such ‘fake’ tactics have been used by supporters of High Speed 2, yet there is no reference offered to substantiate this and no suggestion that the businesses and institutions cited as supports of CHSR were concocted.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have attended a number of Westbourne’s events over the past couple of years, and I can state categorically that I personally never heard any language that could be described as remotely ‘militaristic’. Indeed, those looking for ‘militaristic’ connotations might do well to consider the <a href="http://youtu.be/QSYk8ofhYFY" target="_blank">‘Downfall’ parody</a> -- a tired cliché pedalled across YouTube, often by fans of rival football clubs. Sadly attempts by one HS2 opponent in Staffordshire to portray Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin as Hitler appear to have <a href="http://www.staffordshirenewsletter.co.uk/News/Jewish-businesswoman-Sam-Caldicott-slams-anti-HS2-group-for-disgusting-video-22032013.htm" target="_blank">caused genuine offence</a>. I’ll let readers assess whether such pranks are more or less ‘ethical’ than Westbourne’s alleged conduct.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, my main reservation about these phoney wars is the reluctance to address many of the fundamentals of the debate. Westbourne’s James Bethell once acknowledged to me that discussing the rail capacity benefits of HS2 ‘does not have cut-through with commentariat’. The result is that the most compelling arguments for the project have too often been overlooked, perhaps because they do not sell papers. But that does not mean that the <a href="http://njak100.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-real-west-coast-scandal.html" target="_blank">dire reliability of the West Coast Main Line</a> outlined in the Gibb Report, the <a href="http://bit.ly/XrhMJM" target="_blank">live threat</a> to local stations from the incremental route upgrading approach, or the doubts <a href="http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/single-view/view/ertms-accord-signed.html" target="_blank">about the capacity benefits</a> of novel train control systems on ageing mixed-traffic railways aren’t each a matter of record. All these topics have been subject to analysis on this blog, as regular readers will be aware.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Surprisingly, when I suggested on social media that a less emotive dialogue that focussed on rail issues might benefit the HS2 debate, the High Speed Action Alliance didn’t seem too keen to join in. 'How annoying for you when the lies and deceits of pro lobby are publicised’, HSAA tweeted pettily in reply, before retweeting the supporting opinion of an <a href="http://beleben.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/intimidation-is-not-a-purpose/" target="_blank">anonymous blogger</a> – so much for transparent campaigning then.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Indeed if HSAA are looking for ‘deceits’, they could start by looking closer to home. On March 29, HSAA’s colleagues at Stop HS2 <a href="http://stophs2.org/news/8102-beeching-hs2-common-think" target="_blank">produced a blogpost</a> attempting, in tortuous fashion, to compare HS2 to the local rail cuts of the 1960s. Brazenly ignoring the glaring hypocrisy of raising the spectre of Beeching when alternatives to HS2 so clearly emperil thriving local rail stations such as Stone and Atherstone, Stop HS2’s author ‘Joe’ (presumably this is ubiquitous rent-a-quote Joe Rukin, though no surname is given – again, transparency) writes:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>‘The worst part of this disjointed thinking is that without HS2 taking it over, Great Central could have a great future, providing an alternative route from Milton Keynes to London. With plans to reopen the East-West line, it would be simple to run trains along that line from Milton Keynes, which would then connect with Great Central and run into Marylebone via Aylesbury. Such a project would cheaply deliver the thing which HS2 does not, interconnectivity and local benefits.’</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But like so much rail investment that that HSAA, Stop HS2 and their associates insist is precluded by HS2, a Milton Keynes – Aylesbury rail service is <a href="http://www.eastwestrail.org.uk/route/western-section/" target="_blank">firmly on the agenda</a>, and indeed is likely to come to fruition before HS2 thanks to the efforts of the East-West Rail consortium and Chiltern Railways. Indeed, a greater threat to ‘local connectivity’ would come from trying to path more London-centric inter-city services through Milton Keynes on an already saturated railway as an alternative to HS2, with a very real risk of capacity for local trains being squeezed out, even if an initial dedicated platform for EWR has been provided under recent remodelling of the station.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But ‘Joe’ isn’t done. He adds:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>‘The current plan is not for HS2 to use the Grand Central trackbed, but to skirt around it, constantly crossing the line, as HS2 is being engineered for a track speed on 250 mile/h, meaning it has to be much straighter and wider than previous lines.’</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The term ‘track speed’ is meaningless, and historians of Brunel would surely quibble with the inference that his (initially broad-gauge, ergo ‘wider’) Great Western Railway wasn’t, for substantial distances, pretty straight. But if Stop HS2’s real problem is with railways growing, then they could again accuse East-West Rail, where much of the Oxford – Bletchley formation is to be redoubled and electrified for 100 mile/h running, resulting inevitably in a more substantial physical footprint. Perhaps the group could just rebrand as Stop EWR?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Deceit? Maybe, maybe not. Scaremongering? Yes. Hypocrisy? Without doubt.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I suspect, like so much material put out by the <a href="http://www.prweek.com/uk/news/1042746/Quiller-called-Transport-Sense-lobby-against-high-speed-rail-link/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH" target="_blank">multi-faceted PR machine</a> that HS2 opponents would like us to believe does not exist, they hope the general public in the well-heeled shires where such material is (mostly) disseminated will not bother to check primary sources. Indeed, this is precisely the sort of sleight of hand that Stop HS2 and its acolytes routinely accuse HS2 Ltd and government of </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">committing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In any undertaking on the size and scale of HS2, controversy is sure to ensue; spin, scaremongering and sanctimony follow not far behind. Substance should shape the debate going forward.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-57903897636244943012013-02-15T08:19:00.000-08:002013-02-15T10:47:06.014-08:00HS2: looking into the Great Beyond<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX7xErXc-HZk16h8HG_D2uCuFxBthQ8tUbwFcN9jD6yjFMTEjc3zzMOGxKKLBtyZI8DqbY49YenOjM6_lSHIh0vzMuHpeq57XezvNaIcrvp8miDw-QHR5JQok_T3bIUDWykPbobDKQvnax/s1600/Local_EWHi7_ud%235p.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX7xErXc-HZk16h8HG_D2uCuFxBthQ8tUbwFcN9jD6yjFMTEjc3zzMOGxKKLBtyZI8DqbY49YenOjM6_lSHIh0vzMuHpeq57XezvNaIcrvp8miDw-QHR5JQok_T3bIUDWykPbobDKQvnax/s320/Local_EWHi7_ud%235p.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">HS2 services are envisaged to use an expanded Manchester Piccadilly station.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mansfield, Hucknall, Bristol, Barnsley and Leicester: high speed rail is coming your way. All are among the locations cited by name in the government’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/69739/hs2-phase-two-command-paper-summary.pdf" target="_blank">Command Paper</a> and related documentation covering Phase II of High Speed 2, issued on January 28. Indeed, the time-consuming task of poring over the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/hs2-phase-two-initial-preferred-route-plan-and-profile-maps" target="_blank">reams of paperwork</a> released last month is rewarding, if only for the light it sheds on the thinking behind HS2, as well the many anomalies that the Preferred Route Option has generated.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whether Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin has been stung by repeated assertions that HS2 was designed to get ‘every fool in London’ to Birmingham 15 min faster (as shamefully claimed by Sir Simon Jenkins last December whilst drawing a <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/simon-jenkins-our-rail-heritage-is-at-last-getting-the-respect-it-deserves-8423701.html" target="_blank">painful analogy </a>with the 150th anniversary of the Metropolitan Railway) is debatable. But there is no doubt that, in tone at least, HS2 is now looking to much broader horizons. The Command Paper raises the real prospect of a Leicester – Edinburgh service running via HS2 and the East Coast Main Line, and, by tapping into the rolling programme of electrification of the conventional network, a Bristol – northeast England service which would join HS2 at Birmingham.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These aspirations for a substantial non-London market for high speed services have predictably been widely ignored by most reaction to the Phase II announcement, just as the potential to restore lost inter-regional passenger services along our existing main lines has been. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that much of the supposedly informed comment around HS2 in reality responds to a perception of the project, rather than the detailed plans themselves.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fuss over Parkway stations is a case in point. Just two genuine ‘out-of-town’ stations are proposed under the second stage, joining the Birmingham Airport facility outlined in Phase I (few would claim that the Crossrail interchange at Old Oak Common falls into this category). I concur with those who point to some of France’s out-of-town stations, where trains are few and footfall modest, but to compare these directly to, say, Meadowhall is surely fatuous. The latter is already a busy multimodal hub serving Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster as well as Sheffield, while Toton has been explicitly chosen to serve both Derby and Nottingham. Neither bears much resemblance to, say, the spartan and windswept <a href="http://www.gares360.com/itiview/?project=171" target="_blank">TGV Haute-Picardie</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But far more important is the ineluctable truth that many -- perhaps a substantial majority -- of HS2 passengers will board their trains at exactly the same locations they use today, thanks to the extensive provision of so-called ‘classic compatible’ services. As an example, it is ironic indeed that whilst the planned HS2 terminus at Manchester Piccadilly would form an annexe to the existing trainshed, extra platforms to be built to support the Northern Hub programme will be many minutes’ walk from the concourse and linked by travelator. That isn’t a problem <em>per se</em>, but it highlights how when conventional rail investment includes inevitable design compromises, it does so largely without accompanying howls of invective. Needless to say, the ‘anything but HS2’ brigade revels in such obvious double standards.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That said, HS2 Ltd’s modelling has its own perception issues too. A macro-level service pattern has been drafted to support the revised economic case for the project, which is essential to evidence-based planning, but it does leave the project promoter open to the suggestion that it is defining timetables for 20 years hence. And it is fair to say that the service modelled is, in places, quixotic. A <a href="http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2013/02/07/lep-chairman-to-make-economic-case-to-bring-hs2-to-liverpool-99623-32759935/" target="_blank">muted reaction</a> to the Phase II plan in Liverpool is understandable; the model gives the city a vastly better service than it could hope to receive under any further ill-starred upgrading of the West Coast Main Line, but the plans still envisage only two trains an hour from London via HS2, one of which makes no use of the Phase II alignment at all. This Liverpool service does however serve Stafford, which no doubt will be welcomed in Stafford. But this in turn raises the huge anomaly of Stoke-on-Trent, which appears to gain an HS2 service under Phase I in 2026 and lose it again a few years later under Phase II. Curious.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">HS2 Ltd should state far more robustly in my view that any service pattern offered today is nothing more than the most cursory <em>amuse bouche</em> for a decade of wrangling about who gets what. I am increasingly of the view that the deferral of the Heathrow Airport spur should be made permanent; the <a href="http://www.bowgroup.org/news/bow-group-letter-hs2-published-times-newspaper" target="_blank">Bow Group and others</a> make play of the ‘success’ in Europe of high speed rail interchanges at hub airports, but I suspect the traffic volumes are meagre. To emphasise the point, Scheherazade Zekri-Chevallet, Chief Commercial & Marketing Officer at four-nation TGV operator Thalys International, remarked at a conference late last year that of its near 7 million annual ridership, just 55 000 were using its dedicated interlining tickets via airports in Paris and Brussels.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But while I think the Heathrow paths would be far better utilised for more fast trains to Liverpool and/or a London – Blackpool/<a href="http://www.wcnwchamber.org.uk/news/november-2012/council-leaders-back-electrification-of-the-holyhead-to-crewe-railway-line.htm" target="_blank">Chester/North Wales</a> service running via the Phase I junction at Lichfield, thence Colwich, Stoke and Crewe, my opinion counts for little. HS2 Ltd should consider even at this early stage appointing a Director of Passenger Services in the mould of former Virgin Trains and BR InterCity MD Chris Green to consider these issues in more depth. Currently, the passenger-facing role of developing post-HS2 rail services is being undertaken (if that’s the right word) by Passenger Focus and Network Rail, whereas in (say) France or Germany, this would be the domain of a major operator like DB or SNCF.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It would surely be beneficial to test alternative service options against a set of commercial parameters in a broadly independent fashion, in consultation with business groups in the towns and cities in question, safe in the knowledge that nothing is set in stone. Open-access use of the infrastructure by a new entrant in the style of <a href="http://www.ntvspa.it/en/index.html" target="_blank">Italy’s NTV</a> could be considered much closer to opening.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The growth forecasts made by HS2 Ltd are exceptionally cautious; it says that volumes predicted at the outset for 2021 have <a href="http://www.appghsr.co.uk/upload/APPG%20for%20High-Speed%20Rail%20Inquiry%20Report.pdf" target="_blank">already been exceeded</a>. Within the envelope of these assumptions, there is substantial room for manoeuvre: a sensible service pattern in 2013 is almost certainly not going to apply so smoothly to 2033. Investment in the conventional network (especially electrification), pressure on pathing at key nodes and broad demographic change could all influence the plan. HS2 should be flexible enough to adapt as the project moves into the implementation phase.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-82643604840642168032012-12-21T07:10:00.000-08:002012-12-21T07:28:19.088-08:00The real West Coast scandal<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH3wuut7MFd5baX3xVEJ-wia1ZYynaJngoifP3mnCtut_JtZmlnv8KqYohEVSfw0x1nC7hbEeViJ4NBC4M2l1ieoRVNbferM2WP8ShGjC5H4AVqYdam0iBKJgCPRXMl1Dqpb22WHTsUde5/s1600/121221-WCML+track+renewals-credit+NR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH3wuut7MFd5baX3xVEJ-wia1ZYynaJngoifP3mnCtut_JtZmlnv8KqYohEVSfw0x1nC7hbEeViJ4NBC4M2l1ieoRVNbferM2WP8ShGjC5H4AVqYdam0iBKJgCPRXMl1Dqpb22WHTsUde5/s320/121221-WCML+track+renewals-credit+NR.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The West Coast Main Line: it seems disruption is for life, not just for Christmas. Photo: Network Rail</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It wasn’t quite a Mayan prophecy, but no doubt a few pundits were left somewhat disappointed when the rail franchising Armageddon of December 9 failed to materialise. Despite the many column inches devoted to the undoubtedly serious flaws in the Inter-City West Coast refranchising process, there was never any genuine risk that services on a network carrying 30 million passengers per annum would simply cease because of a foul-up of the functionaries. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And so it proved. The trains are still running, and Virgin Rail Group has a short-term deal to continue to operate ICWC services for a further 23 months. Passengers could be forgiven for breathing a sigh of relief as they prepare for the big Christmas getaway...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or not. Because (and do please forgive the London broadsheet hacks for failing to notice this), ICWC trains do (effectively) stop running on December 23 for <a href="http://mediaroom.virgintrains.co.uk/2012/12/virgin-trains-urges-customers-to-book.html" target="_blank">five days over the Festive period</a>. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sure, there will be a limited rail service linking London with Nuneaton via a circuitous route along the Chiltern main line, but no direct services will run between Euston, Manchester, Liverpool and stations to Glasgow; ironically Chiltern Railways services between London Marylebone and Birmingham Moor Street may also be affected by the need to share tracks with Virgin.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The reason for the hiatus is, of course, engineering works – all four West Coast Main Line tracks through Bletchley will be closed for resignalling. Infrastructure manager Network Rail’s desire to perform work at Christmas is perhaps understandable, as there is less commuter traffic generally and no trains at all on December 25-26. But the Bletchley blockade lasts much longer, seriously hindering leisure travel at one of the busiest times of year, and it isn’t a ‘bog standard’ track possession, it is one of a panoply of work packages deferred from the infamous <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/apr/01/transport.politics" target="_blank">West Coast Route Modernisation Programme</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> undertaken between 1998 and 2009.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As regular readers of this blog will already be well aware, the project was effectively halted prematurely to ensure the outturn cost was kept below the symbolic £10bn mark. Nobody now disputes contractor Bechtel’s assessment that the true capital cost of WCRM was in the region of £13bn. Note that this does not include the wider economic disbenefits caused by a decade of disruption; this sum has never been meaningfully assessed. My own view is that the value of leisure travel in a service-dominated economy is seriously underestimated by transport economists.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But on the West Coast Main Line, it seems disruption is for life, not just for Christmas. This blog has remarked many times that the institutional unreliability of Europe’s busiest mixed-use railway utterly undermines the claims by opponents of High Speed 2 that more services could be accommodated on it. Now these concerns have been confirmed in a <a href="http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/wcs-reliability-programme-191112.pdf" target="_blank">landmark report</a> authored by Virgin Rail Group COO Chris Gibb and issued on behalf of the operator and Network Rail.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mr Gibb outlines a series of interrelated challenges which impact on Network Rail’s ability to achieve an acceptable level of reliability on the busiest London – Rugby core. Among the specifics highlighted are the growing incidence of trespass and suicide, where the report points to Réseau Ferré de France data showing that fewer than 3% of suicides on the French network occur on <em>Lignes à Grande Vitesse</em>, where trespass risk can be modelled at the design stage; an unintended benefit of having fewer platform faces of course.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The difficulty in gaining access to the WCML for maintenance is also addressed:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>'The section between Watford and Euston is some of the most difficult to maintain and ageing infrastructure, passing through an urban area which limits access to and alongside the railway whilst influencing the railway with earthworks issues, trespass and other ‘neighbour’ issues. The current possession arrangements are barely enough to hold the infrastructure in its current condition, which in turn is not good enough to sustain good performance.'</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An examination of overhead power supply equipment revealed a yet more damning indictment of the ‘incremental upgrading’ approach:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>'It appears that the West Coast Route Modernisation project team were more focussed on within budget/on time delivery of the project, than the medium/long term component performance, and this approach has clearly cost NR and the industry dearly in terms of poor performance.'</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You get the idea.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is abundantly clear that many millions of pounds will be needed just to keep the southern WCML in a fit state to handle its current workload, let alone the several extra 125 mile/h services per hour envisaged by the 51m Group under its alternative to HS2.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There will inevitably be those who, come what may, will insist that interminable spending on route upgrading is always the right policy. But global best practice suggests otherwise: it is generally under-appreciated that two of the world’s most commercially-successful high speed rail projects, Japan’s pioneering Tokaido <em>Shinkansen</em> between Tokyo and Osaka, and the Paris – Lyon line in France, were both authorised after the respective governments concluded that upgrading the conventional routes in each case would be too costly for the accrued benefits[1].</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Closer to home, we can hardly dismiss the south end of the WCML as an obstreperous one-off. As this week’s <a href="http://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/News-Releases/7249/Network-Rail-repairing-damage-to-overhead-power-at-Hitchin" target="_blank">multiple overhead power failures</a> at Hitchin illustrated</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, the East Coast Main Line from London King’s Cross is similarly fragile despite a series of infrastructure upgrades over the past three decades, whilst readers of industry newsletter <em><a href="http://www.railwaygazette.com/publications/rail-business-intelligence/subscribe-gbp1.html" target="_blank">Rail Business Intelligence</a></em> will already be aware of insiders’ mounting concerns about the costs and benefits of the London – Cardiff route modernisation, now priced at around £7bn.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The interrelated concerns about capacity, reliability and service patterns on the UK’s principal rail axes will not go away, even as memories of ‘Franchisegate’ fade. Over more than four decades, the alternatives to a new line to link the capital with our most important provincial centres — 14 of which would be served by trains using HS2 under current plans — have been tried repeatedly. Thanks to the Gibb report, we now have empirical proof of the limitations of ‘patch and mend’.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The real West Coast scandal is about infrastructure, not franchising.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: xx-small;">1. For more details on the early years of high speed rail development, see Hughes M., <em>Rail 300: The World High Speed Train Race</em>, David & Charles, Newton Abbot 1988</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-27401390578341764032012-11-18T03:56:00.000-08:002012-11-18T11:40:29.174-08:00OK, Computer? Infrastructure, technology and clairvoyance<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF7EgQV2VV6SF0m0El9HYERJ1zB42R66-puoQvCgCBc4sxEFYSqQodJGkTA-VL4CjCGJyT-Xa5BwacPdy4FBoqtXd2lGM0HZoglEQmaLrno-ECuoXzIuB9gPYL2zpFgT6ux29wSlDEE0zD/s1600/Plane+at+heathrow-credit+Heathrow+Airports+Ltd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF7EgQV2VV6SF0m0El9HYERJ1zB42R66-puoQvCgCBc4sxEFYSqQodJGkTA-VL4CjCGJyT-Xa5BwacPdy4FBoqtXd2lGM0HZoglEQmaLrno-ECuoXzIuB9gPYL2zpFgT6ux29wSlDEE0zD/s320/Plane+at+heathrow-credit+Heathrow+Airports+Ltd.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Unsurprisingly, the notion that some extraneous technological development will dramatically reduce the need for travel in years to come has barely featured in the debate over UK aviation strategy. Credit: Heathrow Airports Ltd.</span> </span><span style="font-size: small;"></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why didn’t the Romans invent the wheelbarrow? Central heating, aqueducts and racing chariots…but not wheelbarrows. They could have, in theory, but they didn’t. Strange.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And so begins an important lesson in what historians term technological determinism. In short, it’s the idea that just because a particular technology has the potential to fulfil a certain role in society, there is no guarantee that it actually will. The <a href="http://www.funsms.net/sms_history.htm" target="_blank">unexpected explosion</a> in SMS text messaging offers an example in the counter sense: a technology largely written off by its developers has achieved mass uptake on a global scale.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How does this affect railway investment? The railway itself is a unusual case: without doubt, the industry has shown remarkable staying power – or even ‘bouncebackability’, to use football manager Iain Dowie’s memorable turn of phrase. By rights, the railway should have been killed off by a multitude of subsequent innovations from the telegraph to the jet aircraft to the internet.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It has not been. Which means it is surprising that, in the UK at least, there is a vocal minority of clairvoyants who liken the modern railway network to the canal system, and insist that a further technological <em>Deus ex-Machina</em> will obviate the need for travel at all. Or at least flatten demand to such an extent that people will stop trying to build railways past the end of their garden....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because the creed espoused by these techno-zealots requires a very selective interpretation of the notion of ‘travel’. If, for example, you live in a bucolic idyll served by a meandering branch line dating back to Victorian times, your desire to use it will apparently remain undiminished amid the rise of the machines. No, the real targets are the fat cats: the preening executive seeking to shuttle from urban centre to urban centre in pampered luxury. Yes, all 31 million of them (!) who did just that between London, Birmingham and northwest England last year: they must be stopped!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And they shall be: apparently by Skype, with extra 3D twiddly bits. Or, er, something.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Convinced? Me neither. Indeed, I am not sure which aspect of some high speed rail opponents’ cultish devotion to technology I find most disturbing: the blind, unwavering faith that point-to-point travel <strong>will</strong> diminish in the next 30 years (not ‘could’ or ‘might’), or their unstinting, almost mystical, commitment to the idea even as the burden of evidence to the contrary utterly overwhelms it. Not only has the mass uptake of high-bandwidth internet services coincided with a <a href="http://www.atoc.org/media-centre/previous-press-releases/growth-of-69-in-2010-takes-demand-for-rail-travel-to-new-high-levels-100551" target="_blank">surge in UK passenger rail ridership</a>, but the adoption of web-enabled devices has democratised access to rail travel. Who now would detour to a station booking office to instruct a clerk to find the cheapest ticket? Fewer and fewer of us of course.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Technology is however changing working habits, and nobody would deny the increased incidence of passengers working onboard inter-city trains. With time, today’s patchy wi-fi functionality should be substantially enhanced, but then capturing the economic benefits of such activity remains exceptionally difficult. Certainly the assumptions about onboard productivity contained in the economic model for High Speed 2 have been widely questioned, but it is telling that HS2 Ltd ascribes <strong>no</strong> economic benefit to productivity gained by passengers transferring from air or road; this mitigation becomes all the more relevant as HS2 evolves slowly into an <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/salmond-urges-english-northern-accord-on-high-speed-rail-campaign.1352830143" target="_blank">Anglo-Scottish rail spine</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the ‘technology versus travel’ debate has far wider implications than one bog-standard rail project. Indeed, logic dictates that international journeys would be disproportionately affected. How to explain, then, the complete absence of the topic from the terms of reference of the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/membership-and-terms-of-reference-of-the-airports-commission" target="_blank">Davies review</a> into UK aviation strategy, the consequences of which are likely to reverberate for many decades to come? The explanation is surely that it’s a weak, weak argument.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every bit as likely is a partial backlash against our screen-dependent culture, as concern grows about the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18149510" target="_blank">health and societal impact</a> of too much time spent hiding behind LCDs. Growth in business and leisure travel could plausibly be sustained by a premium attached to ‘real-time’ interaction. Last December I boarded a Deutsche Bahn high speed service from Cologne to Brussels, my €33 fare having afforded me a seat in a first class compartment. I was joined by a German diplomat also heading for Brussels; having reached for my smart phone, I asked in faltering German if she knew whether there was a wi-fi network onboard.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘No’, she replied, ‘and thank God for that. I am chained to my phone all day, this is the only time I get to gaze out of the window.’</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Surely she is not alone in rejecting the tyranny of technology. Time for the web-wonks to ditch the dogma – we’ll need our railways for many a year yet.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-28185400196051573642012-10-21T04:47:00.000-07:002012-10-21T04:47:23.697-07:00HS2 is not a franchise (thankfully)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcLxeEc8L3a_wd6YRoSpSvUDfJsf_Nf9Z92BtQeQ63FVh8D75U73szzvzNVlBvuGng0Ww9p61qKOHcVvBRjcDKHb7Ik05ozo9rythybtD7thY4zg7LXTXngolJkUAWc0e7Sl0pjHddMqGj/s1600/IMG_0271.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcLxeEc8L3a_wd6YRoSpSvUDfJsf_Nf9Z92BtQeQ63FVh8D75U73szzvzNVlBvuGng0Ww9p61qKOHcVvBRjcDKHb7Ik05ozo9rythybtD7thY4zg7LXTXngolJkUAWc0e7Sl0pjHddMqGj/s320/IMG_0271.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On October 12 at 1815, crowds gather at London Euston, defying the so-called 'cliff' effect when off-peak fares become valid at 1900. HS2 Ltd predicts significantly lower volume growth on inter-city servives between London and the northwest than do recent franchise bidders.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Several days on from the storm breaking over the flawed award of the Inter-City West Coast operating contract, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the government’s franchising reforms are in tatters and the very franchising edifice itself is teetering on the brink.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a regular passenger as well as an industry observer, it does not especially surprise me that the West Coast Main Line should be the straw to break the camel’s back. Although not always recognised as such, the route is arguably Britain’s most strategically important and certainly its most high profile, thanks most recently to Sir Richard Branson’s vituperative criticism of the ICWC bid process. Whilst the government’s decision to halt all live franchising processes clearly indicates the flaws in the system are structural, not route-specific, it is inevitable that the West Coast would be cited as a microcosm of the railway’s wider woes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The response to the fiasco has in some ways been predictable – widespread calls for renationalisation, and speculative assertions about the implications for High Speed 2. Personally I am not quite sure how alleged errors by civil servants and/or ministers helps the case for renationalisation, but that is no doubt a debate that will run at length elsewhere. But on HS2, the accusation is simple: if the Department for Transport can’t tot up the sums on ICWC, surely the same applies to HS2? According to the <em>Daily Telegraph</em>’s London Editor <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/9591329/No-way-to-run-a-grown-up-railway.html" target="_blank">Andrew Gilligan</a>, ‘some of the same statistical models are being used, in different ways’ to appraise the project, whilst former cabinet minister and Amersham MP <a href="http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2012/10/08/comment-hs2-this-bright-shiny-train-does-not-do-what-it-says" target="_blank">Cheryl Gillan</a> claims ‘elements like inflation figures and passenger numbers are common to both’ ICWC and HS2.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ms Gillan is now leading calls for ‘a root-and-branch re-examination’ of HS2. But why? Whilst the franchising system is no doubt in crisis, it pains me to state the obvious: HS2 is not a franchise, it is an infrastructure project, just like Crossrail or the prospective third runway at London Heathrow. In terms of scrutiny, HS2 could not contrast more starkly with ICWC. Consider the <a href="http://www.dft.gov.uk/publications/hs2-economic-case-appraisal-update/" target="_blank">reams of documentation</a> available on the website of project promoter HS2 Ltd and DfT's own site, whilst franchise data is squirreled securely away, notionally on ‘commercial confidentiality’ grounds. Since GNER’s controversial ‘back the bid’ campaign in 2005, DfT has banned bidders even from releasing details of proposed service changes for fear of compromising the byzantine competition.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But on HS2, parliamentary committees, academics and a plethora of dubious think tanks have all had their say. Those parties which strongly disputed HS2 Ltd’s consultation process and economic appraisal have challenged it under judicial review, which inevitably brings further scrutiny. Yet the comparison with ICWC here is perhaps telling: it took Virgin Rail Group’s lawyers barely a week to seize upon DfT’s flawed model for calculating franchise bid guarantees; DfT’s own lawyers then instructed it not to contest the judicial review. However, more than three years since the formal launch of HS2, and no equivalent ‘smoking gun’ appears to exist, and HS2 Ltd insiders confirm that legal advice has been taken at every decision point, for example when whittling down potential London termini from 50 to a single option. Can Mr Gilligan’s ‘it’s the same, but different!’ argument really carry the day?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As for Ms Gillan’s arguments, inflation is straightforward on HS2: inflation is by definition excluded, with all costs cited at ‘Year X’ prices. That is appropriate to make a go/no go decision or choose between options on the basis of a benefit:cost ratio where inflation affects B and C equally and so has a neutral effect. This does not apply to a commercial contract like a franchise where there is revenue and expenditure coming in and going out, as would be the case for any operating concession let for HS2 in the early 2020s.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the most compelling ‘like for like’ comparison is to read across the volume growth assumptions for both the next West Coast franchise and HS2, noting of course the substantially similar markets that both would serve either side of 2026. So whilst First Group’s now-aborted franchise bid assumed volume growth (ie. passenger numbers irrespective of price point) of 6% per annum, HS2 Ltd's figure would be less than 2.5%, and this includes a premium for new journeys created by the faster journeys and the inevitably-significant reliability gains from brand new infrastructure. (For the record, ICWC volume growth over the past 10 years has been 6.3% per annum). Furthermore, all growth on HS2 is <a href="http://assets.dft.gov.uk/publications/hs2-economic-case-appraisal-update/hs2-economic-case-appraisal-update.pdf" target="_blank">forecast to cease</a> at the ‘cap year’ of 2037, a mere four years after the completion of the Y route to Leeds and Manchester; this is analogous to all traffic growth on the M6 motorway ceasing in 1975!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Indeed, it is ironic that if and when a long-term West Coast franchise is eventually re-let for the years to 2026, its volume growth forecasts may well be more modest, and much closer to the ultra-cautious HS2 assumptions.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-86098358095235544632012-08-12T03:51:00.001-07:002012-08-12T03:51:20.272-07:00Tilting at windmills<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBjKVOjzF_WstySIUBfu6JpFVi4H2BG-lhqSl0FUcWi8AaOMBRG5gn8RhtcOeQOWj7AStVMWS1w-gbayjyIOAXB0A8HgRt09lVnjmnbmGoO4jRWQ93jCaZSNcF654983kJgfk8Aabx1WqU/s1600/800px-Edinburgh_Waverley_station_viewed_from_Edinburgh_Castle_photo+C+McKenna.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBjKVOjzF_WstySIUBfu6JpFVi4H2BG-lhqSl0FUcWi8AaOMBRG5gn8RhtcOeQOWj7AStVMWS1w-gbayjyIOAXB0A8HgRt09lVnjmnbmGoO4jRWQ93jCaZSNcF654983kJgfk8Aabx1WqU/s320/800px-Edinburgh_Waverley_station_viewed_from_Edinburgh_Castle_photo+C+McKenna.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
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</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Edinburgh can be reached from London in a fastest time of 4 h 22 min today; HS2 reduces this to 3 h 33 min despite the new-build infrastructure not extending north of York. Substantial capacity would also be released on the congested southern part of the route. Photo: C McKenna</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The perennial problem with railway investment — it’s always ‘jam tomorrow’. And the bigger the investment, the longer the wait. Politicians don’t like that, and in truth railway industry suppliers don’t much like it either. What any railway user, manager or investor wants is the maximum benefit for the shortest wait – and, by extension, the least capital outlay.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s no surprise then that the industry likes to talk up innovation and technological breakthroughs. Capacity crunch? Pah, a five-letter acronym will fix it. Trains too slow? Make ‘em tilt. Job done. That essentially is the message from top-tier supplier Alstom, which has received <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/news/brian-monteith-another-transport-plan-that-simply-won-t-start-1-2452278" target="_blank">plenty of coverage</a> after one of its executives promised that 50 min could be cut from Edinburgh – London journeys if its Pendolino tilting trains were introduced alongside the emerging <a href="http://www.rssb.co.uk/EXPERTISE/Pages/ERTMS.aspx" target="_blank">ERTMS</a> communications-based train control system. Needless to say, such a claim was manna from heaven to organisations such as the High Speed Action Alliance, who predictably leapt on it to insist that High Speed 2 was now even more redundant than it supposedly was before.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Time for a reality check, everyone. I don’t blame Alstom for pushing its case: it is intensely and rightly proud of the Pendolino’s track record in the UK with Virgin Trains (go to any rail trade show anywhere on the planet and you’ll find Alstom promoting its whole-life maintenance skills with lots of photos of its depot at Manchester Longsight). Alstom also supplies onboard and wayside ERTMS kit. And Alstom does not especially want to wait until (say) 2026 to get another bulk order in the UK market. So its position is perfectly understandable, and we should respect its commercial objectives.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But what about everyone else? The campaigners, the columnists, even some politicians? Well one thing is for sure: all have a very short memory. In 1997, Railtrack (and if you can remember them, you’re unlikely to do so fondly) and Virgin Rail Group unveiled their plan to modernise the London – Glasgow West Coast Main Line. Guess what was in it? ERTMS (check), Pendolino tilting trains (check) and whopping time savings between London and Scotland without the pain of building anything much (check). The budget was a mere £1.4bn...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyone who’s read <a href="http://njak100.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/we-have-been-wrestling-with-wcml.html" target="_blank">this blog before</a> knows <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/apr/01/transport.politics" target="_blank">what happened next</a>. To Alstom’s credit, its Pendolinos have worked, and indeed they can be regarded as perhaps the world’s most reliable tilting trains. But they do not reach the speeds Railtrack predicted because the infrastructure won’t permit it, and ERTMS…well, in the late 1990s it didn’t really exist outside the laboratory, let alone make it to installation. The out-turn cost? £8.9bn. Oops.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So what’s changed since the late-90s? Not enough to warrant the hype given to Alstom’s statement. Here, briefly, are the catches:</span><br />
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Capacity</strong> – raising speeds to 140 mile/h might be possible in theory, in some places. But on those sections, you are effectively reducing overall line capacity by introducing a further speed disparity onto what is a mixed-use railway. Local, regional and freight trains will have less railway to use, in effect. In addition, it is very doubtful that tilting rolling stock would offer any significant benefit on the London – Edinburgh route, which is generally less sinuous than the WCML.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Infrastructure</strong> – the East Coast Main Line is littered with level crossings, especially south of York. Level crossings and vandalism are recognised as the two greatest safety risks on the railway today, and it is extremely unlikely that any safety authority is going to sign off higher speeds on the ECML while crossings are so commonplace.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>ERTMS</strong> – now I could (and at some point maybe I will) blog in great and granular detail about the saga that is ERTMS, by which I am here referring to the ETCS Level 2 train control element specifically. In short, it can provide proven vital signalling and train control functions today, and it does so in some European countries. But the irony is that these are almost exclusively new-build railways, including several dedicated high speed lines <em>a la</em> HS2 (current thinking is that HS2 would also use ETCS Level 2, but for comparison the Milan – Rome – Naples high speed corridor is already fitted and equipped to handle up to 20 trains/h/direction). Where ETCS Level 2 is <strong>absolutely unproven</strong> (as yet) is in retrofitting onto existing legacy networks. For HSAA and its associates to claim this is an alternative to the 17 000 km of dedicated high speed rail already operating globally is, at best, breathtakingly naïve. Indeed, even a basic review of the state of play in Europe would have revealed that German national operator DB is <a href="http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/single-view/view/ertms-accord-signed.html" target="_blank">extremely reluctant to install ETCS Level 2</a> on its conventional routes because of the huge capital cost and scant evidence of capacity benefits. On technical matters however, we have grown rather accustomed to so-called experts opposed to HS2 telling us that the sky is green and the grass blue.</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To be absolutely clear, I am not disagreeing with the view that ERTMS will eventually be fitted to the ECML as it will become the only kit available from signalling suppliers (and the European Commission requires fitment on many trunk railways in any case – UKIP will love that bit). Equally a fleet of Pendolinos is clearly a viable option to replace the IC225 trains in due course.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But without a new line, recent history clearly demonstrates nothing other than a wholesale rebuild of the entire route plus a significant reduction in intermediate stops will deliver a 50 min time saving, and we’d have an even more London-centric railway at the end of it. Time for a dose of realism please.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-13683784796466285602012-07-30T05:18:00.000-07:002012-08-02T05:45:22.318-07:00A Letter from America<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2iYmlSpQYJ8Bf1mWzLO95uXT_3JEwm906aB3ssIlzOrI_xCcUEjsguxGG5Lhdc46K7XJ9cxmNtyh_OAoJ00Fmu076L5HhNIh2fbMZfDhi89hc7OciBatLkv_qm0QvIk80KABCe9kjLvfN/s1600/Ldn+Gateway+++UICHSR+2012+017.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2iYmlSpQYJ8Bf1mWzLO95uXT_3JEwm906aB3ssIlzOrI_xCcUEjsguxGG5Lhdc46K7XJ9cxmNtyh_OAoJ00Fmu076L5HhNIh2fbMZfDhi89hc7OciBatLkv_qm0QvIk80KABCe9kjLvfN/s320/Ldn+Gateway+++UICHSR+2012+017.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Northeast vision: an Acela Express train pauses at the restored Wilmington station in Delaware.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With due apologies for the delay, it’s high time I rounded up some of the most immediate conclusions from the International Union of Railways’ (UIC) global high speed rail congress in Philadelphia on July 10-13. The City of Brotherly Love had a tough act to follow, the previous event having been held in Beijing in December 2010. But rather than an overt celebration of past achievements, this UIC Highspeed – the first I’ve attended as it happens – was more of an attempt to catalyse developments in the US.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">News that the Californian senate had passed – by the narrowest of margins – a vote to launch the first phase of the state’s controversial high speed rail programme the preceding Friday was a welcome fillip for delegates. But the fact the venue was a city on the Northeast Corridor, not LA or San Francisco, was telling. And this is especially relevant to British onlookers, as our own High Speed 2 project has an American cousin.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘HS2 is our reference point’, <a href="http://www.politico.com/politicopros/stephengardner.html" target="_blank">Stephen Gardner</a>, Northeast Corridor Director at US federal passenger operator Amtrak, told me on July 12, adding that those developing plans for America’s busiest inter-city rail corridor had much to learn from our experience of upgrading legacy main lines and developing an economic and demand model for new projects. Having now had chance to ride the Boston – New York – Washington NEC on several occasions, the parallels with the West Coast Main Line are indeed compelling.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ageing infrastructure is compromising reliability, yet previous long-term enhancement programmes have not delivered the benefits promised. A varied mix of services, from commuter rail through to the fast Acela business expresses, share the route, meaning that only sub-optimal use can be made of the capacity available. Needless to say, getting a seat on long-distance trains is tough – and I speak from experience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The importance of NEC is graphically underlined when you consider that of the 30 million passengers who use Amtrak across the US each year, 13 million do so in the northeast. Compare this to California, where, to be frank, inter-city passenger rail is about as familiar as cricket. The greatest challenge facing California’s high speed promoters is to create a market where, effectively, none exists at the moment. And judging by my conversations at UIC Highspeed, quite how they might accomplish this is unclear. Constructing an isolated section of high speed infrastructure in the scarcely-populated Central Valley is a high-risk strategy, but it might just work if the requisite sections of conventional line were electrified and upgraded to offer a ‘one seat ride’ between LA and San Francisco from Day One.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But that does not appear to be the plan – even if the starter section opens in 2023, it seems it would be used not by high speed trainsets sprinting along at 200 mile/h, but by occasional diesel-hauled Amtrak trains struggling to achieve half that speed. California High Speed Rail Authority has at least recognised the importance of the legacy network by pledging $1bn to electrify and modernise the Caltrain and LA Metrolink commuter networks at the northern and southern ends of its route. But connecting these to the starter section needs to expedited as rapidly as possible to avoid a repeat of the problems which have affected the Netherlands, where domestic concessionaire NSHispeed has conspicuously failed to deliver a high speed service despite having the infrastructure to do so[1].</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, such project detail might seem unnecessarily punctilious were it not for the fact that when American high speed rail aspirations are mentioned, it is to California, not the northeast, that all eyes turn. And just as the perceived commercial failings of High Speed 1 in the UK have undoubtedly hindered the vastly stronger case for HS2, so California’s controversy could stymie progress between Boston and DC.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That would be a great pity in my view: like HS2, the Northeast Corridor is a prime case where dedicated high speed tracks maximise the potential for inter-city rail travel by tapping into a substantial market which exists <strong>today</strong>. Of course, constructing such a railway will be a multi-generational project – Amtrak’s six-stage Stair Steps vision would not be completed until 2040 at the earliest, with a price tag of $150bn. That’s a pretty eye-watering sum, although at least a third is allocated to upgrading the existing formation. More importantly there is a real recognition that this must be directly compared to the cost of expanding northeast airport capacity or the interstate highway network.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whilst the controversy surrounding California’s programme will not subside anytime soon, most <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-bullet-train-to-nowhere-californias-rail-nightmare-7966310.html" target="_blank">facile comparisons</a> from this side of the Pond are an over-simplification. When it comes to US high speed rail, it’s not just California dreaming.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">1. The Dutch HSL-Zuid high speed railway is used by two operators, Thalys International and NSHispeed. Only Thalys has yet been able to provide high speed services over the route. A poor choice of rolling stock manufacturer has led domestic operator NSHispeed repeatedly to delay launching its own competing services, instead running ageing conventional speed services whilst its V250 fleet goes through a lengthy approval process. Given NSHispeed charges premium fares for a service which hitherto offers no time advantage over the conventional NS network, it is little surprise that the domestic concessionaire has hit financial trouble. Thalys on the other hand cites the opening of HSL-Zuid for a surge in <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-eco/2012/01/31/97002-20120131FILWWW00491-thalys-ca-et-trafic-en-hausse-en-2011.php" target="_blank">revenue and ridership</a>. </span><br /> </span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-52047751933225456502012-07-29T04:00:00.000-07:002012-07-29T04:00:10.200-07:00HS2 is a Northern railway too<em><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/jun/26/hs2-railways-north-leeds-manchester-northern-hub-birmingham" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This article</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> originally appeared on The Guardian's Northerner blog on June 26 2012, since when the Northern Hub programme of regional rail enhancements has been fully funded under the 2014-19 railway control period.</span></em><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">HS2 is essential to ensure capacity on the existing railway can be used to improve local rail services. Photo: First TransPennine Express</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Cheshire town of Northwich might seem an odd place to start a discussion about the case for High Speed 2, the government’s proposed fast rail link between London and (eventually) Manchester and Leeds. Between 7am and 8.30am each weekday, three trains leave Northwich to carry commuters the 30 miles or so to Manchester. Trouble is…only one actually gets there, the others unhelpfully decanting their passengers at Stockport. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the old adage goes, ‘s…’ sells, but the ‘s’ in question is rarely ‘suburban rail capacity’. Such an apparently mundane topic hardly sells newspapers nor gets the blogosphere a-quiver, but it is front and centre of the issues surrounding HS2’s importance to the North. The Northwich case is just one of many examples of too many trains being squeezed onto too little railway; and the railways around Leeds and Manchester remain a somewhat haphazard web of routes that have developed only piecemeal since the mid-19th century.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ed Jacobs’ </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/jun/22/high-speed-train-hs3" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">astute investigation</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> on June 22 into the current state of play regarding HS2 suggests that the project does not ‘address the day to day transport problems’ facing travellers across the north. He then poses four questions which the project’s promoters could seek to answer, thereby heightening its relevance. I’ll try to address them, but with the caveat that capacity and overcrowding issues are quite complex and nuanced.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. What would High Speed Rail to northern England do to ease the UK's unenviable position of having the most expensive rail fares in Europe?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The main reason why Britain has such high rail fares is simple: government policy is that rail users should bear more of the cost of rail travel and taxpayers less; in most European countries, the reverse is true. But HS2’s great advantage is the capacity it brings – and not just for business travellers to London. More capacity means more trains and more seats. But those seats – whether on HS2 or on a more flexible legacy rail network – need to be filled, and pricing should reflect that. As capacity on the West Coast Main Line has grown in the past few years, average price paid per passenger has actually declined, helped by consumers’ increased uptake of buy-ahead tickets. There is no reason why adding substantial extra capacity would not drive prices downwards – after all, this is the lesson from the aviation industry over the past 15 years. But equally we should beware of straw men – HS2 is not primarily designed to affect fares policy, it is about getting more passengers and freight onto the existing rail network.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. How would the project address the problem of trains persistently running late?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Capacity again: removing some express services from the congested approaches to major rail hubs like Manchester Piccadilly and Leeds minimises the disparity between fast and slow services. There is mounting evidence that the busiest sections of our Victorian railway are struggling to cope: the West Coast Main Line, linking the northwest with London Euston, was the dubious beneficiary of a protracted and profoundly flawed £9.6bn modernisation, completed after 11 long years in 2009 (having run an astonishing 400% over budget). If the project itself demonstrated the spiralling cost of a ‘patch and mend’ policy, at least the route should be fit for modern needs now, right? Wrong. The West Coast is Britain’s least reliable main line by a significant margin – in one week in May, more than a third of Virgin Trains failed to reach their destinations within 10 min of schedule. Contrast that with High Speed 1 from London to the Channel Tunnel, where delays are typically measured in seconds, and the net spend by the taxpayer to build it was less than half that to refurbish the West Coast route.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. Will HS2 do anything to relieve frequently overcrowded trains?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yes, indirectly. Between now and HS2’s arrival in Leeds and Manchester (which certainly could and should be earlier than the planned 2033) a significant package of enhancements to the regional rail network is planned under the £560m </span><a href="http://www.northernhub.co.uk/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Northern Hub</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. These enhancements in the existing network should benefit local and regional users – but the risk is that, without a dedicated line, lucrative long-distance services would take up this extra headroom instead. This has already happened in Leeds, where the city’s main station was substantially rebuilt only a decade ago. As one senior transport official in West Yorkshire told me in April, ‘Pontefract and Knottingley won’t get a proper service into Leeds until we sort out the East Coast bottlenecks using HS2’.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4. Would HS2 do anything about the train fare system which so many people cite as being too confusing?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is worth noting that, while the ticketing system is indeed devilishly complex in places, passenger journeys across the country have grown by 23% in the past five years, so it can’t be putting that many people off. But equally a better balance needs to be found for would-be HS2 users: many passengers now know to book ahead to get a better deal, but this then ties them to a specific train at a given time. This may not be realistic for a journey of, say, 45 min between Manchester and Birmingham.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Business leaders and local politicians are lobbying hard to secure the final tranche of funding for the Northern Hub programme, with a decision due next month. They are right to do so: it is the short term priority. But it is telling to note that, among the ten ‘economic outputs’ the package is designed to deliver, one is ‘high speed rail to/from the south’. And that does not just mean London: it is widely under-appreciated that HS2 would halve the rail travel time between Leeds and Birmingham, for example. No alternative based on existing routes could match that – and tellingly, nobody has yet suggested one, to my knowledge.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But back to Northwich: it lost those morning commuter trains to Manchester in 2009 when extra fast trains to London were introduced; the town was on the losing side of a £9.6bn gamble (and Northwich commuters weren’t the only losers). Cancellation of HS2 raises the prospect of yet more patch and mend, on all three north-south rail axes that link our northern cities with the capital. Recent history shows that combined this could easily eat up a huge chunk of that oft-quoted £32bn.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are lucky in the UK that a huge market of more than 30 million passengers per annum </span><a href="http://mediaroom.virgintrains.co.uk/2011/10/thousands-more-seats-as-virgin-trains.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">already exists</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, ready to transfer to HS2 when it opens. It is not a ‘white elephant’, nor is it about getting from London to Birmingham ‘a bit faster’, or even a Victorian revival. It is an essential part of delivering international-class infrastructure in the North. Unpopular as it may be in the short term, the government is right to press ahead.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-76979248965055106622012-05-30T13:32:00.002-07:002012-06-25T10:48:48.152-07:00HS2 and Public Accounts Committee: big hoops<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicxycbRx7ZVIi49V9nPJlJyuwm1MyN1fufDn0Z0IV6zSAW5GEmFQECf4jlTtCbvaej0XkBp0R0bNwR0wGpbDmr2PWPrgfrRywkZtU5BOMjK6kwNhiz_It4wqJchskGiDeHKBXrukqDlU-6/s1600/Northbound-Pendolino-emerging-from-Roade-cutting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicxycbRx7ZVIi49V9nPJlJyuwm1MyN1fufDn0Z0IV6zSAW5GEmFQECf4jlTtCbvaej0XkBp0R0bNwR0wGpbDmr2PWPrgfrRywkZtU5BOMjK6kwNhiz_It4wqJchskGiDeHKBXrukqDlU-6/s320/Northbound-Pendolino-emerging-from-Roade-cutting.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">South Northants District Council is examining the possibility of adding a station to the West Coast Main Line, making use of capacity released by HS2.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the behest of one of my most febrile Twitter followers, I’ve been watching YouTube. Specifically, a series of short outtakes from a recent parliamentary Public Accounts Committee hearing into High Speed 2. Then, for levity, I watched a video to accompany the release of ‘Big Hoops’, the new single by Canadian-Portuguese singer Nelly Furtado.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Needless to say the videos do not have all that much in common, although it was perhaps telling that neither PAC nor Ms Furtado managed to utter the word ‘railway’, or even ‘transport’. And that is a serious point: whilst last year’s long, forensic <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/transport-committee/news/hsr---substantive/" target="_blank">investigation</a> by the Transport Select Committee examined HS2 in the round, putting it correctly into context as an ambitious, large-scale, two-decade programme, these clips do precisely the opposite. But maybe ‘context’ is overrated in the YouTube era…</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nevertheless, despite an unnecessarily hectoring tone which appears not to allow for any reply whatever from the interviewee, during the clips the PAC interviewer makes two points. One, that the Cabinet Office has assessed the current HS2 proposal, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoUp2WaodqI&feature=relmfu" target="_blank">given it an ‘amber/red’ rating</a>, indicating doubts about aspects of the proposal in its present form. Second, that ridership data suggests that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzUaaObYJn4&feature=relmfu" target="_blank">greater focus should be placed on ‘regional’ transport</a>, although importantly the edit allows for no definition of the term ‘regional’.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The civil servants ascribing the ‘amber/red’ outlook to HS2 do not explain their position, and my understanding is that the related report has not been published. It is therefore unwise to speculate as to what may have triggered such a warning. But let me be clear: such caution is no surprise. I would have been shocked if any assessment of HS2 at this early stage in its gestation had merely waved it through.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The debate which surrounds the project is healthy, searching questions ought to be asked of the project promoters, and the assumptions contained in the many hundreds of official documents HS2 generates should be scrutinised. I hope HS2 Ltd manages to find its own voice away from its political masters in Marsham Street, however, in order that some of the more esoteric aspects of this debate might be addressed head on (including the canard that the UK is ‘too small’ for high speed rail, or the evidence-free, determinist fantasy that ‘the internet’ will somehow supersede travel).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the ‘regional’ issue, it is a shame PAC Chairman Margaret Hodge offered no elucidation on her choice of term. Perhaps by ‘regional’, she meant the kind of project that would speed journeys between non-London cities, say <a href="http://www.go-hs2.com/BenefitsOfHS2/BenefitsOfHS2.aspx" target="_blank">Birmingham and Leeds</a> for example? Or a project that might permit a radically better service to intermediate towns on our busiest main lines (like, say, <a href="http://njak100.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/hs2-alternatives-will-your-local.html" target="_blank">Stone in Staffordshire</a>)? Or maybe she meant focusing on the potential for opening railway stations in communities with poor local transport links. Maybe she meant somewhere like <a href="http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/local/experts-claim-new-railway-station-is-needed-south-of-northampton-1-3824585" target="_blank">South Northants</a>?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, she declined to specify so I can only interpret. There can be no doubt that, to paraphrase Ms Furtado, HS2 has some big hoops still to jump through. But with a project of this scale, it is only right that it is seen in context – a transport context, which sees HS2 for what it is: an inter-city axis for sure, but simultaneously a regional railway, and a commuter one, and a freight one too. That is what the phrase ‘released capacity’ means, and those benefits are beyond contention.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We surely need a more informed assessment of the infrastructure we have today, its potential and its limitations, and the transport network we want to see tomorrow.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It will take more than a few 90 sec video clips to obscure that vision.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-66757966950944741192012-04-25T05:46:00.000-07:002012-05-30T14:32:28.180-07:00HS2: the world’s busiest high speed railway?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp27as11Lmt7F_Li4KvWsYv2gG22CTiLYf_DRij61oaAy0FanndVXyNuQh-npwW3CqnmmEVCzCKn2jJjpQCJew7pbJ5PCfa_GugNYi5vO2Buxh0zrLTw-9MF9_zn9Mn-cMVOZ9MfOOCnlV/s1600/800px-CRH2C_&_CRH3C_200808.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp27as11Lmt7F_Li4KvWsYv2gG22CTiLYf_DRij61oaAy0FanndVXyNuQh-npwW3CqnmmEVCzCKn2jJjpQCJew7pbJ5PCfa_GugNYi5vO2Buxh0zrLTw-9MF9_zn9Mn-cMVOZ9MfOOCnlV/s320/800px-CRH2C_&_CRH3C_200808.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The UK's West Coast Main Line is carrying more passengers than either the Beijing - Tianjin or the Wuhan - Guangzhou high speed corridors in China.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A remarkably diverse set of figures detailing the ridership of high speed rail services across the globe has landed on my desk this week. And compelling reading they make too – not least because they reinforce, to an unexpectedly large degree, the sheer scale of demand for inter-city rail travel here in Britain.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first surprise is the scale of uptake of services on the much-derided High Speed 1 from London to the Channel Tunnel. Whilst criticised as ‘poor value for money’ under the exceptionally narrow terms of reference set out by the UK’s National Audit Office in <a href="http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/1012/high_speed_1.aspx">a recent report</a>, train operator Southeastern <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-17769743">this week confirmed</a> that its Kent domestic services had added 1 million passenger-journeys in the past year, taking ridership to 8 million a year.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Adding the circa 9 million Eurostar passengers takes the tally to a respectable 17 million, set against widely-reported claims that the route was expected to carry 21 million by 2012. However, since that forecast was undertaken by a commercial entity bidding for the right to operate Eurostar services alongside the French and Belgian state railways, it is unclear if allowance was made for other operators using the then Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Progress in launching much-anticipated through trains to the Netherlands and Germany has been glacially slow (for reasons entirely unrelated to HS1 itself), but Eurostar is already seeing strong growth in Amsterdam journeys via Brussels, suggesting a viable market exists. We should expect HS1 to break the 20 million mark by the end of the decade. Then perhaps a more meaningful analysis of the costs and benefits of this 40+ year asset can start to be made.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Second, a landmark study prepared by academics at Cambridge University for the World Bank [1] analyses the first three years of China’s chequered high speed programme. Whilst much has been written (some of it sadly sensationalist) about the very serious problems that have affected both the operational railway and its associated Ministry, this report digs as far as possible into the (admittedly partial) commercial data to attempt to quantify ridership levels.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whilst the mammoth 1 300 km Passenger-Dedicated Line from Beijing to Shanghai has not been open long enough to warrant inclusion, the 970 km route from Wuhan to Guangzhou saw 22 million passengers in 2011. At the other end of the spectrum, 25 million took the short 117 km dash from Beijing to Tianjin. The report’s authors note significant progress in eliminating domestic flights on services up to 500 km, but a sharply reduced effect beyond that. On the debit side, there has been some contraction in conventional passenger services on parallel routes, although an increase in environmentally-beneficial rail freight services has also been recorded.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And thirdly to Spain, Europe’s most extensive high speed rail network by route length. The Spanish trade magazine <a href="http://www.vialibre-ffe.com/"><em>Via Libre</em></a> has produced a celebratory edition marking 20 years since the launch of Madrid – Seville AVE services, and with it, the journal has included graphic showing ridership by route. Surprisingly, Spain’s busiest corridor, the former ‘air bridge’ from Madrid to Barcelona that can be completed in just 2 h 30 min by rail, carries a mere 2.2 million per annum; many of the other high speed and quasi-high speed routes carry far fewer. But such is the mass popular support for high speed rail in Spain, construction <a href="http://www.railwaygazette.com/nc/news/single-view/view/madrid-ourense-high-speed-ppp-contracts-awarded.html">continues apace</a>, even to sparsely-populated regions such as Galicia and, in due course, Extremadura.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Clearly Spain has benefited from substantial EU regional development funding and low labour and land acquisition costs in developing the AVE network, yet such comparatively modest ridership implies strongly that the wider social and economic benefits are sufficient to warrant its expansion. (These external benefits are all too often simplistically dismissed, especially by those demagogues who cling to the outdated cant that rail spending is ‘subsidy’ while road or aviation spend is ‘investment’.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Back to Blighty then for the logical conclusion. Virgin Trains <a href="http://mediaroom.virgintrains.co.uk/2011/10/thousands-more-seats-as-virgin-trains.html">carried 30 million passengers</a> on its fast West Coast Main Line services in 2011, of which the vast, vast majority would transfer to HS2 if it opened <strong>tomorrow</strong>, let alone in 2026. As I have pointed out already on several occasions, one of the most deleterious aspects of the West Coast Route Modernisation saga was the rampant prioritisation of London at the expense of intermediate markets. Unpleasant though this is, it at least means we can be sure a proven market exists for HS2 <strong>now </strong>– no crystal ball required, as Andrew Adonis has so often stated.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And in the light of these latest figures, the message is clear: HS2 promises to be among the world’s busiest inter-city rail routes, carrying 15 times as many passengers as Spain’s busiest route, and potentially any other in Europe. On top of that is the suppressed demand from intermediate markets on existing lines. HS2’s opponents wish to strangle these markets further, but as UK rail demand returns to pre-automobile levels, the case to develop better inter-regional connections is compelling on environmental, social and economic grounds.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">White elephant? HS2 is anything but.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">----------------------------------------------------</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">1. High Speed Rail - The First Three Years: Taking the Pulse of China's Emerging Program was prepared for the World Bank by transport economists Richard Bullock and Andrew Salzburg, and Ying Jin, Deputy Director of the Martin Centre for Architectural & Urban Studies at Cambridge University.</span></div>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-17143619584231991132012-03-22T15:06:00.000-07:002012-03-22T15:06:38.979-07:0051M: a cut and shut case?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_pvezjmUSERMCBhOZvWxB3EFBp-GgZ6BXOAg6IYNHPXsgiLim33QVcnpT-ZwMWSQTy4QMDkk46N6WEy9QUG84sAQn5DoKITyzHvuQNa8oDVcDp-_zgO1uxW2pg3gLsUGy6YHKtDKXl_0l/s1600/800px-Wolverhampton_railway_station_sign_-_DSC08698.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_pvezjmUSERMCBhOZvWxB3EFBp-GgZ6BXOAg6IYNHPXsgiLim33QVcnpT-ZwMWSQTy4QMDkk46N6WEy9QUG84sAQn5DoKITyzHvuQNa8oDVcDp-_zgO1uxW2pg3gLsUGy6YHKtDKXl_0l/s320/800px-Wolverhampton_railway_station_sign_-_DSC08698.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 51M Group insists that there are 'no losers' from its HS2 alternative, but its Illustrative WCML Service Pattern suggests otherwise.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When something seems too good to be true, it usually is.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was reminded of this old adage this week when I stumbled upon the glossy ads the 51M Group has been <a href="http://hs2actionalliance.com/images/Justine%20Greening%20interview%20Total%20Politics%2020%2003%2012.pdf">running in <em>Total Politics</em></a> magazine criticising the UK government’s decision to press on with HS2. Clearly, I thought to myself, this is nuts: if we can have ALL this extra rail capacity for a mere £2.1bn, versus the purported £17bn for HS2 (Phase I), why wouldn’t we? And if we can extract benefits worth £5.17 for every £1 we spend, surely we should? As the advert says…there are no losers, honest! Every egg a bird.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The slickest of back street car salesmen could hardly have put it better. Yet as readers of this blog will already have noticed, there are plenty of losers from 51M’s attempt to offer a cut-and-shut banger as a stretch limo. Fortunately you don’t have to delve too far to see the rust peek through this ‘Optimised Alternative’. Network Rail was of course absolutely right to point out in its <a href="http://assets.dft.gov.uk/publications/hs2-review-of-strategic-alternatives/hs2-review-of-strategic-alternatives.pdf">response to the proposal</a> the knock-on effects for regional and commuter services, with some stations in Staffordshire <a href="http://njak100.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/hs2-alternatives-will-your-local.html">left without rail services</a> and a reduction in capacity on the Northampton – London Euston route. Yet in other respects NR was quite generous in its appraisal – and the <em>TP</em> ads show why.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My previous posts have pointed out the detail of the West Coast Main Line element as submitted to the HS2 consultation last year. Grainy though the <a href="http://www.betterthanhs2.org/download/A%20Better%20Railway%20for%20Britain%20v1.1.pdf">image on p30</a> of 51M’s submission is, this now infamous schematic is the only primary evidence showing exactly what kind of rail service the group actually proposes.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUAzWsZB4_rZRNPGNW0PeCAhi1Ck4WKcyWZuCQJH2rJ2JGLe_Gg_5Kc4JYQ2GwBik9lujXQ6mOuJYxmafrGg4gknv4_vImf1xlezXp99N-zdjqcg7V0UFiW-QWhlx6qp9A0umegsNfbuEu/s1600/PTN+Taktfahrplan+for+WCML.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img aea="true" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUAzWsZB4_rZRNPGNW0PeCAhi1Ck4WKcyWZuCQJH2rJ2JGLe_Gg_5Kc4JYQ2GwBik9lujXQ6mOuJYxmafrGg4gknv4_vImf1xlezXp99N-zdjqcg7V0UFiW-QWhlx6qp9A0umegsNfbuEu/s320/PTN+Taktfahrplan+for+WCML.jpg" width="194" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It had struck me immediately that, whilst a two-hourly service to Windermere and Blackpool is included, existing direct trains from London to Wolverhampton and beyond Chester to North Wales and Holyhead are not. NR recognised the Wolverhampton issue and charitably assumed that in practice Wolverhampton would still be served; Holyhead was not mentioned, so we can assume this, like trains to Stone, falls under the category of ‘not 51M’s problem, guv’. I had not given much thought to either element until the <em>TP</em> adverts popped up showing Wolverhampton as a ‘clear beneficiary’ and Holyhead as a ‘potential beneficiary’ of the 51M scheme. Surely some mistake?</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Interestingly, Atkins' <a href="http://assets.dft.gov.uk/publications/hs2-strategic-alternatives-study-update/hs2-strategic-alternatives-study-update.pdf">forensic assessment of alternatives to HS2</a> may answer the conundrum. The 51M ‘optimised alternative’ builds on a previous alternative scenario known as Rail Package 2, which was among several comparisons of numerous road and rail interventions made since 2009. According to Atkins, RP2 and 51M are in many ways very similar, especially in terms of peak service patterns. But on p22 of its report, the consultants note that 51M requires ‘15% less rolling stock’ than RP2. Tellingly, Atkins warns that this ‘may not be entirely appropriate’ given the lack of differentiation between the two scenarios. So the consultants then refined the assumptions about fleet size, once to bring 51M into line with RP2 and then again to add 10 trainsets for contingency. By the end of this process, 51M’s benefit:cost ratio has collapsed from 5.17:1 to just 1.61:1.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So if varying the amount of rolling stock in a large fleet by even as few as 10 trains drives a coach and horses through these oft-quoted BCRs, could this explain 51M’s reluctance to provide trains along the coast to Holyhead, or to eke out more London –Birmingham cycles in a day with a single trainset by ditching Sandwell and Wolverhampton? We should be told.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nevertheless if the 51M package really could be implemented for a mere £2bn, then perhaps we should all just grin and bear the station closures in Staffordshire, the limited scope for growth and the potentially dire impact on intermodal freight? Sadly, all that glitters is not gold. The elephant in the room, not acknowledged by Atkins and only delicately raised by NR, is that the West Coast Main Line barely copes with current traffic levels, let alone up to a third more 125 mile/h inter-city services. Virgin Trains has been marooned at the bottom of the monthly national punctuality tables for 12 of the past 13 periods. As one senior Virgin Rail Group executive told me in January:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>‘What people don’t realise is that, even after you’ve spent £9bn on it, you still have a fundamentally 1960s railway.’</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The reality is, questionably simplistic glossy adverts aside, 51M’s ‘alternative’ risks turning our busiest main line railway into an unusable relic fit for none of the many tasks it is expected to fulfil. It is no surprise that no developed country with a sizeable legacy railway has attempted to shove a quart into a pint pot as we already have with WCML. It is quite astounding that a cabal of local councils and their think-tank acolytes should expect us to repeat the misadventure.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-50399987251701774972012-03-05T11:34:00.000-08:002012-03-05T12:18:16.163-08:00France and Italy ride out the storm<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPNscz_QFKkbrPGYXB0Pq4-CyVyUuQdIBtcaLPrch4iJwlfoYqAr_IF0kH-ineI9sI4XTIZif0tr98MNnE4PMyd__mRuhKWj69VZPfiPVqjLWu3cKS7SH0WwY10fRV5dOZuPuE9F0aI7py/s1600/ALST_44285-MedRes-EuroDuplex+LGVRR+4-Alstom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPNscz_QFKkbrPGYXB0Pq4-CyVyUuQdIBtcaLPrch4iJwlfoYqAr_IF0kH-ineI9sI4XTIZif0tr98MNnE4PMyd__mRuhKWj69VZPfiPVqjLWu3cKS7SH0WwY10fRV5dOZuPuE9F0aI7py/s320/ALST_44285-MedRes-EuroDuplex+LGVRR+4-Alstom.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">LGV Rhin-Rhone opened in December, France has four other high speed lines now under contract or construction. Credit: Alstom</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Outside what the French like to term ‘the Anglo-Saxon world’, high speed rail came of age a long time ago. Now an internationally-proven, increasingly-modular technology, it comes as little surprise to see investment continue even as the austerity agenda bites.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To reinforce this point, two significant growth spurts are expected later this month. On March 23, SNCF plans to introduce a TGV service between Frankfurt and Marseille, a distance of around 1000 km. The route has been launched on the back of the <a href="http://www.railwaygazette.com/nc/news/single-view/view/lgv-rhin-rhone-opens.html">opening in December 2011</a> of France’s latest high speed line: LGV Rhin-Rhone runs for 140 km across eastern France linking Dijon with Belfort, with extensions planned to reach Lyon and Mulhouse. This axis is profoundly significant because of its pan-European implications: a raft of competing long-distance trains is proposed from Germany to destinations in southern France and into Spain, and vice-versa.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Those ‘Anglo-Saxons’ who maintain the pretence that high speed rail is some kind of economic basket case have taken scant interest in the Rhin-Rhone project for obvious reasons. For a start, the line serves no dominant capital city, meaning by definition that the proven economic benefits of improved regional transport can only accrue to local centres such as Dijon and Besancon. By extension, the notion that high speed rail needs a single dominant economic centre to deliver a viable business case is severely dented. Second, international passenger rail services such as Frankfurt – Marseille cannot be subsidised under the legal terms of the European Commission’s rail market directives. Thirdly, the comparatively short section of new-build infrastructure – designed for 360 km/h with an operating maximum of 320 km/h – illustrates immediately how, in connecting two disparate pre-existing networks; high speed rail is anything but ‘standalone’.</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh02gbFa9lQigtcUihuHXqNYANahM7AScjplxTfivfr87lw02js1E9iHrS3fwfFkK6OIVV2hny2yvozNRZ1TfOS_2UGn09zARTnYaHf8aynYgE2fkZ0dnAYy2997pysW7YRGWRiiekbcE3E/s1600/ALST_43744-MedRes-IMG_0374-Alstom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh02gbFa9lQigtcUihuHXqNYANahM7AScjplxTfivfr87lw02js1E9iHrS3fwfFkK6OIVV2hny2yvozNRZ1TfOS_2UGn09zARTnYaHf8aynYgE2fkZ0dnAYy2997pysW7YRGWRiiekbcE3E/s320/ALST_43744-MedRes-IMG_0374-Alstom.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">NTV: the red-blooded challenger. Credit: Alstom</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Italy, meanwhile, private ‘open access’ high speed passenger trains are expected to be launched by Nuovo Trasporti Viaggiatori this month. Running from Milan to Naples via Rome on infrastructure manager RFI’s proven <em>Alta Velocita-Alta Capacita</em> network, NTV’s trains will compete head to head with state railway Trenitalia. By definition, NTV will receive no public subsidy, hence the operator – which is headed by Ferrari F1 Chairman Luca di Montezemolo – has spent many months tailoring its offering to market needs. Critical to its success of course will be its novel rolling stock: as has been widely reported, NTV is the <a href="http://www.railwaygazette.com/nc/news/single-view/view/ntv-unveils-first-italo-agv.html">launch customer</a> for Alstom’s AGV trainsets; the AGV is also the ‘reference train’ for the HS2 modelling in the UK.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Offering a service that the company promises to be ‘fast, agile and fun’, NTV’s debut may however have to compete for column inches with the salutary stories emerging from the Susa valley on Italy’s northwestern border. A series of <a href="http://www.corriere.it/english/12_marzo_01/notav_f97cc974-63b4-11e1-b5fe-fe1dee297a67.shtml">occasionally violent skirmishes</a> has broken out amid the so-called ‘No TAV’ protests against planned construction of a new railway between Turin and Lyon in France. Some media reports have asserted that the Susa protestors reflect a rejection of high speed rail by Italians, but – as NTV’s emergence illustrates -- this is palpable nonsense.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now forming (literally) the spine of the country, the north-south <em>AV-AC</em> route has been more than four decades in the making, as construction of a dedicated fast line between Florence and Rome began in the mid-1960s. Progress was at times glacially slow, but nevertheless the high speed rail programme has survived Italy’s notorious political instability, such that even in the current economic gloom, <a href="http://www.railwaygazette.com/nc/news/single-view/view/brescia-high-speed-line-contract-signed.html">contracts continue to be let</a> to reshape the ‘spine’ as a ‘T’ by extending the network from Milan towards Genoa and Venice.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <a href="http://www.ltf-sas.com/index.php?lg_visite=en">Lyon – Torino Ferroviaire project</a> however is hardly a high speed rail link in the accepted sense of the term, as the railway would primarily be used for transit freight between the two countries. At the heart of the scheme is a vast 57 km Base Tunnel under the Alps: longer than the Channel Tunnel, it is only directly comparable to the equally <a href="http://www.alptransit.ch/en/project.html">massive trans-Gotthard programme</a> in Switzerland. Interestingly, the Swiss equivalent has garnered little if any visible objection, perhaps because it is backed by a national referendum which allocates funding to remove trucks from the country’s motorways.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the Swiss story brings its own lessons for outside observers, and that is another post for another day…</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-75352129000610205252012-02-05T11:54:00.000-08:002012-02-06T05:54:15.019-08:00High speed rail: the quest for context<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLL70DzfuudTxMSCxOv-MAYjIpZBImKBrRQSod-XaMbMlXJ_3WsunQ9Jp8bbhTmbat3x6NjLfJJIIaq2FYmvdT5JcBD0nNCwAaf27wYr_l-a92cnCP3U4HGihd_7_sxqmwaD-ly079bLCW/s1600/tn_fr-lille-europe-ice3-db.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLL70DzfuudTxMSCxOv-MAYjIpZBImKBrRQSod-XaMbMlXJ_3WsunQ9Jp8bbhTmbat3x6NjLfJJIIaq2FYmvdT5JcBD0nNCwAaf27wYr_l-a92cnCP3U4HGihd_7_sxqmwaD-ly079bLCW/s320/tn_fr-lille-europe-ice3-db.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Deutsche Bahn's long-planned services from Germany and the Netherlands to London will pass through Lille. Photo: DB AG</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is always beneficial every once in a while to step away from the heat and (occasional) light of a local debate and look at the bigger picture. On a personal level, one of the most frustrating aspects of the debate over High Speed 2 in the UK has been the widespread use of international comparisons as a blunt instrument with which to bash one’s opponents.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most of these benchmarking exercises have simplified global high speed rail experience either to some kind of panacea for economic miracles, or as a massive con trick propagated by the EU, the rail supply industry, the nuclear sector, or Uncle Tom Cobbley.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As an HS2 supporter and an international rail journalist, I am obviously keen to point out where high speed rail has done well and why (and it is worth adding the rider that, as Andrew Adonis has pointed out, no city which has received high speed rail has said it would rather not have it). In May last year, I </span><a href="http://www.railwaygazette.com/nc/news/single-view/view/business-leaders-push-for-faster-liberalisation.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">went to Lille</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to interview the local business community, and specifically Thierry Mabille de Poncheville, Managing Director of APIM, a promotion agency which sells the city to inward investors. It was heartening to hear that, in preparing its report on HS2, the Commons Transport Select Committee also visited the city.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mabille and his colleagues were adamant that, of course, the city would be worse off without the LGV Nord high speed line. It was suggested that perhaps 50 000 jobs created since 1993 could be attributed to high speed rail. There are counter-arguments of course – the Nord Pas de Calais region remains an unemployment blackspot and </span><a href="http://hs2theregionalimpact.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/french-lessons-is-hs2-a-cost-effective-tool-for-regional-regeneration/"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">some observers</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> claim that the region is worse off today than prior to the coming of the TGV, relative to the rest of France. (I’d suggest that’s a slightly dodgy argument as France has few other heavily industrialised areas, and perhaps a better comparator might be Belgium, but that’s an aside…)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But these are robust, balanced discussions which will continue for some time yet – indeed, the question of Lille’s experience featured in a wide-ranging webchat on <em>The Guardian</em>’s website </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/local-government-network/2012/jan/31/live-discussion-hs2-local-economies"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">this week</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How sad then that the mass media unquestioningly allows high-profile columnists to parrot simplistic scaremongering about ‘bust’ high speed rail without bothering to review the context. The </span><a href="http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2012/01/gilligans-travelling-fantasy-island.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Zelo Street blog</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> did a better job than I could of picking apart Andrew Gilligan’s wayward tirade against high speed rail in the Netherlands, for example. Mr Gilligan's errors were compounded by recent news that Thalys <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-eco/2012/01/31/97002-20120131FILWWW00491-thalys-ca-et-trafic-en-hausse-en-2011.php">continues to grow revenue and ridership</a> on its Paris - Amsterdam route, the only high speed services which use the Dutch line at present.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But sometimes the most illuminating context can be provided from far afield. I was most impressed by a </span><a href="http://www.rpa.org/2012/01/the-uk-moves-ahead-with-high-speed-rail-can-the-us-follow.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">comparative piece</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> put together by Dan Schned and Petra Todorovich of the America 2050 lobby group reflecting on how the outline approval of HS2 might affect plans to implement true high speed rail in the northeastern USA. I was lucky enough to meet Ms Todorovich at a conference in New York last autumn, and I was immediately impressed by her grasp of the intricacies of the HS2 debate, and her knowledge of the problems encountered during the West Coast Route Modernisation of 1998-2009.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are compelling similarities between HS2 and the Northeast Corridor high speed programme, yet from the bluster exhaled on this side of the Pond, you’d think the curious Californian project was the only show in town, as the rail pessimists fall over each other to </span><a href="http://stophs2.org/news/2999-price-environment"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">pronounce its supposed imminent demise</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The quest for context continues.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-79233178765179145342012-01-24T13:20:00.000-08:002012-01-24T13:29:47.577-08:00The 51M debate: join the dots…<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCYqJi8NxUIX6UGqrYucvu7arFxTrcZWZwttBo7bcNs-rUv8tWbUDFUTNmIvRxcGZZGQP_z7bHwQh1Ttn-u_zXiuOa2abUS813K9K3m6adibkF0Qlo5HizqXK-d66fXLA6Ue7LTGXP4L52/s1600/PTN+Taktfahrplan+for+WCML.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCYqJi8NxUIX6UGqrYucvu7arFxTrcZWZwttBo7bcNs-rUv8tWbUDFUTNmIvRxcGZZGQP_z7bHwQh1Ttn-u_zXiuOa2abUS813K9K3m6adibkF0Qlo5HizqXK-d66fXLA6Ue7LTGXP4L52/s640/PTN+Taktfahrplan+for+WCML.jpg" width="389" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 51M timetable proposal as developed by Passenger Transport Networks.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, it’s no surprise at all that the fur has started to fly in the wake of <a href="http://njak100.blogspot.com/2012/01/hs2-alternatives-will-your-local.html">my blogpost</a> about the risk of 51M’s HS2 counter-proposal closing stations in the Midlands.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Responding via Twitter, Jerry Marshall, arguably the most high profile HS2 opponent and close affiliate of the 51M Group, has accused Network Rail of ‘deception’ and insisted that the 51M proposal would not lead to any such closures, as four-tracking the Rugby – Crewe section of the West Coast Main Line and construction of a flyover at Norton Bridge would provide appropriate capacity. But this argument does not stand up to scrutiny.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In drawing up its <a href="http://www.betterthanhs2.org/download/A%20Better%20Railway%20for%20Britain%20v1.1.pdf">‘optimised alternative’</a> to HS2, 51M contracted the York-based consultancy Passenger Transport Networks to draft a WCML timetable using the Viriato software developed by the Swiss firm SMA + Partner in conjunction with the Technical University of Zürich. Now I happen to have met both Jonathan Tyler of PTN and the staff at SMA, and I can confirm that Swiss timetabling specialists make Swiss watchmakers look positively casual.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mr Marshall’s implication that the Atherstone and Rugeley services might be added in afterwards is simply implausible – that’s why Stockport, Long Buckby, Runcorn etc all have dots on the chart, and the threatened stations don’t.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the case of Stone, I tend to agree with Mr Marshall’s suggestion that the Norton Bridge flyover might make a service from the Birmingham direction – rather than London as now – more viable, and this would probably be good for local passengers. But, as NR points out, it’s still not in the 51M proposal, so basically it becomes ‘somebody else’s problem’ to find capacity through the busy nodes of Wolverhampton and Stafford. And for 51M to even suggest this is risible in itself: one of the key tenets of the group’s campaign against HS2 is the suggestion that HS2 is an ‘all or nothing’ answer when incremental improvements are needed.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now we discover that not only are these previously little-mentioned incremental improvements well in hand, but the 51M Group is now embracing them wholesale to make a point! I’d laugh if it weren’t such a serious subject.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is much more to say about the flaws of 51M, not least the sheer fragility of the much-vaunted cost:benefit ratios (subscribers to <a href="http://www.railwaygazette.com/publications/rail-business-intelligence/profile.html"><em>Rail Business Intelligence</em></a> will be able to read a bit more on this) and on freight. But I am going to leave you with a little Liverpudlian vignette.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This exchange, between the MP for Southport and Stuart Baker of the Department for Transport, occurred at a <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmpubacc/189/189.pdf">Public Accounts Committee hearing</a> in 2007 examining the last West Coast Main Line upgrading. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Q29 Dr Pugh: I do not know whether my colleagues have noticed that the agenda for today calls the Report that we are examining The Modernisation of the West Coast Main Line. Either that is a Freudian misprint or it shows an unexpected sense of irony from the Clerks. It is only to be expected, considering that the cost of the project has gone from £1.6 billion to £9 billion in relatively few years. May I first ask a series of slightly parochial questions? Lauding the benefits of the modernisation of the West Coast Main Line, the Secretary of State for Scotland said in a recent statement that there will be an hourly service from Liverpool to London. A stock market statement released by the Department for Transport said the same. Surely I cannot be the only one who has noticed that we have had an hourly service from Liverpool to London for some time prior to the modernisation. Is there a commitment to complete all the bits of the West Coast modernisation, specifically those that affect the port of Liverpool, and, if so, within what time scale?</em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Mr Baker: The stock market statement explains that London to Liverpool will remain an hourly service.</em></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And indeed Liverpool currently has a basic hourly service to London with a couple of extra trains at peak hours, and from the end of next year, most of these trains will be 11-car Pendolinos…exactly the service specified by 51M and the PTN schematic. Indeed, the only additional capacity conferred by the 51M proposal would be a net gain of about 20 seats per train if there is one fewer first class saloon. Compare this with today's all day frequencies on routes from London to Newcastle (2tph), Sheffield (2tph), Leeds (2tph), Manchester (3tph) and Coventry (5tph).</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the wake of the recent controversy about Liverpool’s ‘managed decline’, it’s illuminating to see what a cabal of predominantly southern local councils considers to be future proofing our transport network.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086624128165582510.post-86566788906700284472012-01-12T13:46:00.000-08:002012-01-12T15:14:29.345-08:00HS2 alternatives: will your local station end up Stone dead?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaSHBmeD7TW2IXGS6j8uLKQIEAgBvrTBmZMW-e0u6GsG_flZnUFe9bYNCCkWr-dZ6Zq-Ci-FO_SjHW0lfNMw4puk6t2nHtRe9cO7gZ8ZuEysktwMh7BkafH3LYZiNFueImA9Bsnk1i-9QK/s1600/800px-Stone_railway_station_looking_south.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaSHBmeD7TW2IXGS6j8uLKQIEAgBvrTBmZMW-e0u6GsG_flZnUFe9bYNCCkWr-dZ6Zq-Ci-FO_SjHW0lfNMw4puk6t2nHtRe9cO7gZ8ZuEysktwMh7BkafH3LYZiNFueImA9Bsnk1i-9QK/s320/800px-Stone_railway_station_looking_south.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stone station: under threat from alternative proposals to HS2.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I should be happy: we have reached the end of the beginning. UK Transport Secretary Justine Greening has indeed <a href="http://www.railwaygazette.com/nc/news/single-view/view/government-to-go-ahead-with-high-speed-2-plans.html" target="_blank">confirmed the government’s commitment</a> to press ahead with construction of a national high speed rail network, starting with the first phase of HS2 between London and the West Midlands.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There certainly won’t be any gloating from those in favour of the project; there is too much work still to do, not least of which is to negotiate the laborious Hybrid Bill process in Parliament. Nevertheless, I’d say there was a ‘better than evens’ chance of HS2 going ahead. But any suggestion that the debate over the merits of the project would subside is misplaced – arguments about the scheme’s benefits will run and run. And to that end, the question of ‘if not HS2…?’ is not going to go away.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My support for HS2 has always been caveated by the need for it to be cheaper, greener and, if possible, sooner. And I think all those points are achievable – but more than anything, we cannot repeat the diabolical blunder that was the £9bn West Coast Route Modernisation. I <a href="http://njak100.blogspot.com/2012/01/we-have-been-wrestling-with-wcml.html" target="_blank">blogged about this</a> in detail the other week, and – despite it barely meriting a mention in most mass media coverage of yesterday’s announcement – it remains one of the most <a href="http://bit.ly/gVEOu3" target="_blank">botched public procurement projects</a> of recent years.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps the most unpleasant aspect of WCRM for anyone who cares about our rail network was the enforced closure of three stations in Staffordshire on capacity grounds. Barlaston, Wedgwood and Stone stations were closed in 2003 at the height of the mess; the latter reopened in 2008, served by an hourly stopping train from London.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why does this matter now? Because, appallingly, history might be about to repeat itself, and nobody appears much bothered. Opposition to HS2 is being led by the High Speed Action Alliance of local campaigners and 51M, a group of local authorities opposed to the new line. They have <a href="http://www.betterthanhs2.org/download/A%20Better%20Railway%20for%20Britain%20v1.1%20summary.pdf" target="_blank">prepared a counter-proposal</a> insisting that the existing rail network can meet projected growth between London and the north for the foreseeable future.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the lead up to Justine Greening’s announcement, Network Rail and the Department for Transport <a href="http://assets.dft.gov.uk/publications/hs2-review-of-strategic-alternatives/hs2-review-of-strategic-alternatives.pdf" target="_blank">published a report</a> casting doubt on the benefits of such a strategy. Buried in the report is confirmation that ‘some stations would be left unserved by rail’ under the alternative plans; they are Atherstone and Stone (p6). The report adds that Rugeley would lose its rail service down the Trent Valley line towards Nuneaton, Rugby and London – a(nother) valuable local connection severed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As if that weren’t enough, the report also confirms proposals for a 21 km Stafford Bypass. This would leave the current WCML at Colwich and head through open countryside at grade to a point north of Norton Bridge; it would <a href="http://www.williambarter.co.uk/pdf/HS2%20is%20vital%20to%20provide%20for%20future%20capacity%20needs.pdf" target="_blank">provide capacity for just one extra train</a> per hour from London at a projected cost of more than £1bn. Not bad for those who claim to be acting in the best interests of England’s rural idylls…</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFrAu5RNIsOLRf2rPOhtvNgiY_YgU5ZjvGZZ2gshlzL9aH3s364L0DN60zk8DLQu-bRgASckLGDRE11gos0cFCEf0Icd3tYOdxx26fkrF4sI9GjU1GxZ0-b0cy8Tux_U4KU8BgsigjaTXl/s1600/Colwich+Staffs-credit+R+Kidd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFrAu5RNIsOLRf2rPOhtvNgiY_YgU5ZjvGZZ2gshlzL9aH3s364L0DN60zk8DLQu-bRgASckLGDRE11gos0cFCEf0Icd3tYOdxx26fkrF4sI9GjU1GxZ0-b0cy8Tux_U4KU8BgsigjaTXl/s320/Colwich+Staffs-credit+R+Kidd.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The village of Colwich, Staffordshire, where the Stafford Bypass would diverge from the West Coast Main Line. Photo: R Kidd</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I would be quite cynical about the release of Network Rail’s report if it did not reinforce previously-released assessments of capacity contained in its West Coast Route Utilisation Strategy. And the prior loss of local rail services in Staffordshire confirms that this is no phantom threat.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Principled local opposition to HS2 is understandable and in many ways healthy, but please let us not pretend high speed rail is some superfluous White Elephant: our creaking railway does not exist in the best of all possible worlds, we face some very tough choices about capacity. Greening is right to press on.</span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06437364068843189726noreply@blogger.com5