HS2: the world’s busiest high speed railway?

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.

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.

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 recent report, train operator Southeastern this week confirmed that its Kent domestic services had added 1 million passenger-journeys in the past year, taking ridership to 8 million a year.

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.

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.

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.

And thirdly to Spain, Europe’s most extensive high speed rail network by route length. The Spanish trade magazine Via Libre 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 continues apace, even to sparsely-populated regions such as Galicia and, in due course, Extremadura.

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’.)

Back to Blighty then for the logical conclusion. Virgin Trains carried 30 million passengers on its fast West Coast Main Line services in 2011, of which the vast, vast majority would transfer to HS2 if it opened tomorrow, 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 now – no crystal ball required, as Andrew Adonis has so often stated.

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.

White elephant? HS2 is anything but.

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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.

51M: a cut and shut case?

The 51M Group insists that there are 'no losers' from its HS2 alternative, but its Illustrative WCML Service Pattern suggests otherwise.

When something seems too good to be true, it usually is.

I was reminded of this old adage this week when I stumbled upon the glossy ads the 51M Group has been running in Total Politics 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.

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 response to the proposal the knock-on effects for regional and commuter services, with some stations in Staffordshire left without rail services and a reduction in capacity on the Northampton – London Euston route. Yet in other respects NR was quite generous in its appraisal – and the TP ads show why.

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 image on p30 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.

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 TP adverts popped up showing Wolverhampton as a ‘clear beneficiary’ and Holyhead as a ‘potential beneficiary’ of the 51M scheme. Surely some mistake?

Interestingly, Atkins' forensic assessment of alternatives to HS2 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.

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.

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:

‘What people don’t realise is that, even after you’ve spent £9bn on it, you still have a fundamentally 1960s railway.’

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.

France and Italy ride out the storm

LGV Rhin-Rhone opened in December, France has four other high speed lines now under contract or construction. Credit: Alstom

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.

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 opening in December 2011 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.

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’.

NTV: the red-blooded challenger. Credit: Alstom

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 Alta Velocita-Alta Capacita 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 launch customer for Alstom’s AGV trainsets; the AGV is also the ‘reference train’ for the HS2 modelling in the UK.

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 occasionally violent skirmishes 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.

Now forming (literally) the spine of the country, the north-south AV-AC 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, contracts continue to be let to reshape the ‘spine’ as a ‘T’ by extending the network from Milan towards Genoa and Venice.

The Lyon – Torino Ferroviaire project 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 massive trans-Gotthard programme 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.

But the Swiss story brings its own lessons for outside observers, and that is another post for another day…

High speed rail: the quest for context

Deutsche Bahn's long-planned services from Germany and the Netherlands to London will pass through Lille. Photo: DB AG

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.

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.

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 went to Lille 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.

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 some observers 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…)

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 The Guardian’s website this week.

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 Zelo Street blog 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 continues to grow revenue and ridership on its Paris - Amsterdam route, the only high speed services which use the Dutch line at present.

But sometimes the most illuminating context can be provided from far afield. I was most impressed by a comparative piece 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.

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 pronounce its supposed imminent demise.

The quest for context continues.

The 51M debate: join the dots…

The 51M timetable proposal as developed by Passenger Transport Networks.

Well, it’s no surprise at all that the fur has started to fly in the wake of my blogpost about the risk of 51M’s HS2 counter-proposal closing stations in the Midlands.

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.

In drawing up its ‘optimised alternative’ 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Rail Business Intelligence 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.

This exchange, between the MP for Southport and Stuart Baker of the Department for Transport, occurred at a Public Accounts Committee hearing in 2007 examining the last West Coast Main Line upgrading. 

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?

Mr Baker: The stock market statement explains that London to Liverpool will remain an hourly service.

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).

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.

HS2 alternatives: will your local station end up Stone dead?

Stone station: under threat from alternative proposals to HS2.

I should be happy: we have reached the end of the beginning. UK Transport Secretary Justine Greening has indeed confirmed the government’s commitment 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.

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.

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 blogged about this 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 botched public procurement projects of recent years.

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.

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 prepared a counter-proposal insisting that the existing rail network can meet projected growth between London and the north for the foreseeable future.

In the lead up to Justine Greening’s announcement, Network Rail and the Department for Transport published a report 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.

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 provide capacity for just one extra train 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…

The village of Colwich, Staffordshire, where the Stafford Bypass would diverge from the West Coast Main Line. Photo: R Kidd

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.

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.

HS2: are ‘seats’ and ‘rail capacity’ really the same thing?

How important is seat occupancy if this train doesn't stop at your station? Photo: C McKenna

In my last post, I outlined the various compromises and shortcomings that had arisen from the £9bn effort to modernise the West Coast Main Line from London to Glasgow, Europe's busiest mixed-use railway. Several long-standing inter-city journeys were severed, and a number of local stations faced permanent closure in what amounted to a chilly swish of Dr Beeching's axe four decades late. But in the eyes of the High Speed Action Alliance and other anti-HS2 campaigners, none of that counts under the heading 'rail capacity'.

 
The only definition of ‘capacity’ they want to use is ‘proportion of occupied seats on trains out of London Euston’. The latest salvo in this direction is a research note insisting that only 56% of seats on peak time inter-city trains on the WCML are taken, ergo the need for HS2 is spurious.


HS2AA does however acknowledge, rightly, that the market for inter-city rail travel between London, Birmingham and the North is distorted by fares policy. Confirming former Transport Secretary Philip Hammond’s comments that at peak times the WCML was ‘a rich man’s toy’, a return ticket from London to Manchester leaving a weekday afternoon at 3.20pm routinely comes in at more than £200, even when specifying certain trains on both legs (note that advance purchase train-specific tickets enable the operator to keep 100% of the revenue, rather than sharing it with other potential providers under the ORCATS system, which applies to flexible fares). Little wonder then that occupancy is of secondary importance to yield in the business market; it is equally noticeable that yield is being maximised through ever-tightening restrictions on when cheaper tickets can be used (which is why 3.20pm counts as the ‘evening peak’).

 
Arguably a more valid assessment of capacity available versus potential demand would be to look at Sunday evenings, where (in my experience) many trains in both directions are very full indeed, with no peak fares to distort the picture. Indeed, based unscientifically on my own recent trips, I reckon there are plenty of business travellers on Sunday afternoon and evening services too as working patterns change. (As a further aside, on a recent Sunday journey from Liverpool to London, I found every first class seat was taken, with the exception of the Quiet Zone, reflecting that yield management can fill premium seats too).

 
Note also that HS2AA does not appear to want to draw the obvious conclusion from this bout of clipboard-wielding: ditch some trains. Because it is the number of trains, not seats, on the WCML that is causing both a capacity crunch and mounting unreliability. So if HS2AA believes that loadings on inter-city services are so weak, why not suggest that, for example, the thrice-hourly London – Birmingham/Manchester trains be reduced to half-hourly? The answer, of course, is that HS2 opponents do not wish to be seen as advocates of reduced regional rail services, even though (as I am sure many are aware), this was one of the consequences of the most recent 'incremental upgrading' of the WCML.

 
Similarly, they could argue for the inclusion of more intermediate stops on these lightly-loaded trains, for example at Watford or Rugby, which would partially restore some lost journey opportunities. So why don’t they? Could it be because this would entail longer journey times, thus threatening revenues and potentially leading to greater taxpayer support (anathema to HS2’s many critics on the doctrinaire right), or because the extra patronage would mean these trains weren’t so quiet anymore?

 
One last point on capacity: Virgin’s WCML services from London to Glasgow are relatively sparsely loaded north of Preston (I’ve seen this for myself on several occasions, and seen it corroborated by reports in the trade press). Surprisingly this phenomenon does not merit any analysis from the HS2 doomsayers: again, we can but speculate as to why…perhaps because 30 years of experience in high speed rail travel in Europe shows rail only gains share from airlines once journey times dip below the 4 h mark. Currently a typical Euston – Glasgow Central journey takes 4 h 31 min, with little realistic prospect of the existing line being able to trim those extra 31 min on a regular-pattern timetable on a reliable, long-term basis.

 
Indeed, it is hard to see rail gaining much more share on Anglo-Scottish journeys without using a new-build high speed line for at least part of the journey (and the Scottish Government tends to agree).