HS2: looking into the Great Beyond

HS2 services are envisaged to use an expanded Manchester Piccadilly station.

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 Command Paper and related documentation covering Phase II of High Speed 2, issued on January 28. Indeed, the time-consuming task of poring over the reams of paperwork 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.

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 painful analogy 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.

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.

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 TGV Haute-Picardie.

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 per se, 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.

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 muted reaction 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.

HS2 Ltd should state far more robustly in my view that any service pattern offered today is nothing more than the most cursory amuse bouche 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 Bow Group and others 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.

But while I think the Heathrow paths would be far better utilised for more fast trains to Liverpool and/or a London – Blackpool/Chester/North Wales 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.

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 Italy’s NTV could be considered much closer to opening.

The growth forecasts made by HS2 Ltd are exceptionally cautious; it says that volumes predicted at the outset for 2021 have already been exceeded. 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.

The real West Coast scandal

The West Coast Main Line: it seems disruption is for life, not just for Christmas. Photo: Network Rail

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.

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...

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 five days over the Festive period. 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.

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 West Coast Route Modernisation Programme undertaken between 1998 and 2009.

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.

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 landmark report authored by Virgin Rail Group COO Chris Gibb and issued on behalf of the operator and Network Rail.

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 Lignes à Grande Vitesse, where trespass risk can be modelled at the design stage; an unintended benefit of having fewer platform faces of course.

The difficulty in gaining access to the WCML for maintenance is also addressed:

'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.'

An examination of overhead power supply equipment revealed a yet more damning indictment of the ‘incremental upgrading’ approach:

'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.'

You get the idea.

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.

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 Shinkansen 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].

Closer to home, we can hardly dismiss the south end of the WCML as an obstreperous one-off. As this week’s multiple overhead power failures at Hitchin illustrated, 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 Rail Business Intelligence will already be aware of insiders’ mounting concerns about the costs and benefits of the London – Cardiff route modernisation, now priced at around £7bn.

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’.

The real West Coast scandal is about infrastructure, not franchising.
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1. For more details on the early years of high speed rail development, see Hughes M., Rail 300: The World High Speed Train Race, David & Charles, Newton Abbot 1988

OK, Computer? Infrastructure, technology and clairvoyance

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.

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.

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 unexpected explosion 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.

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.

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 Deus ex-Machina 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....

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!

And they shall be: apparently by Skype, with extra 3D twiddly bits. Or, er, something.

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 will 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 surge in UK passenger rail ridership, 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.

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 no 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 Anglo-Scottish rail spine.

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 Davies review 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.

Every bit as likely is a partial backlash against our screen-dependent culture, as concern grows about the health and societal impact 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.

‘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.’

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.

HS2 is not a franchise (thankfully)

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.

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.

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.

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 Daily Telegraph’s London Editor Andrew Gilligan, ‘some of the same statistical models are being used, in different ways’ to appraise the project, whilst former cabinet minister and Amersham MP Cheryl Gillan claims ‘elements like inflation figures and passenger numbers are common to both’ ICWC and HS2.

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 reams of documentation 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.

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?

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.

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 forecast to cease 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!

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.

Tilting at windmills

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

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.

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 plenty of coverage 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 ERTMS 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.

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.

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...

Anyone who’s read this blog before knows what happened next. 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.

So what’s changed since the late-90s? Not enough to warrant the hype given to Alstom’s statement. Here, briefly, are the catches:

• Capacity – 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.
• Infrastructure – 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.
• ERTMS – 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 a la 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 absolutely unproven (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 extremely reluctant to install ETCS Level 2 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.

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.

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.

A Letter from America

Northeast vision: an Acela Express train pauses at the restored Wilmington station in Delaware.

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.

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.

‘HS2 is our reference point’, Stephen Gardner, 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.

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.

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.

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].

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.

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 today. 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.

Whilst the controversy surrounding California’s programme will not subside anytime soon, most facile comparisons from this side of the Pond are an over-simplification. When it comes to US high speed rail, it’s not just California dreaming.

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 revenue and ridership.

HS2 is a Northern railway too

This article 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.

HS2 is essential to ensure capacity on the existing railway can be used to improve local rail services. Photo: First TransPennine Express

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. 

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.

Ed Jacobs’ astute investigation 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.

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?

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.

2. How would the project address the problem of trains persistently running late?

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.

3. Will HS2 do anything to relieve frequently overcrowded trains?

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 Northern Hub. 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’.

4. Would HS2 do anything about the train fare system which so many people cite as being too confusing?

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.

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.

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.

We are lucky in the UK that a huge market of more than 30 million passengers per annum already exists, 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.