And about time too

[andrewducker]

Labour are talking about putting in decent high-speed rail links up the East/West coast:

The government and Network Rail are considering a £31bn proposal to build a network of 187mph high-speed railway lines that would boost the British economy and slash journey times.

New studies drawn up by Atkins, the engineering consultancy, show how developing the existing west and east coast main lines could see journey times from London to Manchester reduced to 74 minutes, London-Birmingham to just one hour, and London-Sheffield to 79 minutes.

Economic gains to the UK of £63bn far exceed the £31bn cost of building the network, says Atkins.

Atkins's report envisages that high-speed lines would run on the east and west sides of the country, going as far north as Glasgow and Edinburgh. They would replace most of the existing services and free up capacity for local trains.

From here.

Comments

[nuttyxander.livejournal.com]

Yes, but they've been talking about this for some time. The time to have decided to do this was about ten years ago when they were rescuing the WCML upgrade. Also, the Atkins study as shown in 2005 concluded that at the moment it would make the most sense to opt for East Coast first and leave an option to add a West Coast line later.

Intriguingly the cost benefit ratio has slipped from 3:1 as reckoned by David Begg in 2004 to 2:1, which presumably is rising land prices. At the crossrail rate of progress I'd confidently predict we get something built in 2020-2030 at the earliest.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Couldn't they better spend some of that money, for example, propping up their current tracks which, judging by the constant work across weekends and public holidays, are in a terrible state of repair?

If they can't keep their -current- tracks in one piece, building more is hardly a solution. The economic gains of being able to travel on trains that are actually running on time and to the right place at, just as a suggestion, Christmas and Easter, might be worthwhile.

[andrewducker]

The constant work _is_ them propping up the current tracks. What else would it be?

And the current tracks are never going to be high speed ones...

[andrewducker]

Oh, and Easter/Christmas will tend to be when maintenance is done, because that's the time of lightess usage, because the commuters aren't using them.

[nuttyxander.livejournal.com]

No, the problem with the existing network is that

A) It was not designed for high speed services, even the 125 mph stuff is stretching the network
B) There are insane capacity constraints, especially close to London (2 tracks at Welwyn anyone?), 50 mph curves and lots of local services to squeeze fast services around. Witness how quickly the service falls apart when a single train has a problem.
C) Demand is going to increase to a level above that which the current network could support.

Also, as seen elsewhere if you have a parallel high speed network then you can carry out engineering work at a quiet time on either the old or new network with the other network enabling passengers still to travel on the rails. Which would be a significant economic gain.

[themongkey.livejournal.com]

C) Demand is going to increase to a level above that which the current network could support.

Not if they continue raising the prices by stupid per cent year after year so it's cheaper to go by car (or, even more ridiculously, by plane).

[nuttyxander.livejournal.com]

Not really, a large proportion of the populace can't drive and can't get a parking space. Flying won't cut it for commuting.

The reason prices are rising so fast is pretty much linked to two factors, one is that running the current inefficient network is hugely costly in ways that a new network would not be and the other is that there is nothing better at sorting a demand issue than raising the price!

Even with these fare increases demand keeps going up, but it is being suppressed by it.

[guyinahat.livejournal.com]

If only speed were the only problem. Increased speed will increase demand and somewhat increase capacity - but not by nearly enough to even fulfil current demand at a reasonable ticket price.

What we need is double-decker trains. Double the volume of passengers and supply should be sufficient that easyjet tickets wont be half the price of train tickets.

If we got superfast double decker tains, the rest of Europe might stop laughing at out rail network. Though being realistic, by the time this country's inept financing, planning and construction run their course to build such, France and Germany will be on triple-decker 500mph trains, or teleportation.

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

I have a video of a double decker train! They look amazing!

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Its a terrible picture

[nuttyxander.livejournal.com]

Double decker trains are tempting, but aren't necessarily as effective as longer trains. Also, in the loading gauge available a double decker train would provide minimal extra capacity for a lot of fresh design and safety work.

Whereas if we build a high speed line we could pretty much buy a double decker design off the shelf. However, the driver on that would probably be what decisions get made design wise when they replace the current Eurostar stock - that could make for a good initial UK high speed train stock if we only had 100 miles of fast track for example...

[martling.livejournal.com]

Great, so even more of the country can become commuter suburbs for London!

[andrewducker]

You mean people will be able to move from one place to another freely?

Shocking!

[martling.livejournal.com]

The problem is that once people can easily get from A to B, A frequently becomes a shithole.

[andrewducker]

If A had everything people wanted in the first place then they wouldn't go to B. Trapping them in A is clearly not the answer.

[martling.livejournal.com]

No, but if you look at why they want to go from A to B in the first place, you might find a better way to spend £31 billion on making them happier.

[andrewducker]

But we do a fair bit of urban regeneration as well. Spending money on that shouldn't stop us having a decent transport system. Especially when we should be encouraging people to use trains rather than planes.

[martling.livejournal.com]

This is true, and I wasn't actually saying we shouldn't do this.

However, the best way to make people use trains instead of planes is to make trains cheaper than planes.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely. But at the moment we're actually maxing out the carrying capacity of the system a lot of the time. Usage has gone up a lot in the last 10 years and the system needs radical improvements.

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Stop stealing my friends :D

[andrewducker]

Who???

[guybles.livejournal.com]

I've lost track of the number of times I've seen that story (or a variant thereof). Given that the local elections, not to mention the London Mayor elections, are all coming up soon, it's an excellent time for Government to make lots of encouraging noises about necessary schemes. It might even make people feel better when the Budget hammers them on Tuesday (a story which was remarkably close to the one you mentioned.

I wish that The Observer wasn't so awful...although it's still somewhat better than virtually all the other Sunday papers.

[derumi.livejournal.com]

At first I was envisioning freight trains traveling at 180+mph.

[johanna-alice.livejournal.com]

This idea has been around about as long as the Bullet Train... It sounds nice, would cut down on car and air travel and generally be a good thing.

But.

This is the UK. Several things would happen. It would go over-schedule in a manner only exceeded by its going over-budget, and over buget deficit that would probably be made up by increasing ticket prices even more. Railtrack can't even keep the lines it has in repair, to the point that Virgins Pendelino's can't travel at anything approaching maximum speed north of, well, the Watford Gap. Increasing transit speeds would only increase the risks of a serious derailing.

Seriously. Lets fix the service we have, get the current rolling stock functioning at full speed and efficiency, then talk upgrades.