Posted 26th August 2009 | 26 Comments
Network Rail proposes London-Scotland in just over two hours
Network Rail concept animation still
A NEW £34 billion, 200mph, high speed line slashing journey times to Scotland to just over two hours and connecting with major cities in the Midlands and the North West is the best option to deal with the need for new rail capacity in future years, says Network Rail in a new report.
But a separate high speed line to Leeds via cities such as Nottingham and Sheffield would be needed as well says the 1500 page study which has taken 12 months to research.
The report – The Case for New Lines - maintains that Leeds, as a major commercial city, ‘deserves better’ than being linked to a new West Coast route via Manchester. It would be better served by a new North East high speed line, probably taking in Nottingham and Sheffield and this will be subject of a separate report.
The new line proposed is needed for the more critical West Coast route which by 2020 is expected to be ‘full up’ despite the huge £9 billion upgrade which has just finished.
Iain Coucher, Network Rail’s chief executive, said: “We don’t want to turn people way from the railways, we want people to come to the railways.”
The route envisaged in the detailed study would take around 10 years to build but would generate revenue and environmental benefits valued at £55 billion and would pay for itself 1.8 times over 60 years.
Major journey time savings to Scotland, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham would hit domestic flights by up to 3.6 million passengers a year, cut vehicle journeys by 3.8 million and reduce carbon by 250,000 tonnes a year.
The report has been published just four months before a report on a new high speed line between London and Scotland – with initial emphasis on the London to West Midlands section - is due to be presented to transport secretary Lord Adonis by High Speed Two Ltd, a company set up by the Government.
But during a press conference revealing the findings of its study Network Rail chief executive Iain Coucher stressed that the company was not trying to ‘duplicate’ the work of HS2 Ltd.
“We are not saying this is the only answer or the only way to skin a cat. This is a thoughtful piece of research designed to inform us of the options. The decision in the end is one for government.
“It is not a definitive work, this has been done to help inform the public debate on high speed lines.”
Asked about the funding of a new high speed line Mr Coucher added: “If the government is committed to providing an improved environment you have to make these capacity investments.”
He said that Network Rail had a duty to consider how the railway can meet future demand in the short and long term and this is what the new report was trying to do.
He said that funding would be phased over the design and construction period.
During the past 12 months Network Rail has considered up to 12 different options at a time when passenger figures show the railways are now carrying some 1.3 billion people a year – a figure which expected to nearly double in the next 30 years.
The study was set against a background of needing to link major economic centres and rival air travel times.
It looked at options including a line taking in London to Manchester with a divergence to Birmingham and services between Birmingham and Manchester.
But the business case for it was nowhere as good as the one adopted – from central London to Manchester with spur lines to Birmingham/Warrington and Liverpool and then from Preston north to Scotland where the route would split into two routes to Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Journey times would be London to Manchester in 1 hr 6 minutes compared with the current fastest time of 2 hrs 7 mins by Virgin Pendolino at 125 mph while London to Birmingham would see a 46 minute journey compared with 1 hr 22 minutes and the 380 mile London to Glasgow journey reduced from 4 hr 31 minutes to 2 hr 16 minutes.
The route would give up to four trains an hour to Birmingham and Manchester with Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh getting two trains an hour.
The study also comes down firmly against building a new route via Heathrow airport, saying that the vast majority of passengers on the high speed route would be travelling into a city centre terminus in London, not the airport.
Going via Heathrow would add another 15 minutes of journey time for the benefit of a minority and would not make ‘financial sense’ says the report. With Crossrail up and running passengers would have good connections to the airport. The best business case was a spur line to Heathrow.
The report also comes down against a connection in London with HS1 but recommends an interchange station near to St Pancras International.
A physical connection, it says, would be expensive, operationally difficult and be detrimental to the overall business case – most people will want to get into London, not Europe, the study argues.
In construction terms the route would need some 1,500 miles of track, 138 bridges and 30 miles of tunnels although at this stage Network Rail has not come up with detailed plans for the routeing of the new line.
There would have to be 53, 10-carriage and 20, five carriage, 200 mph trains.
Richard Eccles, head of route planning for Network Rail, told Railnews that the HS2 team and the Department for Transport had been kept fully aware of the Network Rail study.
“There has been a dialogue with the two organisations but this is our piece of work.”
On the question of terminals for the high speed line in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh, the study says they would be close to existing city centre stations allowing good access for passengers – but at this stage no possible locations have been drawn on the map.
* Other main travel corridors being looked at are – the North East corridor, the East Midlands corridor and London to the West.
Reader Comments:
Views expressed in submitted comments are that of the author, and not necessarily shared by Railnews.
notabanker, London, Uk
I agree with the comments of Kevin Walker . Reopening existing track beds would be best . The important thing is to get it done ! Now is a good oportunity given teh downturn in the economy . It shocks me that it takes 2 hours ten minutes to travel the 160 approx miles to Sheffield in 2009 Britain.
H T Harvey, Birmingham, UK
Whenever I read about high speed rail proposals there is talk of using links to classic lines in the case of the HS line being blocked or during maintenance.
Then there is tthe reference to London to Glasgow services using classic lines beyond crewe (say).
This is not possible without guage clearance of the classic line ( If I am incorrect someone please tell me.
On this topic I hope Network rail is to provide the necessary guage clearance in future electrification to this HS2 guage. For instance it would be insanity to electrify Liverpool Manchester using the 1974 Weaver to Glasgow clearances. The same could be said of other strategic route
Joseph Pestell, Newbury, UK
It would be great if the GC route could be reused to the extent that some of your correspondents think. Sadly, short-term thinking means that the trackbed has been built on in various places.
Even so, it is probably still the best option for the southern part of a high-speed line.
H T Harvey, Birmingham, UK
On the matter of a Birmingham Station Part of the Curzon St Site contained in the Grand Central proposal is still available. On the other side of the tracks to this site there is an an area of land that includes the Waste Disposal site that should be lokked at quickly by the Transport Secreatary and protected to meet this strategic need.
Just beyond Proof House Juction there is the freightliner depot which could also be considered I feel sure Freightliner would like to move from this congested site particularly if someone would pay them to do so.
There is also the land where the London to Birmingham Line crosses the Camp Hill Line and forms a triagkle with the Birmingham Derby line and the Freightliner depot.
We should never forget that stations need not be through stations and can be bi level.
Finally, moving further away from the City centre the are various plots of land in the Washwood Heat area including where the Aston Stechford line crosses the Birmingham- Derby line
H T Harvey, Birmingham, UK
When will the little minded, inward looking, closed minds, tunnel visioned, short sighted sceptics wake up.
The airport and motorway fanatics never decry gradiose schemes they back them. Why because it shows they are aware that in this way they SUPPORT their projects and believe in them. They want more runways, more lanes etc etc and they are not embarassed to ask for them even they they may not be justified (the case more often than not).
Please WAKE UP.
Yes we all want more electrification, I have spent half my life fighting against the closure of rail, lines and for the re-opening and electrification of others.
High Speed Rail will bring enormous benefits to the nation and provide us with a 22 Century railway not keep us in the 19 Century. Yes we should serve other areas of the Country and wales and Scotland but you have to start somewhere and then the 'Network Effect' takes hold.
What most critics and supporter of High Speed Rail links forget is that one of the benefits is that the 'movers and shakers' will make rail their first call for travel and then rail will become the 'favoured mode'.
HS2 services will feed traffic onto local networks, provide capacity relief for these networks enabling more freight and additional local services. Despite the sceptics HS Rail is far more efficient than air or car. Ignore the Booze Hamilton Allen reports CO2 findings they are totally incorrect. They find London to Scotland is will 'save' CO2 but London to Manchester or Birmingham does not. With a London to Scotland line passing within 15 to 20 miles of these cities Booze Allen presume a separate link for each is needed rather than short spurs off the London to Scotland line. Ignore road to rail transfer and do not even mention the cascade effect and the CO2 savings that will make.
Kevin Walker, Blackpool, England
If we really need a high speed line to manchester to london, why don't we reopen the Great Central route? It was closed in the late 60's, was built to the european loading gauge (the original idea was to build a channel tunnel and go on to Paris), it was virtually straight and as flat as a billiard table for most of it's route. It ran from manchester to sheffield, rugby, nottingham, loughborough, leicester and wembly stadium to maylebone. Most of the trackbed still exits, why not re use it? It should be quite a bit cheaper too, as the railway still owns the land, and all the cuttings, and most of the bridges and tunnels are still in place. There is even a station next to Manchester piccadilly (mayfield, on the other side of the road, closed to passengers since 1960) which is still standing and could be reopened. The scheme network rail wants seem to be the super deluxe train set, when the parts of the set they already have would do just as well. If the line from manchester to chorley was electrified at the same time, the whole trip to scotland could be run using electic trains.
Joseph Pestell, Newbury
Ref John Harper's comment,
400m platforms clearly follows French practice in that they are allowing for two 10-car trains to be coupled together.
Building new stations with such long-platforms will be very pricey in most city centres. Best available site in Birmingham would be in what was proposed some years ago as "Heartlands", some way to the north of the city centre.
Geoff Steel, Northampton, United Kingdom
This has really generated a lot of comments and rightly so.
However, if we are truly to become part of the European HS rail network then a link with HS1 has to be an integral part of this project as I believe that Network Rail's study under estimates the benefits. In my view a link to HS 1 would generate new direct international journey opportunities linking up provincial cities right across the UK and Europe and this would further reduce the demand for building more capacity at airports across Europe not just in the UK. This has already happened in Spain which has seen air travel plummet between Madrid and Barcelona since the HS line came into operation.
I suspect another reason is that this has a lot to do with national security and border controls in keeping domestic high speed trains and international services apart whereas this does not happen so much in mainland Europe where cross border high speed lines are becoming common place.
Another point is that we still have an obsession with everything terminating in London. You only have to look at the WCML timetable and see that it only serves the major cities at the expense of many towns along its route.
My vision is much wider than just a HS line(s) but more an integrated rail network that offers access to all our major cities and towns to both high speed domestic and international rail services. How could this be done?
Given the limited capacity at St Pancras (for both international and domestic expansion) I would develop and expand Stratford International providing the link to London (and Heathrow) with new High Speed Lines radiating out to the major cities of the UK. The new hubs at say Birmingham and Manchester and Glasgow / Edinburgh could have dedicated platforms and facilities for both domestic and international services.
At the same time by using the link already constructed at St Pancras I would develop and expand the Kent domestic trains on to the existing WCML; ECML and the soon to be electrified GWML and hopefully the MML. This would allow the 140mph trains to access many locations across the network such as Milton Keynes; Peterborough; Leicester and Oxford and Bristol giving fast links to the dedicated HS lines. By the time the first HS line is built we should have ERTMS (cab signalling) rolled across the major part of the existing network that would give the extra capacity needed on these routes to cater for the projected increase in demand for rail both passenger and freight.
This actually raises a counter arguement - when the cost of building the HS line is looked across the public spending demands of the nation - is that if ERTMS is able to provide the extra capacity we need on the "classic routes" do we actually need the HS line at all?
Alas, when looking at the NR vision it is too vague lacks substance takes far to long to deliver and the cost is far to high and I cannot see any Government having the money to fund this project without a major contribution from the private sector.
Tim Price., Nottingham., United Kingdom.
Whilst high speed rail in the UK is an exciting proposal, there are already two high(ish) speed lines linking London and Scotland. Do we really need another?
The £34 Billion would be far, far better spent bringing the current network up to scratch. For that amount you could electrify the entire network and have change left over, for in 10years time the Spinter and Pacer DMU trains working most of the local non electrified services, will be rapidly approaching the end of their service life, and with the reluctance of ROSCO's to invest in new diesel units, especially on the scale that would be required, mass electrification is the only viable option. Has anyone considered this?
James Atkins, Birmingham, UK
£34bn is a ridiculously high price to pay for a line which duplicates existing routes and for which the fares will be beyond the ordinary person's reach. I agree with Christian Wolmar that the money would be far better spent improving the existing network. Hopefully it will never happen as the Tories will have the good sense to cut back on public spending, especially vanity projects such as HS2 and Crossrail.
John Harper, Edinburgh, UK
The choice of a route through Birmingham makes sense as there is substantial West Midlands to Scotland traffic, West Midlands to Lancastrian cities etc. It will also free up WCML for more freight and local services. However given size of trains 400m platforms seem excessive, I would have thought 260m would be okay. I would build new low level stations at St Pancras- Kings Cross, New St and Piccadilly, utilise cross rail in Glasgow to free up space at Central, a link to Liverpool loop to free up space at Lime St, and bring the high speed route into Waverley via the east side reusing the old platforms 8/9.
David Emmott, Liverpool, UK
An earlier suggestion was to route the line via Manchester and Leeds to the north-east. This would provide the sort of interconnections between northern cities that we need, rather than focus everything on London. Already the (non-HS) proposals for electrification miss out the transpennine link between Manchester and Leeds which desperately needs improvement and speeding up.
The Spanish (not to mention the French) have transformed their whole country with a high-speed network in less than ten years. The Victorians did the same here in the 19th century. What has happened to us British?
Joseph Pestell, Newbury
I can not help but wonder whether there are people within Network Rail who are covertly seeking to sabotage any plans for a High Speed rail link to the North. It seems the only reasonable explanation for a hopelessly over-specified and therefore unaffordable scheme.
Much of the cost clearly relates to large new stations in city centres. Are these really necessary, or even desirable? Would it not be far better to provide Parkway stations at points where the High Speed line intersects with traditional rail links into city centres? Manchester is probably the exception but a site should not be so difficult to find there (G-Mex perhaps). I certainly can not see the economic justification for a city centre station in Birmingham when that gives only a 20-minute time-saving over existing services. I suspect that property developers sometimes have more to do with these decisions than transport planners.
Why seek to build a new station in the Euston / St Pancras area which would be enormously costly? There is unused space at Paddington / Royal Oak which also has the best exit route from London (a direct comparison here with TGV Sud-Ouest), the best potential depot space and the shortest distance to provide a Heathrow branch, mentioned in the report but not shown on the maps. Post Crossrail, Paddington will also have the better links to the business districts of the capital.
How can the high speed link be justified north of Preston? It was difficult enough to make the financial case for electrification to Scotland and there is not the same shortage of route capacity there. It must be far more remunerative to use that money to build a branch of the High Speed line from Birmingham International via the East Midlands and Sheffield to York. Trains to Scotland using a high speed line as far as Preston would give a journey time of approximately 3 hours: fast enough to be competitive with air as Paris-Marseille has proved.
And what to make of a proposal for some 5-car trains? If you only have enough passengers to fill such a short train, you can certainly not justify such expensive infrastructure upon which to run that train. In the same context, I note that none of the illustrations show double-deck trains.
Peter Gumbrell, Hove, UK
Blimey. You'd think this would be generally taken as good news, but from some of the comments here the Brits sure love to whinge. Regarding improvements at regional level vs high speed routes, one would hope that gradual and sufficient funding for the former would come over the years regardless. Investment and development of one should not necessarily preclude the other.
A start on high speed domestic lines has to come somewhere, and this would seem a fairly pragmatic solution. Mancunians should only be aggrieved that having been promised direct Eurostar services back in the 90s, forty years later it looks like they'll still be denied this luxury. However, the same situation exists in countries such as France. I would like to be able to travel direct from the UK to French cities other than the capital, but a change in Paris is still required. The future of High Speed Europe still looks like being very much a multi-hop, dot to dot solution between capitals/borders.
Bob K, Sheffield, England
With HS1 running into St Pancras would it not be a better Idea to have Have HS2 running from St Pancras ? to me there seems to be an absession with the west coast , the west coast upgrade was over budget and badley managed from start to finish. The line which has been the poor relation for a long time is MML but has finally been put on the Map by St Pancras so lets, build on that. Lets have an easy connection for a change , there is potential to make Nott`s , Derby 3 hrs to Paris with the right connection and not Much more from Yorkshire. We have two decent lines on the East and West Coast so lets have a fantastic one down the middle! i will finish by saying that if the Wset coast option goes ahead ,the DFT should demand that The MML is Electrified & upgraded to 140 mph Running with Pendalinos cascaded from the WCML .
Terry Piper, Altrincham, England
The proposal is just that, this will be a hot potato for Parliment then countless Public Enquiries to consider so that we won't see the benefit for maybe 20 years (remember Thameslink 2000 and Crossrail as examples of Government dithering).
As said before where will the Stations be, if the stations are outside the city centers the the benefit of fast journeys is lost on the transit time between the two. Finally what about the Yorkshire, Tees and Tyne regions?
Nick Hollinghurst, Tring, UK
Why don't we decentralise the country - like the internet decentralised communication? Why don't we organise our economy so that increased wealth and added value is shared fairly across the regions? This would reduce the pressure on the bottom right-hand corner of UK!
A well-planned transport network would contribute to this process and reduce the inefficiencies of congestion and overcrowding.
Let's have a multi-hub UK and move away from the (now 2,000 year old) mono-hub Londoncentric model.
Nick Hollinghurst
andrew ganley, cheam, United Kingdom
Shades of the Sherpal report in the Thatcher years,remember his proposals?
just two line from London to the NW/Scotland,no railway west of Exeter(or was that Basingstoke) forget Wales too.
This is pure fantasy and only goes to prove NR live in said land,stll Croucher has to justify his over-inflated pay packet.
And as for the journey times Birmingham in 46 minutes? what is there in Brum
that would possibly want me to go there!
And agree too about this fixation of every train centering on London,NR should start re-opening some of the disgracefull closures of the mad axeman Beeching
Still at least i wont be around to see it,thank heaven.
David, Manchester
i can already see what will happen here!!! the north is so used to having the cast off trains from the south, so willing to bet we end up with the old eurostar units in 20 years times when they are due for replacement to operate northern high speed services!! Northern Rail & Trans Pennine are actually paying excess revenue to the government but the companies to get new trains are thos receiving heavy subsidies figure that if you will!
ROY BURNLEY, BRADFORD, WEST YORKSHIRE
I THINK £34 BILLION ON THIS NEW RAILWAY WOULD BE BETTER SPENT ON OTHER PARTS OF RAILWAY IE WCML & ECML & MML & SOUTH COAST LINE TO CORNWALL AND NORTH OF ENGLAND.
I WOULD LIKE TO MORE NEW TRAIN RUNING IN YORKSHIRE
andrew blurton, STAFFORD, UK
I WOULD LIKE TO SEE MORE TOWNS & CITES ON THE EAST COAST WIRED & ELECTRIFIED BEFORE GETTING HIGH SPEED RAIL SERVICES TO THE CONTINENT FIRST & NETWORK RAIL SHOULD PAY MORE ATTENTION ON THIS FIRST AROUND DONCASTER & PETERBOROUGH VIA LINCOLN & ALSO THE LINE FROM DARLINGTON TO NEWCASTLE VIA SUNDERLAND WHICH BOTH COULD OPERATE WITH DESIRO UNITS LIKE LONDON MIDLAND WITH 350'S UNITS TO YORK & SUNDERLAND!!
IF A NEW HIGH SPEED LINE IS BUILT FOR THE EAST COAST FROM LONDON TO EDINBURGH THE CALLING POINTS FOR THE ROUTE SHOULD BE PETERBOROUGH, DONCASTER, LEEDS, HULL,YORK &
NEWCASTLE ON TYNE WITH REBUILT FREIGHT YARDS & STATIONS & COULD BE CALLED HIGH SPEED THREE IF IT WAS PROPOSED BY NETWORK RAIL FOR THEIR ROUTE & SERVICES MORE LOCALISED!!!
THEIR NEW LINE SHOULD SERVE KINGS CROSS STATIONS & TRAINS & NOT SHEFFIELD ONLY 10 MINUTES AWAY FROM DONCASTER!!!!!
Craig Ward, BLACKBURN, England
Yet again we have an urge to build grandiose schemes at huge expense when at regional level there are so many smaller schemes begging to be developed which would have more impact on a greater number of people than those benefiting from a high speed line. In the north more people travel daily between the northern regions than travel to London and yet for many of them their journeys are slower than they should be and the rolloing stock is often inadequate. In the north we need more electrification, strategic links rebuilt and redoubled and better rolling stock. I can put up with a 3 hour journey to London occasionally but would like to be able to travel faster and in more comfort across the north country on many more occasions. With better inter-regional links even more people would use the rail network but not necessarily use a high speed line to London that much more often.
Andrew Sage, London
This proposal is a credit to Network Rail and demonstrates to its detractors that it is commited to delivering a 21st centuury railway for the whole of the United Kingdom. This proposal effictively has holed the goverments dissapointing HS2 programme below the water line. Highlighting so well the shortcomings inherent in short distance high-speed network focussing on linking Heathrow and Birmingham.
On the face of it, it is a dissappointment to reject a link with HS1 but in reality the practicallity and need for this is limited; provided that a suitable site is located for the interchange (not Waterloo) to allow quick and rapid transit. This proposal is the most sensible and well argued so far, although i am less convinced of the need for a spur to Liverpool. Whilst a dissapointment for those living in Yorkshire and the North-east this western roting is the most sensible option to pursue. The logic for developing a high-speed line should be to provide a high-speed service where it is needed and not as some pseudo aid to revelopment.
Rob, Leeds, England
What about the East of the country? Surely Leeds should get a look in?
Robert W. Green, SHERBORNE, United Kingdom
A very logical proposal, given the dwindling capacity of the railways to carry the ever growing passenger numbers.
I have always been an advocate of the fact that "cutting or closing down completely, all domestic flights would release additional "on the ground" and "air traffic windows" at airports, in particular Heathrow, for future developing International traffic. Vacated domestic terminals would also provide ready made viable for reuse, Railway station connection perhaps?
With the existing rail International Channel tunnel connection, flights within the near EU countries should also be considered for closure. Given that this proposal is acceptable it would be possible the travel from Edinburgh to Paris on a high speed train!
All this, would in turn have the knock on effect of reduced pressure to expand or lay down new runways. Additionally the Railway has a greater potential to create jobs for skilled engineering apprenticeships. Not only will it "revolutionise passenger journeys" It will generate paths for many more railfrieght movements on lines away from the high speed routes. The possibilities are endless. I should like to think that Sir Richard Branson may read my contribution, he appears to be one, among the few who champion the Railways.
"Let the train take the strain"
In support of the proposal and its zero impact on the environment
Regards
Bob William Green
Simon Hulse, Stockport, UK
With NR redeveloping London Euston, have they considered where the line will actually terminate in the capital? As far as i can see there is no room at Euston, an alternative could be to use the redundant ex Eurostar platforms at London Waterloo. These have been empty since Eurostar moved across the Thames to St Pancras. It would make sense to use these whilst the DFT 'ponder' over what to do with this space. It would probably save NR alot of money to do this but thats probably not going to happen!