We like to think it is not often we get caught out at London Reconnections. Often there’s a hint, either spotter or official, if not an openly advanced warning, about significant announcements. Other times we have smelt them out anyway – reading through interminable committee minutes combined with the occasional sixth sense sometimes has its rewards. We must admit, however, that Thursday’s announcement by Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin about looking into Crossrail going to Tring in Hertfordshire caught us completely off-guard.
It seems we were almost certainly not the only ones. Press officers need holiday too and it quickly became clear that the media-handling floors of both Crossrail and TfL were missing the people upon whose beats this would normally fall. Indeed if further evidence were needed that this announcement was not carefully planned then one only has to go to the Crossrail and TfL websites and find no mention of it to realise that two organisations, normally so adept at handling public relations, have been left somewhat bereft. Finally there was a speedy post-announcement email from Chief Executive Andrew Wolstenholme to all Crossrail staff letting them know not to worry about something that was very much the concern of the project’s sponsors (DfT in this case) not themselves – not the organisation’s normal style of internal communication.
Dressing for the part
The DfT probably didn’t specifically plan the announcement to coincide with a few individuals holiday dates of course but everyone knows you don’t make significant announcements in August – a period of time that used to be referred to in journalistic circles as the silly season.
When coming across an announcement like this, one has to go hunting through the cupboards for the cynicism hat, put it firmly on one’s head and ask what the purpose of this announcement was. Unfortunately in this case one is left with many plausible theories but nothing that stands out as being a rational reason for this. Removing the cynicism hat and getting out the rose tinted glasses though reveals a number of positives. The thoughts of the current occupants of LR Towers – itself currently depleted by holidays – are however below.
Just like that
One of the things many things to watch for in a press announcement is the favourite of the magician – misdirection. The more something is emphasised, the more likely it is that the real point is something else. That very much seems to be the case here, and our strong suspicion is that Mr McLoughin’s announcement was very cleverly stage managed to completely hide what the announcement was really about – High Speed 2 (HS2). More specifically, the diversion of West Coast Main Line (WCML) local services in order to facilitate reconstruction of Euston. This is not to say HS2 didn’t get a mention – it did get quite a few – but the emphasis was that this was doing something for Hertfordshire commuters… oh, and an additional benefit was that it would also help HS2.
Tring and Bing
In order to Accentuate The Positive, the idea of diverting the stopping services from the WCML is linked to Crossrail. This is done because Crossrail seems to have near universal support. It is portrayed positively in TV documentaries, is shown as a model project on time and on budget and – very much in contrast to HS2 – has its own controversial planning issues safely forgotten in the past. To complete this picture the announcement was made at Farringdon (Crossrail) and not at Euston (HS2).
This tactic clearly worked and the BBC obligingly headlined their article Crossrail extension to Hertfordshire being considered. On BBC London, our regular transport correspondent, Tom Edwards, who would normally pass his critical eye over the announcement, was conspicuous by his absence – perhaps transport correspondents need holiday too…
Possible Advantages
Looking at the announcement more positively, this is ultimately the launch of a study to see how rail services to Hertfordshire can be improved. And to be fair, whilst TfL and Network Rail have talked about the potential benefits of such a diversion they have never talked about taking the opportunity to investigate how those benefits could be maximised. What is perhaps a little puzzling though is quite why Mr McLoughin felt that the setting up of such an investigation was not only worthy of an announcement, but a completely unscheduled announcement. At London Reconnections we have a couple of theories, but they are perhaps better suited to being debated on South London rail tours or our next Thursday pub meet, rather than committing to print here.
We must emphasise of course that the idea of extending Crossrail along the south part of WCML is not new. It was in fact looked at in the early days of Crossrail planning, but was rejected as not providing value for money. That was of course before the idea of redeveloping Old Oak Common was born.
In 2011 Network Rail mentioned extending Crossrail along the West Coast Main Line as desirable in their London and South East Route Utilisation Strategy citing it as option K1. They went as far as to state that “The case for this option is strengthened by HS2 proceeding” with the obvious implication that there may be a good enough case for the proposal without relying on HS2.
It seems that Patrick McLoughin is hopeful that such a case could be made for Crossrail to Tring to stand on its own because that would effectively decouple the project from HS2. One wonders if the issue could even be the classic one – “who pays” – but it is hard to see any future London mayor, current or future, contributing a penny if they know that the DfT needs this to go ahead to support HS2.
Putting prestige and money aside then, why place so much emphasis on making this part of Crossrail, not HS2?
Old Oak – No Joke
It is well known that certain people are very concerned about timescales for Old Oak Common redevelopment should HS2 go ahead. The problem is that the current workflow produces critical conflicts however you try to sequence the order of the works. One person who is particularly concerned is David Higgins, chairman of HS2, who is anxious for an early start on diverting the slow WCML services to Crossrail.
The problem is that HS2 Ltd. have no powers to do any work until the High Speed 2 bill becomes law. So if Crossrail were to include WCML services, and this was pursued with urgency without any reference to HS2, this would be extremely helpful.
It could be that the Secretary of State for Transport was slightly alarmed recently to read the Mayor of London’s London Infrastructure Plan 2050: Transport Supporting Paper and discover that the proposal listed as “Crossrail 1 to WCML Watford Jn / Tring” still had a prospective date of 2026. 2026 is far too late to be of use for the “fast track” HS2 schedule that the government seems so keen on.
The Paddington – Old Oak Bottleneck
One of the biggest potential issues of extending Crossrail to the West Coast Main Line is how you extend the existing terminating services from Paddington to the WCML. This involves a new connection at Old Oak. The enormous concern is that from the Crossrail portal to the point where the trains diverge to Tring the trains will be running on the Great Western Main Line (GWML) relief lines. This is going to be a severe bottleneck which will limit capacity on the GWML, although just how much is obviously dependent on the number of Crossrail trains one ends up running up the WCML. Providing an extra running line is expected to be doable but difficult. Providing two and segregating the services would be ideal if possible and really requires further investigation, beyond what has already been done, as soon as possible.
One organisation that may have a great deal of interest in the idea of extra tracks east of Old Oak Common could be the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea which has had its aspirations for a Crossrail station at the Kensal former gasworks site. Their quest to have a station added to the original project ended in failure, but any suggestion of extra tracks may well see them brushing off their plans and seeing if some trains could stop there without creating the previous objection – that the disadvantage to other users far outweighed any benefit to users of the station.
The plan for Crossrail is ravelling
The obvious benefit of switching services to Crossrail is that it makes better use of the railway infrastructure and give passengers a better service. Indeed the only real bit of content in the announcement was
Initial analysis suggests 40 per cent of passengers travelling into London from these locations finish their journeys within 1km of a Crossrail station, compared to just 10 per cent within 1km of Euston. The link would have the added benefit of reducing congestion at the station, specifically for passengers using the southbound Northern and Victoria lines.
Looking at it differently we have always said, and most readers seem to agree, that there were three very unsatisfactory features of the original Crossrail scheme:
- It terminated in the west at Maidenhead when logically it ought to go to Reading
- It terminated in the south east at Abbey Wood which although busy was not really a logical terminating point and the obvious further opportunities to go to Dartford or even Ebbsfleet (alternatively Gravesend) were missed.
- It seemed just almost unbelievable that trains from the east would terminate at Paddington rather than fulfil a role to bring further passengers in from the west
Indeed so prominent were these themes that they all made it into our light-hearted post-Christmas ditties in 2012. It seems quite incredible, and shows how fast things are changing, that little more than 18 months later with today’s announcement and the formerly announced proposals for Ebbsfleet Garden City there is realistic potential for all three deficiencies to be eliminated.
The extendadors look towards Milton Keynes
Inevitably suggestions have emerged arguing that there is no need to stop at Tring and Milton Keynes is a more logical final destination. Inevitably a comparison between Maidenhead and Reading is made. But those reaching for both map and crayon would do well to still their hands, at least for now. Distance-wise Tring is really the equivalent of Reading. Extending to Milton Keynes could be better compared with extending to Oxford.
This is not to say that a further extension to Milton Keynes is automatically a silly an idea. Indeed that was the original idea as stated in the aforementioned Route Utilisation Study. That study kept mentioning the expected rapid further development of Milton Keynes and it is the case that the good burghers of that city realise that, though it was built on the car, further developments require public transport. It is not therefore unrealistic to expect that some time in the future the morning flow into Milton Keynes will justify extending any existing Crossrail service from Tring to Milton Keynes – just not now.
Possible Crossrail extensions diagram from the London and South East Route Utilisation Study. Extending as far as Milton Keynes was clearly a serious possibility.
As with Reading it would still be expected that longer distance travellers from Milton Keynes would choose to travel by fast train to Euston. Alternatively, if a case could be made for stopping long distance trains at Harrow & Wealdstone (or Watford as at present) then a change to Crossrail could be made there. One advantage of encouraging changing to Crossrail before reaching Euston is that it would further take the pressure off Euston.
What if Crossrail becomes full within months of Opening?
We have said on a number of occasions that Sir Peter Hendy predicts that Crossrail will be full within months of opening. Although some may feel this is a bit of an exaggeration, no-one is prepared to go on record and contradict him. Clearly additional passengers from the WCML does not bode well under that scenario. Long term we should not worry too much because there is a lot of potential to increase capacity with up to 30tph in the central section and the trains could be extended from 9 to 11 carriages. Under current tentative plans Crossrail is not due to go to 30tph until 2029 but one cannot see why that could not be brought forward. Meanwhile we have the absolute unknown of how much traffic Old Oak Common will generate and it is strange that no mention was made in the announcement of a station at Old Oak Common.
Perhaps mentioning a station at Old Oak Common was inappropriate because Old Oak Common is associated with HS2. It does seem though that if ever Crossrail got too busy then separating the two main western branches with an interchange station at Old Oak Common and combining this with using one of the, by then, existing Crossrail branches to form the basis of of a new Crossrail line many years hence, would be the obvious way to go. One wonders what provision for this, if any, will be made in the masterplan for Old Oak Common.
Avoiding objections
Beyond the practical potential benefits and problems, there is one other aspect of this scheme which is no doubt very attractive to the DfT – that it goes some way to answering the objections the Mayor’s Office have raised (on TfL’s behalf) to HS2.
That TfL are one of HS2’s objectors is something which, perhaps surprisingly, has not featured significantly in the press. Perhaps this is because it is clear that their objection is not ideological but operational – as far as they are concerned the arrival of HS2 at Euston would place an intolerable extra level of passenger pressure on the Underground connections there. As a result, their general stance on the project has so far been clear – there can be no HS2 without Crossrail 2, whose plans they modified to include a station at Euston specifically to address this demand.
For the DfT this presents a particular problem. Even if Crossrail 2 represents good value for money, it is still a big expense to be pushed past the Treasury, and thus having it coupled in anyway to HS2 places a burden of risk on the timing of the latter. Diverting services away from Euston, however, provides room to manoeuvre, and in the aftermath of yesterday’s announcement both TfL and the DfT were happy to admit this was a key reason why this idea was being considered.
This did, however, come with one clear caveat – from TfL at least. That any extension to Hertfordshire should have no negative impact at all on the current service pattern for Crossrail.
An Investigation not a Decision
Ultimately, as some commenters have pointed already, this is an announcement that commits to nothing. To that extent it is seen as a weakness. This seems to be a legacy of the Thatcher era. Prior to Mrs Thatcher being Prime Minister it was quite common for the government and indeed the GLC to issue Green Papers. Green Papers were consultation documents intended to do exactly that – consult (as opposed to white papers which spelt out government policy). Mrs Thatcher did not believe in Green Papers. She believed in strong decisive government and the number of Green Papers issued during her period of office is one fewer than the number of state nationalisations that took place under her leadership. Whilst Mr McLoughin may not have formally issued a document, the announcement may thus be considered the verbal equivalent of a green paper. Maybe this is not a bad thing and maybe we should get back to genuine consultation as part of the government process without it being considered a sign of weakness.
Whatever the outcome of that consultation is (and according to the DfT we can expect this in December 2014), the announcement itself remains an unusual one. That this was a case of HS2 in Crossrail’s clothing is relatively obvious, but why it was felt important to make it now remains unclear. It was made at an event intended to highlight the Bam Ferrovial Kier’s 100th Apprentice on the Crossrail project. Crossrail are rightfully proud of their push to get apprentices involved in the project and it seems unlikely they will have looked favourably on the Transport Secretary hijacking this event simply to announce that he’s vaguely thinking about taking Crossrail to Tring. Perhaps the Secretary of State saw this as a government/DfT thing and was anxious to get the credit before the Mayor of London did. We are still left wondering if this sudden and apparently unscheduled announcement was by some means prompted by Boris Johnson announcing his intention to stand again for parliament the previous day.
Whatever the reasons, we will follow the consultation with interest – and (with tongues firmly in cheek) look forward to the half-term holiday announcement of an extension to Gravesend…
News today that HS2 link to Heathriw has been dropped by government see –
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-31814933
Given we are still awaiting result of both election and report on Airport expansion this announcement seems to be more about the coming election than long term planning .
It seems Anti Hs2 groups see this as a victory but same groups have in the past called for HS2 to be diverted to run via Heathrow !
Anyway HS2 link was scheduled for stage 2 of HS2 and so there is plenty of time for a future government to include a direct link for HS2 as part of a link to GWR to create better links to the South West and Wales .
To me dropping HS2 to Heathrow makes sense, although in practical terms for phase 1 I am not sure wha is changes, maybe less construction expense if no passive provision needs to be built?
I would think that extra paths to central London vs the airport would already be far more beneficial, especially considering a change at OOC to Crossrail for the limited ammount of passengers is hardly the end of the world if the interchange facilities are well designed (i.e to cope with luggage) and through ticketing is available, so analysis could already show a high degree of confidence the spur would never be built. Added to which you have a better chance to arrive at the airport terminal you want from OOC rather than on HS2.
So isn’t the route of HS2 via OOC now wrong too?
@ Theban
No it’s righter now, as OOC is the only way to LHR via HS2, changing to Crossrail 1.
The announcement conveniently saves the Treasury some contingent £s ahead of the 2015 Budget.
@ Theban OOC is just a short distance from Willesden Junction where WCML now runs and benefits with interchange to Crossrail and GWR can be built.
I still think the TFL plan lacks inclusion of interchange from Underground lines which run nearby and could be diverted to serve OOC . With Central and piccadilly Lines and maybe District being options .
I think an important implication of the recently leaked image of the new staged plan for rebuilding Euston has been overlooked. It appears that the plan is now to build only 6 highspeed platforms alongside the existing building as part of Phase 1 to Birmingham, with later highspeed platforms not added until Phase 2. This must greatly reduce the need to divert services away from Euston for rebuilding. According to the slide in the Camden New Journal report, 16 existing platforms will be maintained, which is only two less than now. You could probably fit everything in just by diverting the sleepers.
As a result, the Euston rebuild becomes less of a London Bridge (divert services away to take sections out of use for reconstruction), and more of a Waterloo (add extra platforms, and use the extra space to reshuffle services as needed while work continues).
This means that it seems unlikely the government will pay for a connection between the WCML and Crossrail as a side-effect of HS2.
@Ian J – “You could probably fit everything in just by diverting the sleepers.”
Where to? According to the March issue of ‘Modern Railways’, Serco has signed a 15-year €125 million service contract with Alstom to maintain the sleeper carriages (new to come and existing) at the Wembley (London) traincare centre (out of two in the contract, the other one being in Glasgow). Not impossible I suppose to divert from Euston; Waterloo has been mentioned in the past but not a satisfactory solution. If the new Anglo-Scottish sleepers are all they are made out to be, then they may be surprisingly popular – using Euston.
@Ian J – ah yes, the beginning of stage 2 of HS2 descoping. Two days ago, it was LHR,; did I mention that le Grand Euston would be the next to fall? Now for north of Crewe…
@Graham Feakins – compared with the savings from finding another temporary home for the sleepers, the savings from a descoped Euston are enormous. The problem is less than it was, assuming that the refurbed stock will have retention toilets – and there will be a short term degree of spare capacity at Waterloo once WIT is fully available again.
Ian J
Your link is broken – it redirects back to this self-same article….
@Graham F
“If the new Anglo-Scottish sleepers are all they are made out to be, then they may be surprisingly popular – using Euston.”
Why would they not be popular using Waterloo? End-to-end journey time is not a deal breaker for overnight services (look at the protracted shunting that goes on at Edinburgh every night) and the class 92s that will be operating the services from next month are more than capable of running faster than the 80mph required to maintain the existing schedules – although admittedly they have less in hand than the class 90s which currently operate the service. The class 92s are also equipped to operate on dc, so they can operate in and out of Waterloo.
Waterloo is at least as central as Euston. At worst, passengers will have to travel seven stops further on the Tube. (Many will have to travel seven stops less!)
@ Ian J & GH
Yes, descoping, as the reality of “promises” made hits the forecasts for future budgets (as the residents on the “Dawlish diversion’ have already discovered)
There is apparently a difference between (a) a pledge, (b) a commitment, (c) a promise, (d) a definite promise. You need to get (d) PLUS one of the other three before any weasel words from the soapbox can be taken seriously.
Castlebar,
You forget a commitment to examine or investigate. It has the word “commitment” in it which people latch onto and they ignore what surrounds it.
Particularly good for double-speak is “commitment to establish the feasibility of …”. This can then be taken by one side to mean that the project is already feasible and all that is needed is to present the case, that is clearly already there, in a way that gets it approved. Of course what was probably meant, but deliberately not spelt out, was that the commitment was to investigate to see if the project is in any way feasible – but with the initial assumption that it probably isn’t.
It is just one of many reasons why you have to read a press release very carefully and see what was really promised.
And quite apart from any changes of mind by the promisor (or insincerity), there is the issue that one can strictly only promise things which one is going to do single-handed. And not much infrastructure gets built single-handed these days, though I did know someone who thusly built a 4-bed house.
Otherwise, the promise has in it the implicit weasel-phrase “do my best to cause”. Arguably whoever promised the Dawlish diversion did his or her best to (indirectly) cause other people to actually operate the spades and shovels, but was thwarted by the fact that his or her best was not good enough.
@ PoP. Yes of course you are right and “commitment to establish the feasibility of …”. is a brilliant example of weasel-speak.
The world seems headed towards deflation with the Koreans cutting their interest rates now. I wonder if some projects might now get put on hold as they will be cheaper to build in 5 years time. Deflation is much harder to get rid of than inflation, as any Japanese can tell you from experience.
@Castlebar/PoP – another weapon in the draftsman’s armoury is to “welcome a feasibility” study, preferably accompanied by a visit to the site of the putative project in which you are seen boarding a train, chatting to passengers, and so on…
@Greg T: sorry, the link I meant to put in was this one:
http://www.camdennewjournal.com/hs2euston
(with samizdat photo of a slide from HS2’s presentation)
Note also the intention to demolish the office buildings in front of the station to enable the Tube station to be rebuilt straight away – that should make things much easier as it would give a clear worksite for TfL – the interesting questions would be a) whether they intend to build some kind of provision for Crossrail 2, b) whether the long-discussed link to Euston Square happens, and c) does the tube station rebuild get paid for by HS2 or come out of the TfL budget?
@Graham H, Castlebar:
The “descoping” (really rephasing) of the Euston rebuilding reminds me of the similar exercises for Crossrail shortly before the decision to go ahead was made, when Reading and Ebbsfleet got lopped off the scope (the former eventually reinstated, of course), and then again in 2010, when some reworking of the tunnelling strategy and Whitechapel station managed to knock a billion or so off the cost, just in time for the Comprehensive Spending Review. Contrary to the hopes of some, it strikes me as a sign that HS2 is very likely to survive the next spending review – you don’t rephase a project you intend to cancel (neither would you save any meaningful money within the next spending review period by cancelling Phase 2).
It might not even be necessary to divert the sleepers from Euston – just reduce the time they spend in the platforms so they aren’t taking up the whole morning peak. Don’t they currently get diverted to King’s Cross sometimes anyway?
And for a potential Christmas Quiz question: why have HS2 held “high level” discussions about the Euston rebuild with the Australian government?
@timbeau (and Graham H) – Yes, I had appreciated the points you both made but I had more in mind the track occupation around from the WCML to Waterloo, rather than arrival times for the sleepers but I was trying also to keep in mind that capacity is said to be stretched at Waterloo anyway.
BTW, back in the golden days of hope, I was a great supporter of the proposed Euronight sleeper services. They had the first lot of staff, they built the carriages, and then….
I made enquiries amongst many London members of my profession and they without exception said they would be pleased with a London (then Waterloo) sleeper service as far as Munich – timbeau will understand why Munich in particular – and they thought that doing that would be preferable than, say, getting an early morning flight from London and then trying to be fresh to be ready for ‘legal proceedings’ on behalf of their clients that morning in Munich. Until recently, the only other sleeper service was from Paris Est to Munich but the take-up on that with Eurostar around the corner at Gare du Nord was never realised/advertised.
S’posing my comment is translated to Crossrail, HS2, St. Pancras and on to Munich, I wonder whether the Euronight concept could ever be revived.
@Graham F – even the Paris/Munich sleeper is alas no more
Waterloo is busy, but once the International station is up and running (and they have finished use as an overflow whilst platforms 1 to 4 are extended) there should be enough space to take the sleepers. After all, they do not run in the very height of the peak.
@ian J
“Don’t they currently get diverted to King’s Cross sometimes anyway?”
No – none of the platforms at KX is nearly long enough to take them. When they use the ECML they run via the North London Incline onto the North London Line and then reverse at Camden to get to Euston. (This causes a logistical problem for the Lowland sleeper as it ends up back to front)
@ Ian J (& GH)
No, GH’s use of ‘descoping’ is correct
It is a relevantly recent American management buzzword, (just as a few years ago politicos of a certain leftish tilt here used the then fashionable word ‘outcomes’ in order to recognise each other), and descoping means “cutting the overall scope (picture) of a project” by trimming it at the edges to cut costs. It is temporarily fashionable there in the US.. GH’s use for the HS2 project is likely to be proven to be ‘spot on’
@castlebar – thank you – I did indeed mean that the project was being cut back, not necessarily abandoned – that may come later, of course, and descoping may make that easier to sell to the unadmiring public. “Good news for [insert suitable demographic here] . The last government’s wasteful project [insert name] is relaunched today as an innovatory approach to serving the people of[insert] better and more cost effectively.” [translation: we’ve scrapped the last lot’s pet project because it was theirs, so here’s something different and much cheaper – may not be better though…]. But first, comes the descoping…
Is HS2 now up for full debate on LR, or is it just trolling by the usual suspects that is allowed?
Timbeau @ 08:03
I do not follow your idea that Waterloo international will only be used as an ‘overflow’ until P1 – P4 are extended.
SWT have stated a couple of years ago that the entire Windsor Lines service group will be moved across to operate from P19-24 permanently, and the main suburban and main line service groups will expand their normal platforming to fill P1-P18 once the lengthening is complete and the throat re-arranged.
@Anonymous 1051 -“Is HS2 now up for full debate on LR”? Let’s hope not – if past discussion is anything to go by,it’s difficult to imagine a topic that generates so much more heat than light.
@Paul
In the long term all 24 platforms will indeed be needed for domestic services. But in the short term, when platforms 1 to 4 are closed, the station will have to manage with just twenty (one less than today, although nos 20 and 21 are only used in extremis). Once 1 to 4 reopen, there will be some breathing space as traffic (and available rolling stock) builds up before all 24 are needed. (And the sleepers are only there in the build-up to the peak: you have to vacate the berths by 0800 and they are gone shortly after that). It might even be possible for one of the southbound trains to use Euston and the other Waterloo in the mornings, although it would probably be too confusing, and unnecessary given the off peak timings, to have them depart from different termini.
@Anonymous 1051
“Is HS2 now up for full debate on LR”?
As Graham H states, discussing the validity of HS2 is beyond the remit of LR and is not up for debate.
Discussing the impact of HS2 on London railway termini, connecting transport, and urban design and development issues are valid topics.
LBM
@Castlebar on inflation
I was going to pour cold water on your post. Then I looked at the data.
The latest comparable data from Eurostat for the UK for January 2015 show a month on month fall of 2.9% and a 12-month fall of 9.5% in industrial producer prices. The UK’s figure is similar to the Netherlands but much lower than most of the rest of Europe. It’s probably due to a combination of the rise in the £ due to quantitative easing in the Eurozone and big capital spending cutbacks in the North Sea. I would have to look much more closely at the data to be sure, though.
However, I would guess that the UK will revert to the European mean on prices, so I would not count too much on significant continued falls in industrial producer prices. Now would be a good time to spend big money on infrastructure…
Here’s your reference: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/euro-indicators/peeis
Click on the link for industrial producer prices
@ answer=42
Thank you but I knew this before posting.
MANY countries now have negative interest rates, incl. in Europe.
Without going off topic or showing any political bias, last year, a top economist said to me “It’s a toss up which will come first, the next election or the next recession”. Now, a year on, the election is 8 weeks away, but the recession is nearer. So back to the point of GH’s ‘descoping’ comment, simply in a year from now some projects (a) will be unaffordable, and (b) might actually be cheaper in the long run being deferred or ‘descoped’ in the short term, as commodity costs could be lower, AND, of more concern, labour costs might be as well.
LBM 12:21
So mention of Crewe sightly off limits?
Castlebar
1. We agree that financing costs are low and will stay that way (just to be precise – nominal interest rates and mostly positive but certainly negative in real terms)
2. We agree that commodity costs will stay low for the next couple of years; and that they don’t really count for infrastructure
3. I’m not sure about your recession argument. In favour is the point that the UK is running a 6% payments deficit. 6%! Perhaps someone should tell the press. Against are the positive indicators coming out of the Eurozone, to which the UK’s economy is closely linked. NIESR, no-one’s political lackeys, forecast continued growth. I don’t follow the UK data closely, so my opinion is probably not worth much on this.
4. Also not so convinced about continued real wage declines. It has been pretty bloody as far as UK real wages have been concerned but the current data suggests the decline may be over. Employment / wages lag output after a recession. Of course, all depends on (3) above.
5. A major infrastructure project in the UK takes, what, 10 years? If you wait for the bottom of the market, you will miss it. Can a big infrastructure project be financed in the current climate? You betcha. And cheaply. Unaffordable? nope.
Abstracting from politics appreciated.
sorry, should have written:
(just to be precise – nominal interest rates are mostly positive but certainly negative in real terms)
@ a=42 (but might soon be only 41 due to deflation
I could write for many hours on this but it would be way off topic.
So to précis, I agree with all you say.
The gov’t successfully managed to blame the last (world) recession on Gordon Brown. The next one won’t be so easy. We simply cannot afford to pay our national debt interest. Hence interest rates will remain low and there will HAVE TO BE descoping, if not abandonment of some projects altogether. GH says HS2 is being descoped. I can think of others for potential descoping that are transport related rail, roads and of course airports too. They are likely to be more descoped in the South and thus London will be affected because no future gov’t dare upset the Welsh and particularly the Scots who will continue to bucket the money being thrown in their direction. Aye.
If I go to answer=41, due deflation, do you go to Hovelbar, due descoping?
@ a=41
The fact that Stamp Duty from house sales is producing more money for the government than does income tax, proves that (a) the economy has gone out of balance, and (b) there is a lot of income tax leakage.
This IS relevant to this thread because if there is now a downturn in house sales, “descoping” will be only the first step on the road to complete abandonment of some projects due to lack of affordability. Keep an eye on house sale numbers. If they drop, some projects will be culled p.d.q.
@Flatbar
Not quite. The rational (one can hope) response to a decline in the government financial position – both lower revenues and higher than planned expenditure – would be to cut current expenditure, not capex [spirit of LBM: capital expenditure]. Hence lower level of financial support to TOCs / NR / TfL etc.
Explain please again why Directly Operated Railways were not allowed to bid for the ECML?
Also, please inform if there is a free press in the UK?
@ a=40.5
I am going to avoid comments/answers which of necessity would be political and thus snipped
Your 2 questions
1) I am at a loss to answer that
2) I am going to avoid an answer which of necessity would be political and thus snipped.
B&BBar
Confirmed the 6% payments deficit:
http://ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/bop/balance-of-payments/q3-2014/sty-current-account–income-balance-and-net-international-investment-position.html
Government deficit at 5% in 2014
Oh my giddy aunts. If the UK was in the Euro, then it would be subject to Excessive Deficit Procedure.
I don’t know how NIESR are forecasting good growth with these figures, will have to check.
Here’s the route to your descoping: loss of sterling triple A rating or depreciation against the Euro (itself falling due quantitative easing), leading to interest rate rise. That would kill off the rationale for big capex. But, to reiterate, we are not there yet. Now is the time, financially speaking, for HS2 / CR2 etc. The UK may miss the boat / railway line / whatever metaphor.
Well, not Gordon Brown;s fault any more, is it?
Gov’t is paying more on new “Pensioner Bonds” than is affordable, so these will cease soon. I am reminded of the juggler whose Balls (excuse pun) all come down and hit the floor at once.
The relevance to the thread and GH’s “descoping” comment is simply “Things are now being promised that CANNOT be afforded”
Note what I said yesterday about promises, definite promises, pledges and commitments. There is NOT ENOUGH MONEY coming in for all these to be paid for. The comment I made about income from Stamp Duty now being greater than from Income Tax is very serious, and dangerous too. It’s too near to the election to be addressed, but I would not put money on some projects (HS2 is possibly one of them) being completed as per current blueprint, ‘cos there won’t be enough Wonga in the pot.
The juggler’s time is running out, the balls in the air are getting heavier, are increasing in number and it seems to be getting darker…………
Faltbar + ans=41
Err, isn’t there some clause in the original privatisation Act that forbods BRITISH state-owned interests from running privatised rail services, unless instructed?
Of course foreign state interests do not have this bar. [Snark removed. LBM]
Err, are not incomes finally starting to rise, resulting in an increase in the tax-take?
SleepingBagBar
I can’t find any evidence of your view that tax revenue is collapsing. Over the three months to January 2015 it grew at a rate of 4.3% over the same period a year earlier. I would need to know more about how tax receipts respond to economic growth but this seems somewhere in the region between ‘OK’ to ‘less than OK but no disaster’.
Data source: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_396149.pdf
I also looked at the NIESR’s press release. These are good economists but I have my doubts about some of their forecast. Let’s just say that all I have seen is the press release.
I say again, all this is not directly to do with capex. Govt won’t fund CR2 or HS2 itself. It will borrow on the markets, which are gagging to lend. Borrowing is against ticket revenues, backed up by a government guarantee. And, even if the economic outlook is not as Rosy Scenario as the NIESR says, and there are some potential risks, there ain’t no problem in borrowing. I see no evidence otherwise.
Now I don’t want to get polical, so here is a fact just “cut and pasted” from the BBC website
“The French financial prosecutor’s office has demanded that HSBC’s Swiss private bank face a criminal trial for tax evasion.
The request follows an investigation by local magistrates into alleged tax fraud involving 3,000 French taxpayers.
“This is a normal step in the judicial procedure and the outcome of the matter is not determined as of today,” HSBC said in a statement.
Parent company HSBC also faces a separate, ongoing French investigation.
HSBC’s Swiss private bank has one month to respond, after which French magistrates will decide whether or not to hold a trial.
The French newspaper Le Monde reported that HSBC turned down a €1.5m (£1.07m; $1.6m) settlement offer.”
Now, ask yourselves why no such criminal trial would take place in this country and couple this with the earlier comments about Stamp Duty ‘take’ now being greater than that from Income Tax. There is a serious issue to be addressed regarding the economy, again it’s relevance being the fulfilment of promises being made about projects. It will be which projects are ‘descoped’ and which will have the plug pulled on them altogether. I give no opinion, and just state fact that some projects cannot be afforded. I do not know which of them will be scrutinised after the election. However, I would put money on whatever comes up as the cheapest option for future airport expansion, and would put no money at all on Boris Island. I’d love to get GH to give his views as to how a completed HS2 will be likely to look, if it ever gets completed at all.
@ answer = 40 and a bit
Rather than get into a debate now about economics, which will in any case be snipped, I would prefer to wait until after the election when economic “facts” and announcements are likely to be far more accurate based on “up to data”.
There is no point in conjecturing as we personally are not in any election squabble. I think there will be game changing figures available to us all by the end of May, and I suspect some voters will wish they could reconsider what they chose to believe.
@former-Castlebar
Criminality should not be political. Even if one political party seems to be doing a good impression of defending illegal actions.
On airports, the cheapest option is the cheapest option per additional flight generated. It is therefore the best choice, no? Perhaps there should be an article on this.
The data I have quoted is nice and fresh.
@ answer = 39+
I have no doubt.
I have no doubt it (like many from figures and forecasts from the Treasury and their pet economists these days) will be revised, probably with a less favourable aspect.
Let us not argue on hypothesis, and just wait and see.
You have any evidence for this? You started by quoting a statistic: ‘receipts from stamp duty now bigger than from income tax.’ (which I have not checked). Now you are calling into question statisticians’ good faith. You can’t have it both ways.
Castlebar, I’m a little confused by what your saying with regards to levels of Treasury income from Stamp Duty and Income Tax. In 2013-2014 Income Tax generated £156,898 million, Stamp Duty Land Tax generated a paltry £9,273 million in comparison.
I certainly wouldn’t bet against Old Oak Common interchange and the Park Royal opportunity area coming to nothing though. It’s all happened before. Notice how the report contains all the familiar tropes; improved transport links, private sector investment, regeneration, tens of thousands of jobs created, affordable housing. Presumably all the plans disappeared in a puff of smoke when things took a turn for the worse in 1990.
Statisticians can only work with the figures with which they have been provided. Some are estimates. I know enough about the Treasury and the Civil Service to know how it works. Sincerely, I would recommend you read Andrew MARR’s “A history of modern Britain”
I said “Let us not argue on hypothesis, and just wait and see”, which are now my final words.
@Anonymous at 13:09, Graham H
“So mention of Crewe slightly off limits?”
Indeed. An example of HS2 discussion scope creep methinks… Thank you for spotting this.
@greg
“Err, isn’t there some clause in the original privatisation Act that forbids BRITISH state-owned interests from running privatised rail services, unless instructed?”
No –
Railways Act 1993: Section 25:
“Public sector operators not to be franchisees.
(1)
The following bodies and persons (in this Part referred to as “public sector operators”) shall not be franchisees—
(a)…..[the Crown]
(b) any local authority;
(d) any body corporate whose members are appointed by a Minister of the Crown, a Government department, a local authority
(e) a company a majority of whose issued shares are held by or on behalf of any of the bodies or persons falling within paragraphs (a)-(d) above;”
etc, etc
So no public body can be a franchisee (which makes sense, as the government would be granting a franchise to itself)
BUT
Section 26ZA: No adequate tender for franchise received.
(1) This section applies in the case of an invitation to tender under section 26 for the provision of services if —
(a) the appropriate franchising authority receives no tender in response to the invitation; or
(b) it receives a tender but considers that the services would be provided more economically and efficiently if they were provided otherwise than under a franchise agreement entered into in response to the tender.
(2) The appropriate franchising authority may —
(a)………….
(b) …………
(c) decide not to seek to secure the provision of the services under a franchise agreement”
(and if it is not under a franchise agreement, then the prohibition of S25 doesn’t apply)
Note that “considers that the services would be provided more economically and efficiently”. How can it know that if it doesn’t investigate alternatives to franchises every time a franchise comes up for renewal. Even if it receives a tender, it should look at whether it would be more economic or efficient to do something else.
answer=42 says “On airports, the cheapest option is the cheapest option per additional flight generated. It is therefore the best choice, no?
Not necessarily. Other, non-financial considerations should also play a part. Including, but not limited to, public health. The best choice might be one that pays somewhat more per extra flight generated, but leaves a greater fraction of the UK population able to gain the established health benefits of less noise.
Avoiding the remote but nonetheless significant risk of a serious air accident over Central London might also play some part. Money isn’t everything.
@timbeau:So no public body can be a franchisee (which makes sense, as the government would be granting a franchise to itself)
I’m not sure it does make sense – if one level of government grants a franchise to a different level of government, there isn’t the conflict of interest. Shouldn’t London Underground, say, be able to bid for franchises if it wants to? It would be no different to RATP and MTR bidding for them, surely? Or what about the Welsh government setting up a non-profit franchise operator?
@Malcolm: there is also the vexed question of agglomeration/hub effects – the cheapest option on a per-flight basis might be to add lots of capacity at a low-cost airport (or turn a redundant military airfield into a new low-cost airport), but would the economic benefits of more cheap flights to holiday destinations be as great as expanding an airport which is attractive to intercontinental airlines and their business customers, who will value good flight connections and ground transport connections to Central London – probably an inherently more expensive prospect.
@timbeau – the government was,in fact, forced to accept a HoL amendment to the 1993 Act permitting the Board to bid, despite being a body whose members were appointed by the Crown. As a result, I was tasked with putting together the Board’s Pre-qual material for every forthcoming franchise. * Needless to say,the Franchising director found reasons – usually the need to undertake market testing – to prevent the Board from proceeding to the next stage. However, the point was made. I’m not sure the relevant subsection has ever been repealed but in any case it would have no effect now the Board no longer exists.
@Ian J – technically speaking, neither RATP nor MTR are bodies whose members are appointed by a Minister of the Crown,so they are not prevented from bidding -however nonsensical it is to allow foreign state enterprises to bid as part of the UK privatisation policy. As to the Welsh case, it maybe that the trick lies in the distinction between the “operator” and the franchisee. For each franchise, the “operator” is a separate company which remains in continuous existence from franchise to franchise; what happens is that the franchisee is given control of that company. So the Welsh Assembly could set up a continuing not-for-profit body whose management was franchised out from time to time.
*It is, of course, amusing for those of us with a taste for irony, to see how many of the board’s 1993 proposals are now resurfacing…
@Graham H
“the Welsh Assembly could set up a continuing not-for-profit body whose management was franchised out from time to time.”
The Welsh and Scottish assemblies are devolved authorities, but their authority still comes ultimately from the Crown. Even if this were not the case, in Scotland and Wales they are the relevant franchising authorities, so the “not making a contract with yourself” problem would arise there at least. (A contract is defined as an agreement between two parties)
I agree the logic is less clear for local authorities, but S25 prohibits it. Any operation of railways by a publicly-owned UK body has to be otherwise than by a franchise. S26ZA sets out the circumstances in which that may (must?) happen.
(The curious number is because the section was inserted (by the 2005 Act) between Sections 26 and 26A, the latter having itself been inserted between 26 and 27 at some previous date)
@timbeau -I clearly didn’t set out the situation clearly enough. What is happening when a franchise is let is that a franchisee (who can’t be, as you say, a Crown body) takes control of a totally separate entity which continues from franchise to franchise. That could be a not for profit body. Think of the franchise as the coming together of two clutch plates. Were it not so, then you would have to revest the whole franchised entity every time it was franchised.
I do agree with you about the bizarre numbering of the clauses. Every Parliamentary draftsman has their own style. Some produce models of clarity;I have to say that the 1993 Act was generally regarded amongst the cognoscenti of such things as one of the sloppiest pieces of legislation ever seen.
Together with the other news today, that wold appear to be that for HS2 then
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/26/damning-hs2-report-reveals-serious-cost-concerns
Can we stop talking about it now? [Yes. Malcolm]
Feel free to delete this if there is a Euston post coming up, but plans have now been published for what I mentioned upthread about the staged rebuild of Euston, which in turn kills off TfL’s hope of getting the Tring-Crossrail link paid for as part of HS2 for the time being, since the at least 16 platforms of the existing Euston station will be retained until Stage 2 after 2026*.
However, extensive capacity improvements will be made to the Underground station: the report notes that these would be required even if HS2 were not built. There will be new entrances to Euston tube station from near Euston square, and from the south side of Euston road; the latter subway will include a link (ramps not stairs, interestingly) to the platforms at Euston Square. There will be various blockades in 2022-3 with different tube lines non-stopping Euston.
*One approach track will be taken out of use and the diveunder line, “Track X”, will be out of action from 2018 to 2021, but the level of disruption modelled is the withdrawal of a handful of peak trains rather than wholesale diversion.
Interesting – any passive provision for CR2?
@timbeau
Also relevant for Old Oak topic: WCML-Crossrail 1 isn’t ruled out in HS2/TfL thinking, just that HS2 isn’t to pay for it all and that no one else yet has it in their budget so its timescale has headed to 2026 or later.
However HS2 is to make a £25m contribution to passive provision near Old Oak for the southern end of the WCML link, so that that piece of work doesn’t need to be duplicated. It will include the flyover for the GW up relief line from Ealing over the ex-GW Birmingham Line spur, so that in a future date CR1-WCML (and v.v.) trains can pass under the up relief, while reversing sidings for high frequency Crossrail services can also be constructed there.
That might also be beneficial for any Chiltern-OOC or Chiltern-Crossrail services, in a different or expanded service development proposition.
Time. As a regular user of Euston then my prime concern is whether the station will continue to function whilst HS2 is built. Taking 4tph WCML services into Crossrail reduces the number of people at Euston in peak – positive. But building Crossrail OOC needs HS2 to build theirs first and you then need to get to the WCML slows. Doing that ‘properly’ would involve too much time to get Euston ready for Phase 1 launch. So there needs to be a joined up critical path.
On Euston platform capacity the new HS2 6 platform extension plan is better. It has less impact on the existing station. On the other hand the existing station needs a major refresh.
How many platforms are really needed? Assume upgrades unlock capacity, then 18 HS2 (some captive, some classic), 24tph on (upgraded) fast line, 20-14tph on slow line (depending on freight strategy) and 4tph on DC + complication of Scottish Sleeper. Whether there is a market for all these extras services is another point. (Fast lines maybe 13 ‘Virgin’, 3 open access, 8 Midland Outers inc Northampton and Trent Valley)
So assume fast line 2tpph then 12 platforms. If all 20 slow lines went to Euston at 3tpph then 7 platforms + 1 for DC + luxury of 2 operational spares (Sleeper) then 22 platforms would be needed for the conventional railway. Against 18 current. But slow line reality means this is overkill.
Sending a theoretical 8tph (4tph current) into Crossrail, providing 4-6 freight paths and sending 2tph onto WLL then a max of 6 slows are left at Euston, which can operate from 2 platforms. The DC service (I’m now less keen on this being Crossrail) of 3-4tph (I hope 8tph peak, 6tph off peak eventually) should be diverted away from Euston saving another platform and the associated DC complications. Which drops Euston platforms to 12 fast, 2 slow + 1 operational spare (sleeper) = 15 providing 3 (5 with juggling) HS2 in the main shed.
This seems to make 6 platform extension reasonable. However at some point HS1-HS2 is likely. On the assumption of some Euston X type scheme, then maybe 6-8 HS2 won’t go to the high level platforms. This would make 3 HS2 platforms redundant with less than 20 years service. Hence I suspect the use of “flexible” when describing the main shed development.
I would personally use Crossrail services to Milton Keynes for certain journeys. 2 Tring and 2 Milton Keynes Crossrail stoppers are desirable as services. My nagging concern with linking termini remains, linking lines places constraints on timetabling and service recovery.
@Saintsman
As the part-author of this recent output, you might wish to give it some consideration!
http://www.jrc.org.uk/PDFs/rh150911%20master%20Re-Visioning%20Euston.pdf
http://www.jrc.org.uk/PDFs/Euston%20Express%20press%20release%2011%20September%202015.pdf
@Jonathan Roberts:
You might want to have someone proofread those documents. I spotted a number of typos, including a misspelling of the contact email on page 6 of the first linked PDF.
*
That said, I agree with the points made regarding the delayed introduction of TGV-gauge rolling stock and the notion that such need only be bought once HS2 is well into its second (or later) construction phases, and even then, only if an HS2-HS1 link is approved. The secret to getting a project like the HS2-HS1 Link off the ground will be squeezing the most out of it as possible, which means it has to be multipurpose.
Fundamentally, however, the key issue I have with HS2 is the decision to repeat the mistake our Victorian ancestors made by having it stop dead at a terminus built on very expensive land, instead of running through. Through-running services require much less land-take, and also improve the city’s permeability by eliminating the need to change. The only reason people are suggesting dragging CR2 up to Euston is because Euston station isn’t where most passengers decanted there actually want to go.
So I believe the HS2-HS1 link should be there from the outset, rather than nailed on as an afterthought. It’s not about international traffic, though that’s certainly a bonus. It’s about improving the network effect and eliminating future expensive infrastructure enhancements to the Tube and its ilk by removing the need for many passengers to interchange between the termini.
[Response to purpose of HS1-HS2 link snipped as we’ve had this suggestion several times before and it’s been hashed out. LBM]
@Sainstman – perhaps, but we don’t know what classic services will be operated; as you say, it’s unclear whether the market will support classic services to the 24 tph level. (Or, contrarywise, whether it can support all these high speed services). What does seem clear is that it is unlikely to support both without massive subsidy. The key to Euston’s size is platform re-occupation time (as you imply); however, you may have noticed that VT seems to require about 45 minutes to release a platform. If such a poor performance is repeated in the future, we need a Euston of 40 odd platforms.
What is to be done? Inquiries of the Virgin bid team suggest that the reason for the terrible turnround timings is the “over-tight” diagramming of the Pendolinos. There are too few to allow any flexibility in deployment and so they must, absolutely must, stick to the scheduled diagrams otherwise they miss their fixed working back to the depot for maintenance. The sorts of turnround you indicate therefore require more margin in the number of sets deployed, I am not optimistic that this will be done, however, as the sets will be appraised and bought quite independently of the station design or any other infrastructure considerations (as with the IEPs). Another – hidden cost of the disintegrated railway.
@JR – very good but HS2 Ltd have shown themselves totally deaf to any external suggestions…
The reason why we are in this mess at Euston is because of the actual shape of HS2 being a Y. HS2 is repeating another mistake the Victorians mostly avoided – using one single terminus for two different railways. Of course the Midland built its on route into St. Pancras because of overcrowding south of Hitchin, and why the LSWR blocked the LBSCR from running into Waterloo.
[Northern non-London suggestions for HS2 snipped to keep discussion on topic. LBM]
As for running straight through London, well [London 2050] “Making Tracks to the Future” Parts 3 and 4 argues for a possible high speed line running south of London mirroring the SWML or BML. Perhaps HS2’s construction should start in Bournemouth and run underneath London to continue its route northwards.
@Anomnibus @Miles : The first problem with running HS2 straight through London is that it would add a further 5 to 10 years of delay while everything was reworked, and the parliamentary process repeated.
The second problem is that there is no single destination (or pair of destinations on the same line) which would take a sensible proportion of the traffic. So most of the passengers would get off at Euston, and the extension (to Stratford, Ashford, Croydon, Brighton, Southampton, Paris or wherever) would just serve as a very expensive turn-round facility. Even more expensive than platforms at Euston.
@Miles
It’s proving hard enough to get HS2 through the relatively sparsely-populated Chilterns. Can you imagine getting it through Hampshire and Surrey?
Mind you, if it turned off the currently-planned route at Ruislip and ran due south to the Weybridge area and then alongside the M3, missing out Euston altogether, it might pick up some business on Hounslow Heath. I gather the amount of traffic originating from there has really “taken off” in the seven decades since my Dad lived there!
@malcolm – well said; there is no single destination south of London that is one tenth the size of the northern conurbations served by HS2. More, the time savings on a short high speed run to the likes of Brighton are -bluntly – small for the purposes of appraisal.
@ Graham H
I agree VT reoccupation rate is far too long. For the fast lines 30mins in peak hour with a spare platform would be welcomed at many other London Termini. (13tph doesn’t run all day so 40+mins will be seen). If 45mins is the future norm then there is likely to be a lack of terminus capacity. LM Outer services do better, I have included more of these, than current, in my numbers. (Commuting from Northampton, Coventry and Trent Valley are all planned to grow – 8tph looks about right by 2040s)
My underlying point is TIME. We seem to be in an awful mess to find a Euston HS2 solution. With the mitigation solutions struggling to support the HS2 launch timeline (like WCML Crossrail etc). We then create massive disruption in Camden and cost, which may then get superseded by a decent HS1-HS2. How big Euston’s footprint in 2040?
I do support HS2 for Manchester or Leeds “Expresses” (and elsewhere) if this creates extra paths on conventional lines which are then economically used. I can’t see an HS2 OOC temporary terminus feeding Crossrail as a solution. So if it is to be Euston, we need to be really sure of what is needed long term. Positively divert away as much as we can and ONLY build what we really need, without messing up existing flows during the build. Time is pressing. IF Captive trains are selected in phase 1 I can’t see anyway around at least a 4 platform extension (6 probably right but need more info). My biggest ripe with the latest plans is the lack of improvement on the conventional side.
@Malcolm
“the extension (to Stratford, Ashford, Croydon, Brighton, Southampton, Paris or wherever) would just serve as a very expensive turn-round facility. ”
Indeed – but if the trains are “classic compatible” it doesn’t need to be taken all the way to Southampton or wherever. And although no one destination is big enough to balance, say Birmingham or Manchester (let alone both), a tunnel to, say, Surbiton* would relieve the existing lines up to that point, allowing expansion of suburban services, and allow HS2 services to replace the longer distance services to Southampton, Portsmouth, Salisbury etc offering a multitude of turnround points
If Crossrail 2 is considered necessary to distribute passengers from HS2 arriving at Euston, why not join them together and avoid those passengers having to change trains there?
* I seem to recall a plan to build a line, largely in tunnel, from somewhere in the Euston Cross area to the Gravesend/Medway area designed for high speed running, which could distribute high speed services to many Kent Coast destinations. Did anything ever come of it?
Wasn’t the ‘Euston Cross’ proposal to connect to HS1 somewhere between St Pancras and Stratford International, making that station the eastern equivalent to Old Oak Common – onward destinations would be via HS1, Ebbsfleet, and Ashford. Did the rounds in 2013.
DfT supposedly assessed it and there was then an ‘alternative options report’ which announced, inter alia, that it would not happen, basically due to difficulty in building the massive east west underground station that would be required.
@timbeau: This desire to send expensive high-speed trains beyond Euston is just another instance of the misunderstanding of the crossrail concept which produces demand for CR1 trains to go ever further (Newbury, Oxford and many other clamourings). The train types (amount of seating, toilets, top speed, train length and many other attributes) are different between long-distance services and crossrail type services. Yes, stopping long-distance trains more than once in the London region has some benefits – which is why we have the OOC stop, which does not require extra tunnelling or extra train-mileage. But going beyond the centre fails to make any kind of economic sense.
And with your starred point, there may have been such a notion. But the demand to Medway and all the Kent coast added together does not amount to a row of beans alongside 18 full-length tph arriving on HS2. And the station with the broadest access to major South-East destinations is not in the Gravesend/Medway area at all, it is St Pancras.
If anyone ever does build a non-stop tunnel between central London and Surbiton, there are better uses for it than trains containing mostly empty seats vacated by the majority of HS2 passengers who have no wish to be in Surbiton or anywhere reachable from Surbiton. Repeat for all possible values of the variable Surbiton.
Those people anxious to send HS2 trains beyond central London might like to first apply their ideas to existing trains from, say Leeds and Newcastle. It will shortly be possible to send these on to Croydon and Brighton, say, or Ashford and Hastings, with no extra tunnelling whatever. Just swap them with the trains from Cambridge and Peterborough which we currently expect to go through Thameslink. Why is this not a good idea?
Then apply the answer, with extra emphasis, to HS2.
@Jonathan Roberts – I recently reread the Euston Express proposal when it appeared on Railfuture. Which was then the trigger for yesterdays post after mulling over. The report did predate the HS2 Sept announcement. There is really only one opportunity; Euston needs to be of sufficient size for the future. I took the view that as HS2 is supposed to fix southern WCML capacity then more services would eventually be created; then there needs to be platform capacity to serve that growth. (whether such demand is there and can be served economically is a whole other debate) Otherwise you are into WCML fast Cross London territory or terminate early eg Queens Park or WLL etc.
I understand the attraction of keeping Euston in its current footprint, ultimately that for me depends on not using Captive stock in Phase 1. Jugging platforms and improving VT turnarounds. When Phase 2 opens then 6-8tph need to avoid Euston high level so back to HS1-HS2 debate – which then would allow Captive stock.
Again I worry about the practicalities and economics of Captive stock BUT GC makes some sense if we want to buy a ‘standard’ design / get through trains.
HS2 seem to be saying they need 6 platform extension to get phase 1 started and be “flexible” after that.
Either way I would like to see (and use) the Tring and MK stoppers into Crossrail 1, eventually rising to 8tph [if 24tph core] + 2tph onto WLL from MK. Which has the additional benefit of simplifing Euston.
Indeed sending a train from Leeds through the Thameslink tunnel to Brighton does not make sense, because Thameslink, like it or not, is an outer suburban operation. Note that the fastest trains from Brighton and from Cambridge will continue to terminate on the edge of the Circle Line. (In the same way that Crossrail will be little more attractive to Reading-London commuters than the existing stopping services – Readingers will continue to pile on to any HST which calls there for the twenty minute dash rather than the (loo-less) all-stations crawl of Crossrail.
@ Malcolm
“empty seats vacated by the majority of HS2 passengers who have no wish to be in Surbiton or anywhere reachable from Surbiton. Repeat for all possible values of the variable Surbiton.”
try “Solent”
Most seats arriving from the Midlands and North would probably be vacated in central London, but they would be re-occupied by people wanting to get from central London to destinations in the south.
I would not suggest for a moment that Surbiton is a sensible calling place for HS2 trains – but it is a suitable place for a tunnel mouth for a train running non-stop from central London to the Solent conurbation, for example.
The Solent area has a population of 1.3 million, bigger than Birmingham itself (1.1 million), but smaller than the West Midlands conurbation (2.4 million).
As for demand, the non-stop services from Winchester to Waterloo are frequently full-and-standing – and that’s a long time.
Current fastest journey times to Southampton and Birmingham are about the same at 1h20 – although Southampton is a lot closer.
@Malcolm – “If anyone ever does build a non-stop tunnel between central London and Surbiton, there are better uses for it than trains containing mostly empty seats vacated by the majority of HS2 passengers who have no wish to be in Surbiton or anywhere reachable from Surbiton. Repeat for all possible values of the variable Surbiton.” I wholly agree, that’s the key – if you’re going to build a new tunnel under London to the south(west), then make sure it is full! BTW, the sum total of ALL the conurbations between Poole and Ashford is still only a bit more than the City of Brum alone; throwing in the likes of Winchester, Guildford, and err, Maidstone (doesn’t something else high speed go near there? ) still only brings you to about half the population of the West Midlands. Sorry, timbeau, but building London in the bottom r/h corner of the island has its price…
@Graham H
“the sum total of ALL the conurbations between Poole and Ashford is still only a bit more than the City of Brum alone”
The City of Birmingham had a population of 1.08 million in 2013 (ONS data)
http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/HTMLDocs/dvc134_a/index.html
The LEP cites a population of 1.3 million for the Solent area alone (which is certainly between Poole and Ashford)
http://solentlep.org.uk/about
That figure includes the Isle of Wight, (although people do commute from there too!), but even without it the population around the Solent is about 1.15 million.
And if we are using conventional-sized stock, we don’t have to send it all to Southampton – some can go to Portsmouth, or Bournemouth, or Salisbury if you electrify it.
Nor do they all have to go down the SWML – HS1 is already there to take some of the trains into Kent.
If there is a market for northbound WCML services to go beyond Birmingham to smaller destinations like Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury, why is there not a market for southbound ones to go beyond London to the Solent or Thanet?
timbeau asks “If there is a market for northbound WCML services to go beyond Birmingham to smaller destinations like Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury, why is there not a market for southbound ones to go beyond London to the Solent or Thanet? ”
Perhaps there is. But if so it would probably be best served by conventional trains rather than high-speed ones (which should spend as much of their time as possible on high speed lines). (There may be a case for a new high-speed line from London to the Solent, but if there is, it will have to join the queue, which I at least am unlikely to live to see the end of). And even if an appropriate number of high speed trains from Birmingham were extended to the Solent (one per hour?), it wouldn’t make much of a dent in the requirement for terminating platforms at Euston, which is where we came in.
I think I’ve said enough on this topic, so will probably not respond to any response timbeau might choose to make to this one; which will not mean that I agree with it, nor that I am annoyed with him – which I am not.
@Saintsman
Thanks for that, and broadly agree there is only one chance for redeveloping Euston terminal for many decades. Our judgment is that the combination of (1) WCML-Crossrail 1, (2) tighter Euston long-distance turnrounds closer to other termini’s standards, (3) only classic compatable to start with, (4) eventual new cross-London capability (primarily for L&SE uses) should cumulatively enable Euston to stay at its present size. Nor would we object if it got a bit larger in the process (and say so in the document), as some land has already been expropriated on the west side. But it isn’t needed, in our view, nor all the humungous works which HS2 propose in and around Euston.
@Anomnibus, @Graham H
Re typos, am aware of those, was on holiday as last version was finalised. Next version with assessment of HS2 AP3 will address that. Agree with Graham H that core business case for any HS1-HS2 scheme has to be justified by L&SE travel volume, plus emerging polycentricity of high volume jobs locations with OOC and Stratford as SAZs.
@ timbeau who said
“empty seats vacated by the majority of HS2 passengers who have no wish to be in Surbiton or anywhere reachable from Surbiton”.
Agree, and it’s not just HS2 passengers who have no wish to be in or go to Surbiton. (Getting FROM Surbiton I can understand). However, a factor for the future will be that wherever these new lines end up, there will be plenty of new build housing and many people want to live by the end of any line in order to regularly get a seat for their regular commute (whether transverse or whatever). HS2 is aimed at an (alleged) city centre to city centre market. Crossrail has a different job to do. I have always wondered why of all the London termini, Euston was chosen as the southern end of HS2. Trains from Euston already go to Birmingham, and I doubt if people living in Watford or Tring are going to go to Euston to get a high speed train from Euston if they need to go to Birmingham.
I can understand almost any other central London location, or even Victoria for the southern HS2 terminus, but not Euston.
I detect a blurring of objectives with this topic now.
@Castlebar
“HS2 passengers have no wish to be in Surbiton”
It is not necessary to have a station at the tunnel portal (and if the reaction to HS2 in Bucks is anything to go by I’m sure the Surbitonese would actually want the portal further out – and Waltonians would want it even further out, and so on for the Weybridgeish, Byflites, Wokers etc, all the way to the Wincastrians and Salisburghers). There no more needs to be an HS2 station at Surbiton than at Greenford or Gerrards Cross
@CB
“Trains from Euston already go to Birmingham”.
Do they? I always go there from Marylebone! 😉
Seriously though, it’s a good point. We are already getting used to paradigm shifts like St Pancras for Kent (and the continent) and Blackfriars for Hertfordshire, (and, in a few years, Liverpool Street for the Thames Valley and Paddington for Essex), so there is no reason trains from the NW “have” to go to Euston? (I still need to remember the Edinburgh sleeper doesn’t go from Kings Cross any more!)
I suspect the real reasons are two-fold:
1. where else would you find enough space? (With hindsight, putting the British Library where they did looks like a big mistake)
2. which central London terminus needs modernisation most?
Paddington would have been cheaper to get to. I even recall a suggestion that an HS2 terminal would have been a good use for Waterloo International.
@ timbeau , yes a high speed railway FROM Surbiton I would understand. Issues have become blurred. I remember the thread a few months ago regarding the sleeper using Waterloo International or Olympia, and it seemed to make sense. HS2 makes no sense to me IF Euston is the southern end of it. Paddington would be better and trains have run twixt Birmingham and Paddington afore now. This seems to be a case of “Euston, because that’s where they always go from”, and nothing else
@castlebar
I would say that Euston is no more – or less – sensible than any other central London site for the HS2 terminus. But commercially, if you want to attract as many people away from the classic WCML as possible, you don’t want the classic route’s terminus to be more attractive than the new one even for a small proportion of the passengers.
If you put the HS2 terminus at Victoria, or Paddington, some potential passengers will still prefer to use Euston.
One of the reasons that not all Kentish commuters defected to HS1 was that Victoria, Cannon Street and Charing Cross are more convenient to many of them.
I don’t know what you’ve got against Surbiton – fairly typical South London suburb, with an undeserved reputation for poshness thanks to Margo Leadbetter of “The Good Life” – but would you prefer the tunnel portal to be at Berrylands – so the new line can surface there to obliterate a large swathe through Surbiton on its way to the stockbroker belt!
timbeau, what I think you possibly fail to see with > “If you put the HS2 terminus at Victoria, or Paddington, some potential passengers will still prefer to use Euston.” is that even with the HS2 terminus at Euston the COST of the journey, not location will dictate that some travellers will prefer NOT to use HS2m and use “ordinary trains”. HS2 would be likely to get more business if it stopped at a different terminal point in London. (Although Surbiton is a bit extreme).
Enough of this from me now, as I have made my comment.
Castlebar, I wonder if one of the reasons Euston may have been chosen was the massive possible planning gain that was initially foreseen from expanding the station site, and then developing over it.
More straightforward in theory than in practice, and it would be reasonable to say there are vested interests in both the for and against camps.
Re. HS2 – HS1 Link:
Assuming the western portal is at Old Oak Common (as seems likely), then why assume only long-distance High Speed services would use it?
If the GWML is upgraded to handle trains capable of 140 mph or so, then there’s no reason why it couldn’t also send some Class 395-like trains through London and over HS1 to Canterbury.
Also, yes, the conurbations of the southern Home Counties tend to be small. So was the population of the Docklands area when the DLR was opened. Why would you wait until after the desperately needed tens of thousands of new houses are built before building the infrastructure needed by the people who’ll be living there?
Clearly, there is an intensely strong and close relationship between cost, time, and land take. If Euston used its existing platforms more efficiently then less land would be required for expansion and money (and time) would be saved. What is stopping this? No impetus for the slowcoaches (sic) to get out of the way a bit faster.
But since the days of a monolithic BR we now have a separation between the station and the train operator. So charge them platform rental! It would soon make the TOCs (specifically VR) question leaving stock standing idle.
Airlines know they need to keep their aircraft in the sky and not on the ground if they want to make money. Why don’t train operators do the same?
[addendum]
I’ll even suggest a sliding scale from nominal to annoying:
Up to ten minutes – £1 a minute
Up to twenty – £10 per minute
Up to thirty – £100 per minute
plus £1000 per minute over 30.
You want to leave a useless train standing for 45 minutes? That’ll be £4500 please, but release the platform in only 15 minutes and pay only £150.
Obviously the rates and price points would need tuning, but it shouldn’t be rocket science to get a station which works more effectively!
@ Alison
So through services such as Thameslink initiated make more and more sense
@Anomnibus – you are lucky to escape snippery – I believe the moderators are now bored/tired/irritated with the repetition of the arguments about the link.
[Indeed, we were using that belt that barbers use to sharpen the shears. LBM]
@Alison W – and indeed, the airlines are charged by the time they spend on stand. I agree very strongly that if NR were to introduce a similar programme at their termini we’d soon see an end to 45 minute re-occupation times. (Mind you, the charge would have to be enough to bite…). The savings in moving from a 45 m platform reoccupation time to, say, 20 minutes, would be substantial – BOFP suggests that Euston could then go down from 18 to a dozen classic platforms which would leave plenty of room for 6 high speed platforms to cope with 18 tph. Who needs to rebuild?
I wonder if a revised operational emphasis at Network Rail, courtesy of a new Chairman, might just bring about a revised focus on platform utilisation. The problem with instituing a charging regime now is that it is unlikely to shift the status quo because the risk will all be priced in to franchises and it’s a “money go round” (in part). No operator would sign up to a potenially punative charging regime. You also would establish a new aspect to the delay attribution process – “I was in the platform for 5 mins too long because your signalling delayed me by 10 minutes on the way in. I did everything super dooper to just be 5 mins late leaving. I’m not paying any platform occupancy surcharge.” I suspect a collaborative approach to squeeze out higher utilisation might be better but that relies on a mature working relationship between NR and the TOC.
The wider issue at Euston is that HS2 are, for understandable reasons, in “do the minimum to make HS2 work properly and not spend an extra penny on any third party”. This leaves us with an undefined upgrade for Euston station itself, no defined commercial development anywhere on the site and a half arsed upgrade for the tube with nothing for CR2. This really is not remotely tenable as time passes but I fear it will all end up as some horrible compromise that’s not much use to anyone. I’m certainly not terribly convinced by the proposed tube station changes nor by the amended road layout, bus stations and taxi ranks. I don’t use cabs but the proposals for Euston HS2 look a right mess.
@AlisonW
I agree. Ryanair sets a general 25 minute deadline for plane turnarounds, as I understand it, and sets incentives for quicker turnrounds/or walks away if the airport is consistently poor at timekeeping.
OK the planes are only 150-200 seaters, not 800 plus, but often only 1 or 2 doors, massive luggage volumes on/off AND all passengers sat down and strapped in, the passenger and luggage manifest checked, and the occupants being lectured at about safety, before the go is given.
Any terminus platform slot rental plus rolling stock leasing forcing high utilisation (eg hire by the hour) would surely stimulate faster intercity turnrounds, at Euston at least, maybe elsewhere too. One appreciates that turnrounds on the railways are also linked to route complexity (but so are pathing and engineering extra minutes en route, so why do you need to replicate that at termini as well?) plus length of time in service on the previous leg. I factored a straightforward formula for that based on current NR ‘rules of the plan’, into Euston Express platform slot planning!
With HS2, Birmingham is under 1 hour, and it will have the most hyper-excellent modern signalling etc (it is hoped), so why not a classic commuter train turnround time of 15 minutes for that particular journey sector?! Add another 5 minutes per hour’s journey for other sectors if you want to, as a rule of thumb. You still don’t need more than 9 basic HS platforms if 18 tph max – HS2 has confirmed to me an average of 2 trains per platform per hour is their plan – plus 2 extra as perturbation or problem platforms = 11 in total. As it happens, restructured WCML + DC plus allowance for growth and open access need about the same, 9 + 2.
If you shared platforms by avoiding GC gauge (or indeed built mixed UK/GC gauge tracks also sharing platforms – GC tracks about 3 inches further away from the platform edge), you could have fewer platforms in total. Lots more analysis in the report link above.
BOFP Britain Office of Financial Projections, better known as Back Of Fag Pack…
Graham H: my typo; 45 mins should have read £18,000 fee, which probably nibbles?
WW: yes, probably a moneygoround, but there are already mechanisms to allocate costs when there are delays so probably possible for occupation too.
Bottom line is not spending money which doesn’t need to be raised in the first place.
@JR, AlisonW
When I worked in aerospace the typical turnaround time for non-charter, non-discount airlines was 45-60 minutes.
@AlisonW – “Obviously the rates and price points would need tuning, but it shouldn’t be rocket science to get a station which works more effectively!”
That is until something happens like last night in the peak, when a Thameslink train had a door failure somewhere on or close to the core, resulting in cancellations and very late running throughout until the close of service – and that’s before we reach the 24tph era.
Jonathan Roberts,
Very small point but, as I understand it, aircraft timing usually refers to time arriving or leaving the stand and not take-off and landing times. Turnaround time is therefore very analogous to dwell time for trains. The safety announcement is nearly always given after having pushed off from the stand and whilst taxiing to the runway (which can take quite a while) so, I believe, forms no part of turnaround time. Apart from not delaying things, this means that anyone who deigned to listen should have had it very recently in their mind should there be a problem on takeoff.
@timbeau:
Interesting – any passive provision for CR2?
CR2 is mentioned briefly in the sense of ‘nothing proposed would conflict with it’.
The updated safeguarding for Crossrail 2 has the earmarked surface areas at Euston along either side of Eversholt Street on the eastern side of the station – this potentially lines up with the 2033 northern exit to the tube station from the high speed platforms, but of course the existing station is in the way. But then if you wanted the safeguarded area as a worksite you’d need to demolish a big chunk of the current station anyway. I suspect that there’s an unspoken assumption that by the time HS2 and CR2 were built, Network Rail’s own station redevelopment would have happened in some form and maybe included some kind of provision or ticket hall box for CR2 – there isn’t such a direct relationship between the high-speed bit of the station to the west and CR2 to the east.
Incidentally HS2 did consider expanding 7 other London termini (p. 8) instead of Euston – I suppose a parlour game would be to guess which 7…
@PoP
I too was thinking of stand times not take-off and landing. There is then some taxi-ing time, not all the way to/from the runway, but enough to permit stand re-occupation. Similarly platform approach and departure allowances have to be applied at rail termini. NR sets out values for those in its ‘rules of the plan’, depending on track layout, signalling, permitted speed, train acceleration and train length factors. Re flight safety announcements, in my experience you can have those on stand or more commonly while taxi-ing. I agree they don’t form an intrinsic component of the stand turnaround time.
@LBM
“we were using that belt that barbers use to sharpen the shears”
If that pun was intentional, it’s very clever!
@Graham F/Alison W -if the re-occupation penalties were to work like delay penalties, then you would presumably have similar “that doesn’t count” arrangements.
@WW – I take your point that franchise bidders would almost certainly factor in the penalties into the bid. Even so, the penalties would, if pitched at the right level, make bidders consider the trade-off between spare rolling stock/Dispozuege and longer occupation times – at the moment VT,for example, doesn’t see that as an issue, because only the rolling stock is a cost.
@ Graham H – you know better than I do that the organisational “split” is in the wrong place when we face an issue like Euston rebuilding. As you rightly point out a proper guiding mind that could balance reconstruction costs, operating costs and the train service impacts would be more likely to get the “right answer” by forcing the respective bits of the business to work in improved ways to the greater overall good of the public purse. It is ludicrous that we have don’t yet have a comprehensive position for Euston that encompasses CR2, HS2 and the existing services (TOC and TfL). Back to the boring old concept of the railway being a “system” rather than a random muddle of bits.
@WW – 🙂 Actually, the number of platforms at Euston would make a classic textbook study of the effects of disintegration, not least because the dwell time of Virgin Trains at Euston isn’t a straightforward function of “couldn’t you save a set or two in the programme if only they weren’t standing idly at a platform in NW1?” According to the VT WC bid team, the problem is that each set must arrive at the assigned maintenance point at exactly the right time, and there are too few sets to allow such a set to be stepped up to its right slot in the event of a delay, with a suitable spare being substituted. So, it seems it’s better to build in dwell time padding at Euston to allow for a late running set to resume its proper place in the programme.
This is slightly counter-intuitive. Couldn’t you create some spares by having shorter dwell times, you might ask? VT think not (or maybe have never asked themselves the question).
So – the trade-off seems to be between number of sets, maintenance strategy, and number of platforms – that’s too many players these days to expect a rational response. Still, it doesn’t matter – after all, it’s only public money at stake and who would expect DfT officials to care about that?
Bitter, moi?
Presumably the decision to have two sizes of train, 9 or 11 car, must have a marginal effect on diagramming, if they don’t want it to be truly random?
@Paul – yes, a further element in the mix! (And again, the trade-off between flexibility – aka spare sets – and the savings from not building two cars per 9-car set would, you might think,have been appraised).These sorts of trade-off are, of course, wholly invisible to NR, as owners of Euston,and way above HS2’s pay grade, who are answering a wholly different set of questions).
@Paul
I believe some platforms can’t take 11-car trains, so trains serving those stations have to be run as 9-car
@timbeau – and any costs imposed thus on TOCs by the Network Management Statement don’t exist, therefore…
But, Graham H, isn’t the issue that VT are comparing the cost of (an) additional set(s) with, um, er … a zero cost for parking.
Either you assign platforms to TOCs on some basis such that they have to make their own best use (similar to airlines having ‘slots’ at airports) with the infrastructure operator setting the limit, or you charge for access to the damn things. Giving them away for free clearly isn’t working*.
* well it works for the TOC, obviously, just not for anyone else!
People should note that Virgin wished (and campaigned hard) to extend all their Pendalinos to 11 cars, as this would have made diagramming and maintenance a lot easier (in theory you could manage to keep the mileages roughly the same across the fleet by rotating the units round all roues over the year.
The DfT disagreed as it would increase direct costs to them plus indirect costs through NR having to extend more platforms, plus it would have prevented Virgin using certain platforms at Euston.
As a result we got some units extended to 11 cars but others staying at 9.
@Alison W – Exactly so! (My point was indeed that there were a number of trade offs to be addressed here – set numbers, maintenance, platforms etc – with few of these relationships either monetised or indeed visible to all the players. How can sensible decisions be made if the issues cannot be quantified for debate?) DfT’s failure to address the totality of the all the issues,noted by an Anonymous, illustrates the point.
There are so many issues that have been raised here that can really only be solved by joined up system/network leadership and management (or a dictator – didn’t Mussolini make the trains run on time?) and only the DfT is a position to exercise same. Sadly they seem not to be willing to step up to the plate.
with so many interesting debates taking place simultaneously, it is ever more stark to compare the situation at TfL with that of the national network. TfL buys the services of a train operator on it’s part of the heavy rail network, and it buys the track access. Moreover it knocks heads together in the event of disagreements. On the Underground it’s generally even easier.
This WILL (assume in 72 point type) require resolution if the Euston conundrum is to be resolved. The story about platform occupation by VTWC is truly incredible, but I know it’s true. Talk about tail wagging dog! A train service isn’t run for the convenience of the maintainer – or has someone forgotten what it’s there for? Someone “in charge” must start to ask “what have we got to do to reduce platform occupation time from XX minutes to YY minutes (where YY is a lot smaller than XX)”? The answer will, in turn, lead to numerous seemingly impossible demands which will have to be addressed in the same fashion. My thoughts…….perhaps a couple more Pendolinos might solve the problem – there’s an opportunity to piggy back on someone else’s order and the cost is small compared with the cost of Euston HS2? Perhaps the refranchising sends an opportunity? Perhaps NR will get to grips with the all to frequent delays?
Similar issues have occurred in vaguely similar situation on the Tube, and have been resolved by a) leadership, b) teamwork by all the actors and c) goodwill. Once suitable practical arrangements have been sorted out, then any commercial implications have been sorted. Incredibly, it’s possible that there may be no commercial issues as it might all be no more costly for anyone. a more efficient utilisation might even provide enough to end 5 car Voyagers running under the wires all the way from Euston to Scotland (horrible even for Euston – MK!
Sorry, wandered off topic. Rant over!
@Anonymous-horizontally managed railway anyone?
@ 100 and thirty – even in your blissful “everyone agrees” scenario there are commercial issues. They may well be resolved but there are issues, money has to change hands, agreements have to be made etc. Even if its all “internalised” in a LU type situation you still have to change responsibilities, accountabilities, have a business case, fund incremental costs and rejig budgets. That’s assuming you do things properly rather than a bodge that then unravels later.
WW
But, that is exactly the problem: a bodge that unravels later
And how many of those have we had?
Do we really want to start making a list?
We could be here for some time, if we did that!
Walthamstow Writer: it wasn’t the “everyone agrees” point, but I probably should have written “no financial implications” rather than “no commercial implications”.
Plenty more detail on the Euston rebuild now available here. Full marks if you picked Farringdon, Cricklewood, or Trafalgar Square as one of the alternative HS2 station locations considered. No detail on Stage B2 (the Network Rail rebuild), of course (wouldn’t want to distract the Select Committee) – but that nomenclature is interesting. I can’t help feeling there is a “Euston after phase B2 in 203X” drawing sitting on Network Rail’s servers somewhere.
Note on p. 48 a “future link to Crossrail 2”. It looks like TfL are getting a new set of platform accesses to the Victoria Line paid for by HS2 which will then become rather useful for Crossrail 2…
Very interesting, thanks. I see that two of the current six lines in Euston will be removed for three years (2018-21) during construction of the HS2 station – so prior to any of the Inter City services being shifted next door. Is it realistic that all the current services into Euston can be maintained with two less tracks, or will we be seeing some diversions like at London Bridge? There’s been suggestion before about diverting the overground stopping service to Watford: always seems to me to be rather incongruous among the other big trains at Euston, but I’ve found it very handy on Wembley match days.
Toby Chopra
“Is it realistic that all the current services into Euston can be maintained with two less tracks, or will we be seeing some diversions like at London Bridge?”
Presumably this is where Crossrail to Tring comes in…
@ D-Notice
“Presumably this is where Crossrail to Tring comes in…”
If that was definitely going to happen in time for the Jan 2019 track closures, wouldn’t it have been in these most recent documents, if HS2 are going to pay for it. I didn’t spot anything, but might have missed it.
Re Toby / D notice,
It has gone awfully quiet on that front so suspect you haven’t missed anything. HS2 not getting in the way of doing CR to Tring at Old Oak is about has far as it has got publicly I think.
@ Ian J
Plenty more detail on the Euston rebuild now available here. Full marks if you picked Farringdon, Cricklewood, or Trafalgar Square as one of the alternative HS2 station locations considered.
I find it interesting that the beneath a Royal park option got to stage 2. I imagine that a through station at Euston and a terminus under a park could rank highly, but doesn’t appear to have been considered.
@ngh Thanks. I can’t help feeling that the Euston works are going to be a bit like London Bridge: magnificent when finished, but just a total drag for existing passengers in the meantime. Hope I’m wrong.
Is it realistic that all the current services into Euston can be maintained with two less tracks, or will we be seeing some diversions like at London Bridge
That’s the question the Select Committee will no doubt be asking. Although I believe that Euston managed with 4 approach tracks until 2000.
Ian J
Not quite.
I commuted a lot from Euston in the 1970’s & there were regular workings using the diveunder(s) in both directions [ 3 or 4 trains a day IIRC ]
Where they really came in useful was if something went badly out of path or schedule & the signallers would use the extra flexibility they had. Over the years, at one point or another, I went over every single possible variation – including, on one memorable occasion, joining the diveunder line from the W side ( i.e. the carriage-line connection ) & then finally exiting on to the Down fast through the back road of what had been Camden shed (!)
An aside to those HS2 documents, page 11279(3) quotes “On the trunk section of the HS2 network (south of the West Midlands) … 90% of those passengers will be travelling to, from or via central London.”
Well given there aren’t any intermediate stations that isn’t really a surprise, is it? :O
Er, isn’t Old Oak Common an intermediate station?
So they could be travelling to just about anywhere – Penzance, Clapham Junction and beyond, Heathrow Airport for example.
Toby: Reading through there (and looking at all the lovely diagrams) it looks to me like _rail_ pax coming into Euston wouldn’t have it that bad during the extended works as, unlike London Bridge where effectively _everything_ has been replaced, the Euston plans are keeping much of the existing stuff untouched. Above-ground though will be a different story, with buses delayed (removing bus lanes in Euston Road!) and gridlock much of the day in a large radius around the works. The diversion around Chalk Farm will be terrible, and I note the spoil trucks have a very roundabout (and therefore disruptive over a wider area) route.
Interesting too how much of the station throat is planned to be decked over, presumably to generate income.
ps. I rather like the idea of having the terminus below Trafalgar Square 🙂
PoP: “via”.
AlisonW: “via central London”.
@ Ian J
As the consideration of 27 London station locations suggests “I’m sorry I haven’t a clue” perhaps the HS2 terminus should be at Mornington Crescent.
Micheal,
The HS2 terminus will be at Mornington Crescent – or at least the northern end will practically be at the southern end of Mornington Crescent.
@[poP
“the northern end will practically be at the southern end of Mornington Crescent.”
The “country” end of the domestic platforms at St Pancras are about 400m from Mornington Crescent station, and about the same to the Tube platforms at KXSP
timbeau,
I was referring to the road itself and the footprint of the station as in the latest plans.
@AlisonW: Above-ground though will be a different story, with buses delayed (removing bus lanes in Euston Road!) and gridlock much of the day in a large radius around the works
It doesn’t seem that different to me to the disruption involved in rebuilding St Pancras and its tube station, which also involved closing Euston Road bus lanes and other roads in the area. Disruptive, but then travelling by road in central London is never exactly fast.
Interesting too how much of the station throat is planned to be decked over, presumably to generate income
The plans show a park over the station throat itself – the replacement for St James’ Gardens. But yes, fairly extensive development over the approach tracks further out – on the site of the old carriage sheds, currently apparently being used as some kind of greenhouse by DB Shenker.
Suspicious-looking plants in that greenhouse, too, Ian J!
Well Network Rail has set itself a big target for making money from its surplus land…
PoP
Ah, a Mornington Crescent interchange platform & tunnel.
Should make the game even more interesting.
Oh dear.
GF
Buddleia davidii AFAIK – boring.
Shame to see those sheds rotting, though
I did wonder whether the bringing forward of HS2 Phase 2a to Crewe would clash with the phasing of the Euston re-build. It will bring forward the increased number of trains and passengers that the Euston rebuild isn’t planned to cope with until the second phase of the rebuild, which provides the second lot of HS2 platforms and the beefed up links to the Underground platforms.
ML – phase 2a will not change the number of trains entering Euston, it’s only when the HS2 eastern branch is built that this will happen. Indeed in the many documents published yesterday this was explicitly mentioned as a ‘pro’ for choosing that alternative over accelerating another part of the network.
As has been remarked though Crossrail up the WCML idea does seem to have gone very quiet – maybe they need to develop the wider OOC plans first. Maybe it’s a game of waiting, HS2 may like it to ease a little pressure on Euston during the rebuild, OOC development team may like it to widen their catchment area, both want the other to pay! I would suggest, if there is a need involving Euston rebuild, HS2 would have to move first.
OK, I’m going to ask what might be an extremely stupid question …
Why isn’t the spoil from major termini works (such as Euston) taken away … by *rail* (instead of trucking it out on already-congested roads)?
It must be possible to create/use the westernmost metals as a bay and then dump it somewhere suitable / needing it (like Bletchley, for example, on the EW line build)
@ Alison W – lack of paths, lack of siding space, site construction / logistics don’t allow it, don’t want to be seen to be putting spoil removal ahead of keeping passenger trains running into Euston, rail freight simply not economic, HS2 spoil disposal sites may not be rail served?? Wild guesses on my part but I suspect the truth lies somewhere in there / some combination of factors. Have they used rail to take spoil away from the Railway Lands redevelopment north of Kings Cross? Not as far as I’m aware.
@AlisonW @WalthamstowWriter They have posted an assessment of rail spoil removal.
The best option costs £80m and adds 6 months to the plan. I doubt it will happen.
@AlisonW:
Crossrail 1 sent much of its spoil round the houses from their Royal Oak portal to Northfleet in Kent, where it was then sent via the Thames to its final destination in east London. This was only really possible because the spoil was being generated by TBMs, which sent it back to the portal at Royal Oak. There, it was loaded automatically via conveyor systems into the waiting trains. As the TBMs were mostly well below London’s made ground*, both the quantities and the kind of spoil were very predictable.
The work at Euston will produce spoil of varying kinds, including building rubble, and whatever else was under the ground when the original station was built. (Sources state that the area was “mostly” farmland, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be any interesting archaeology down there.)
While the RSPB would likely be interested in soil that can be used to extend a wetland somewhere, it’s doubtful they’d be quite as interested in large chunks of reinforced concrete, so disposal of the spoil will be a more complicated process than it was for most of Crossrail 1.
* “Made ground” is basically ground that isn’t natural. E.g. a plague pit, or a building foundation. Old cities like London sit on a layer cake of older versions of the city. Around London Bridge, the made ground can be as much as 12 metres deep as this part of London dates right back to the Romans.
Non-road options are used when it is practical. Much of the material for the Blackfriars station project came in by barge. It will also be used for the NLE
http://www.wandsworthsw18.com/shared/northernlineext004.htm
I think it was even considered for the Bank project.
And barges were also used to get the spoil from the Crossrail tunnels to Wallasea Island
http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/articles/crossrail-will-move-five-million-tonnes-earth-via-river
The soil that was excavated for the DLR tunnels from Island Gardens to Greenwich was spread on Millwall Park. (Millwall Park being the piece of green space at the southern end of the Isle of Dogs, where a certain football team originally played on – but moved to Bermondsey over a century ago). The enabling bill for the construction of that DLR extension specifically restricted spoil removal by lorry – the clause was added after objections from local residents. The original expectation was to take the spoil away by barge, but in the end Millwall Park was used, as the playing pitches there had been subject to periodic flooding.
Thanks for the info, everyone. Seems to me though that using the transportation option you already have in situ (mostly) makes a lot of sense, especially when noting the bery final bullet point: “For the busiest month remov[ing] all excavated by rail .. [will replace] 247 lorry movements.” And page 11 say reduction would be 400 removed HGV movements! That’s a massive improvement in keeping central area traffic moving, to my mind, keeping upwards of 700 thousand cubic metres of material off the roads.
As regards train paths, surely the removal of the first western platforms will mean fewer movements into the station area, let alone the plan to curtail some services (eg DC line) and taking the page 8 option seems fine given the parcels deck is mostly pointless now anyway, though I prefer the conveyor option as it would be useful for a longer period.
Page eleven makes clear there are many other benefits too, not least in CO2 and NOX emission reductions, which would benefit the workforce as well as local residents. The operational noise issue on page 12 is irrelevant; however it goes it will make noise around the clock.
So Crossrail 2 and HS3 are to be “green lighted” by the Treasury, whatever that means. The route of the former and the name of the latter both assume HS2 will be built – but how certain is that?
Re Timbeau,
Given most of the petitions have been dealt with probably reasonably certain phase 1 will get the go ahead at some point this year. (With spades in the ground next year.)
@timbeau – today’s fairly explicit “hint” from the Chancellor is that tomorrow’s announcement will confirm a share of the funding for the study of CR2, rather than the thing itself. £80m was mentioned. [BTW am I alone in getting very irritated by people announcing in advance what they are going to say? What is the point? It cannot be long -indeed,I believe it already happens – that other people will then respond,equally in advance, – to an announcement that hasn’t yet been made formally…]
HS2 Bill likely in Lords from 23rd March, but Lords Select Committee unlikely to start until June. Still considerable bitterness among petitioners in some areas, don’t assume the Committee will find consideration of matters straightforward. My judgment is spring 2017 for Royal Assent. HS2 in London article on the stocks.
Graham H……Don’t you have a rule of thumb from your time in the corridors of power for the number of times something has to be announced before anything actually gets done?
@100andthirty -could be any number of times, really*. No,my objection was to announce the decision the day or so before “the announcement” – rapidly followed by comments along the lines of “X will respond to tomorrow’s announcement by saying…” Why not just “do it”?!
*Remember John Welsby’s remarks about West Coast upgrade being announced once a year, and in a good year, twice.
@Graham H
“BTW am I alone in getting very irritated by people announcing in advance what they are going to say?”
No, you are not alone! I’ve often wondered what would happen if they die before they make the announcement they said they were going to make, and therefore say nothing at all, or suffer a Damascene conversion on the way to where they were going to announce it and say something something completely different. Has the foreshadowed announcement then been made or not?
..or, indeed, if “events, dear boy” make the actual announcement meaningless?
@ JR I believe the Lords does not have the same powers when it comes to hybrid bills like that for HS2 and trying to fight old battles is unlikely to get anywhere.
In addition the HS2 bill will have come before the commons for its 3rd reading and thus support in this parliament would have been secured .
It’s time councils also my route if HS2 worked on benefits it can bring them as spending money on opposition will be just wasting money …
@timbeau – 🙂 Presumably in the case of the chap who dies before tomorrow, the would be responders have to say something like “Had the guy made the following announcement, I would have responded thus…” [This sounds a bit like some of the proleptic discussions in the Hewett household – “I didn’t do X.– No, but if you had, you would have got it wrong.”]
I once attended a luncheon where a minister was supposed to speak. Unfortunately he was tied up (no, I’m not commenting on the minister’s recreational activities). Instead, his Permanent Secretary or some other “humble servant” gave the speech, peppered with “the minister would have said…..” but somehow suggesting that the minister wasn’t exactly master of his brief. It was hilarious – at least I think it was, most of the audience had had at least half a bottle of wine each with aperitifs before!
I went back to the date of the original article and was surprised at how comparatively recent it was. It was just 14 months later that I attended a conference where the Technical Director of Crossrail spoke. I asked him about progress on the possible extension to Tring. He seemed surprised at the question and I got the impression that the notion was announced and then nothing was done.
100andthirty,
My impression too.
Melvyn 15 March 2016 at 19:19
“It’s time councils also my route if HS2 worked on benefits it can bring them as spending money on opposition will be just wasting money … ”
Can we have that sentence in plain English, please?
@Alan G/ Melvyn
“councils on the route of HS2 ” perhaps?
But it’s difficult to see what benefits HS2 can possibly bring to many of them. Those on the WCML may see better local services once the intercities are diverted over HS2, but what possible benefit can HS2 bring to, say, Brackley?
Given how long things take in this country, it must surely be time now to start on planning CR3?
And NO, that is not an invitation to get the crayons out!!!!
@timbeau – you’ve beaten me to the draw, but I’m probably written off as hopelessly anti-HS2, so I didn’t bother. One might add that the modelling accompanying the business case showed many losers as well as winners from HS2, especially amongst those far from an HS2 station.
A reminder that this site is London Reconnections and is not the place for a general discussion on HS2. Scissors withheld so far, but they are poised.
@Southern heights
“it must surely be time now to start on planning CR3”
What makes you think that no-one in the GLA/TfL/DfT is doing just that? After all, the planning for CR2 had been going on since long before anything was made public. (Indeed, earlier incarnations proposed to build it before CR1 had even been thought of, although parts of CR1 seem to have replaced the original plans for the Fleet Line)
Concerning pre-announcements of announcements. In my modest career I had to approve press releases related to my construction projects. These almost always had a big caveat printed on them ‘Embargoed until (date)’. I am certain that LR HQ gets a load of these. The purpose was to enable the media to put together articles in advance, but not to pre-empt the great day. Perhaps the pre-announcement of announcements is due to some media relations wonks forgetting to add the magic phrase! Then the politicos thought ‘why don’t we do that more often?’ It does make me wonder though, are there embargoed press releases with the release date the same as the pre-announcement, followed by others with release dates timed for the ‘real’ thing?
@Fandroid
Alas, the days when press offices relied solely on embargoed press releases have long gone (if they ever really existed). The press office will have routinely briefed one or two selected journalists in advance on the basis that they are getting privileged information earlier than usual with the expectation that they will then write a sufficiently friendly piece in advance of the main publication which will then set the tone for the rest of the coverage.
@quinlet -the issue is not the briefing of the press beforehand – we’ve all done that -it’s the wanton encouragement of the press to announce the announcement a day or so in advance of the actual statement itself. It’s rapidly becoming totally otiose to make any sort of formal statement of policy.
@ Graham H
But that is my point. If you can get a bit a favourable coverage coming out a day or two before the formal announcement you stand a really good chance of shaping the whole coverage as lazy hacks are far more likely simply to copy the slant of an earlier article unless it’s clearly wrong or has missed something critical.
The somewhat more sophisticated approach combines both the leaks and encouraged publication in advance and a diversion on the day. You need look no further than the current budget as a good example where the cuts to PIP payments were to be leaked and published in advance, with the spin that these were necessary to control welfare expenditure, and then the sugar tax was the diversion on the day itself. In that case it was only the exposure by the IFS of the scale of tax cuts for the wealthy that really started to make it unravel. A policy which didn’t have such obvious presentational difficulties would have got away with it.
[This digression into non-transport current affairs is tolerated, but could we please refrain from further excursions down this path; nor is this toleration to be treated as too much of a precedent. Malcolm]
@quinlet – you are as cynical as I am – a great compliment in my book – although the explanation you offer still doesn’t prevent my irritation with the practice!
@ Graham H – you are as cynical as I am – a great compliment in my book 🙂 🙂 🙂
Thank you for the compliment. I guess it comes from too much exposure to politicians!
The iron does enter into the soul somewhat. (Critics* say that conversations in the Hewett household – where everyone has been brought up as politically-facing bureaucrats – are usually incomprehensible metadiscussions.)
*Even my prospective daughter-in-law has been affected now she has gone to work for DSTL.
Wouldn’t Crossrail 3 have to be Marylebone to Fenchurch Street corridors? They’re the only corridors left unconnected. Crossrail 1 takes Great Western and Great Eastern services probably soon adding West Coast Main Line. Crossrail 2 takes West Anglia services and Southwestern services. Thameslink takes Midland services along with a whole bunch of Southern services. Aylesbury and Tilbury are the only corridors not covered so far.
I don’t want to get sucked into talk of CR3 but factually Marylebone to Fenchurch St is not the only corridor left. All London terminals other than Blackfriars have enough traffic to be one of the chosen options. Moreover, CR2 is starting out at Wimbledon and somewhere-in-north-London-which-is-no-longer-clear so terminals aren’t really involved directly.
There are corridors and there are terminals. Some terminals serve more than one corridor, and vice versa.
The Chiltern corridor(s) may be all that’s left in the north, unless you start reclaiming the Northern Heights or the Epping line, but south of the Thames there is still scope: there are no plans to hook up the Windsor Lines corridor to anything, nor the ex-SER services through Lewisham, nor any of Souhern’s services into Victoria (someone last week in the Evening Standard was complaining bitterly that CR2 will do nothing for Croydon, although he seems to have overlooked that Croydon already has three cross-London services from there – over the Cremorne Bridge, via Blackfriars, and through the Brunel Tunnel).
Actually – the link between the Marylebone and Fenchurch corridors already exists, and has done so since very shortly after Marylebone was built. The last section of the GCR/LTSR link was the Whitechapel & Bow Railway, completed in 1902.
Signs of incipient crayonism here (I’ve just taken delivery of my Faeber-Castell Polychromos -36 colours in a tin – fortunately for everyone’s sanity, these will be deployed on mapping local watercourses).
@ Graham H – “cracking pencils Graham” but not exactly cheap. The box of 120 pencils is heading off to crayonista nirvana. 😉
@WW, Graham H
Indeed. Better, more expensive crayons are not the way to get one’s ideas accepted for publication herein…
@WW – Blimey, -120 – that would be serious crayonism (and a big dent in the wallet…)
@LBM – fear not, I have not had a Damascene conversion to crayonism…
Good grief, I’ve lust looked at the website: they cost £1 each!
My son, for work reasons, was looking into buying pencils in bulk. For £60 he could buy 10,000. However, they would only be useful for drawing extensions to the Jubilee Line! (I’ve just worked out that if you laid them end to end, they would stretch about a mile: from North Greenwich to City Airport.
Ah yes,but they were praised by Goethe -His “Green Pencil”
The District Line was Goethe’s idea?
So which line is named Faust then?
Possibly Faust Great Western?
timbeau 21 March 2016 at 20:30
” if you laid them end to end, they would stretch about a mile: from North Greenwich to City Airport.”
That would be a waste of time. Just change from Jubilee to DLR by walking upstairs at Canning Town.
Surely laying 100,000 pencils end-to-end would be a waste of time wherever you did it?
Some say Will Shakespeare was a philosopher and he definitely wrote about pencils:
“2B or not 2B”.
Never mind green pencils. The moderators’ red ones are being sharpened right now…
Nameless
22 March 2016 at 14:33
“2B or not 2B”.
I hadn’t realised soft power began so early
Malcolm – Pencils maybe sharpened but this article relates to an ” HS2 hijack ..!”
Anyway HS2 Bill gained another 10/1 majority at 3 rd reading in commons and it therefore seems likely major developments at Euston , Old Oak Common and where changes to infrastructure in Greater London to incorporate HS2 will soon be a reality once construction gets underway next year and I assume will become part of this site.
AG re my earlier comment a case of auto correct thinking it knows better .. I of course meant ” councils along the route …
GRAHAM FEAKINS at 04:45
@Ian J – “You could probably fit everything in just by diverting the sleepers.”
Where to? Waterloo has been mentioned in the past but not a satisfactory solution. If the new Anglo-Scottish sleepers are all they are made out to be, then they may be surprisingly popular – using Euston.
Is this temporarily for destruction or permanent for platforms.
At night there is no conflict so maybe arrive earlier in the morning and clear out before demand peaks.
If temporary then sleepers were linked with motor-rail so return to Olympia for a decade. The tracks could still be used for parking during the business day.
For a permanent new home as an Edinburgh route then KingsX.
TIMBEAU at 08:03
“Don’t they currently get diverted to King’s Cross sometimes anyway?”
No – none of the platforms at KX is nearly long enough to take them.
Do they get split into halves for 2 platforms – Lowland and Highland boarding.
Aleks2CV: It is helpful to state which comment you are replying to, but I’m afraid in a case like this you need more than the time of day (the date, including the year, would help). We have no objection to old threads being re-opened by someone who has something worth saying on the matter, but response may sometimes be muted (or non-existent), as many people prefer to concentrate on more recent articles.
Cal;edonian Sleepers at Kings Cross
https://www.railmagazine.com/galleries/in-pictures-caledonian-sleeper-diversions
This thread is referenced in the HS2buffers discussion I fell into.
The focus here has been on platforms on which my enquiries are:
Sleeper – why does it need to come to Euston and why could it not arrive (and clear) 30-40 minutes earlier ?
DC – as mentioned many times does not fit Euston mk3 and has easy fixes.
Intermediates served by Bakerloo and semi-fasts calling at WJ & alternately Harrow or Watford (Bushey in peaks).
Underground platforms discussion has been on long (expensive) HS where apparently no case.
There is a case for balanced outer suburban through running so likely to eventually feature at every terminus. Given plans to build a such a facility under the station why not use Cross rail service at Euston for the MK/Northamptons.
Likely because the Chelney plans already existed for use as a Crossrail concept line but that has evolved into a hybrid more like a Thameslink 2 railway
(Distance/toilets/seating/calling pattern/branches)
If platform space numbers is needed then money will be expensed so rather than dig out Camden why not double deck at least part? Maybe shorter ones to save cost.
Euston mk2 was marketed as a modern airport equivalent facility that eventually disappointed. The public are expecting something magnificent from Euston mk3 that will rank in London’s top 5 termini.
@Aleks2CV: If the sleeper arrived earlier, it would only take longer to clear. The service is there for people who travel down overnight and then have a few meetings in London, grab dinner with a friend and return home.
If the train arrived at 06:45, where would they go?
A2CV
The whole approch (pun intended) to Euston HS2 strikes me as a complere dog’s breakfast, I’m afraid.
But without seriously getting the crayons out it’s probably too late now.
I agree that the “sensible” solution would have been to have the present services at a higher level & the HS2 ones where the existing station is, with the tunneled HS lines emerging where the now-abandoned carriage sheds are.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Then there’s the potty idea of having a HS-line with a stop 5 minutes outside the city centre (OOC) & tunelling (!) along the old NNML route, when there’s space in the solum & … & …
Oh dear.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Oh yes: Euston mk2 was marketed as a modern airport equivalent facility
Well, it succeeded in that, perfectly, I’m afraid.
@SHLR- and why would anyone choose to use such an unattractive offer? PV at 07.30 is bad enough! In any case, these days, the am peak has already started well before 0645, so an earlier arrival would contribute nothing to the release of platform space at a critical time..
@Aleks 2CV
Euston is the only station with long enough platfoms – I believe shorter formations were necessary when KX had to be used. The usual arrangment when diverted over the ECML is to route from Euston via a reversal at South Hampstead, and via Primrose Hill and the North London incline.
And yes, arrival times are about as early as they can be: I have had to kick my heels at Edinburgh for a couple of hours after getting off the sleeper, and I imagine there is little more to do at Euston at that time of the morning.
@SOUTHERN HEIGHTS (LIGHT RAILWAY)
@Aleks2CV:
There are also laws – The Environmental Noise (England) Regulations 2006
– about noise trains can make overnight too.
In it Lnight is LAeq over the period 2300 – 0700, local time (where dB(A) sound pressure level (“A” weighted) in decibels as specified in British Standard BS EN 61672-2:2003).
The upshot is that trains have to run as quiet as they can between 11pm and 7am. This includes lowering their speed and the use of whistles/horns.
@Graham H: An 09:00 arrival would be perfect of course, but very Downton Abbey era… A 09:30 arrival would be a bit late and not an opportune time to run an express through the tail end of the morning rush hour either.
@Briantist: I roughly know what those terms mean, but didn’t realise that it ran up to 07:00! Quite surprising!!!!
@SHLR – Let’s face it, there probably isn’t a convenient morning arrival time! If it were the orient Express,perhaps a pleasant late morning arrival after a full breakfast (kippers *and* porridge+) with a little extra time to retire to one’s cabin and freshen up before a short cab ride to one’s luncheon appointment – alas, they don’t make passengers (or sleepers) like that anymore…
+I used tohave a standing bet on with David Mitchell when he was the Minister for railways that we weren’t going to get both on each outing. [The special train to reopen Barmouth bridge caused both of us difficulty as lava bread was substituted for porridge. Personally, I’m no great fan of the stuff, but the Minister had never heard of it; on being assured that it was a traditional Welsh food and that we were passing through some marginal constituencies, he ate it up without further ado].
Graham H…..increasingly your posts are causing me to think of Richard Murdoch and Deryk Guyler in their “Men from the Ministry” roles, and some of your stories have nearly as much comedy value!
@130 -I aim to please.
GREG TINGEY 31 December 2017 at 10:07
“Then there’s the potty idea of having a HS-line with a stop 5 minutes outside the city centre (OOC)”
With its alternative links for the west end, city, docklands and easy connections to Heathrow and the booming Thames Valley heading west. This concept of a satellite edge city location as well as a city centre station each with a different set of connections (including airports) is also followed on both main Shinkansen routes running out of Tokyo in Japan. For a city the size of a small country two stations is not irrational, it is inspired. As train speed through the Euston – OOC tunnels will be fairly low anyway (partly for cost reasons as diameter can be limited) the extra stop doesn’t add significantly to journey time.
“tunelling (!) the old NNML route, when there’s space in the solum”
Chiltern want to run to OOC via this route so that suggests the existing classic solum WILL be preserved following HS2 construction. There isn’t room for two segregated double track alignments on the surface as well as the Central Line, and I think noise through a built-up area was one of the justifications for tunneling in this area. Also it avoids complex intersections with other routes (road and rail) in the Ruislip area.
SHLR asks “If the train arrived at 06:45, where would they go?”
The answer, surely, is “anywhere but taking up a platform. Once you’ve arrived it’s time to get off!”
@Alison W – you certainly can turf the punters onto the streets, but the stock has to sit around for a bit whilst it’s checked (not quite as simple as walking through a Piccadilly set terminating at Rayners Lane), even if you move the servicing and cleaning elsewhere, and then you have to find a path (possibly two, given the length and traction involved) to get rid of it. BTW, you also have to find a further path on arrival to put a loco or two on the country end and possibly a further path to get rid of the locos that brought the train in (unless you are prepared to drag them out to the servicing point. Just what an operator wants any time after about 0630…
@Mark Townend – not a negligible amount of time – perhaps not the 12 minutes and more consumed per Eurostar halt, but perhaps 6 or 7 minutes depending on dwell time. Doesn’t do the business case much good. If only DfT and “Big Train” ministers were less obsessed with speed, some more rational approach to connectivity might appear. [I have high hopes of a forthcoming seminar for the shadow minister for railways next month, although I fear it will get turned into a discussion about Swiss style timetabling.]
@ AlisonW & Graham H – I guess many may not appreciate being turfed off a sleeper immediately upon arrival at e.g. Edinburgh or Euston. I certainly wouldn’t have. There was usually time permitted to stay on the train for at least half an hour after arrival. Mind you, I did once rather panic after arrival and taking my time to ‘get things together’ before alighting in Edinburgh and my electric shaver died when the electric loco was taken off the front and I had fears of being hauled off into a siding! I suppose there was a limit that I managed to pass.
There is also the factor that the sleeper is currently being pushed up-market with some posh new carriages, and presumably fares to match.
(Back in the day you could get off at Milton Keynes, at silly-o-clock in the morning. A good way to make yourself unpopular with the stranger you were sharing a cabin with.)
If these VI-Business types are so effective they won’t be kipping at early o’clock.
But really it is not the train but the arrival. A sleeper reception should ‘have somewhere to go’ for meeting preparation, business lounge, gym, showers, dressing room, internet and a hearty breakfast. One could categorize that as hotel services.
I suspect that vocal decision users are Scottish MPs on accounts taking taxis to the House for 9am.
For future franchising and colouring the UK is becoming more of a leisure and tourism economy. I would categorise the Sleeper as a Hotel on wheels. Harry Potter shows no sign of fading and fans taking in the Hogwarts Express on the Glenfinnan viaduct during a UK layover after their photos on Patform 9 3/4 and day-trip to Kings Langley for HP World.
My ‘solution’ would be at Willesden freightliner with through sidings for the three sleepers and a couple of tourist sidings. Zone the Stephensen Street end with a high end hotel appropriate to the client base suitable for Orient Express departures.
Make it a Grand Terminus theme but with all necessary services. Integrate the hotel with the cabins encouraging stays on site as it were. Sight-seeing and day business is Z2 Oyster from the bridge at Willesden Junction.
Check-out could be at Noon, check-in from 7pm. If cabin servicing was a morning room service for cleaning, linen, supplies then a short run in the afternoon down to Wembley could do the tanks and running checks.
All much more civilised than using Euston.
The sleepers already make a thumping great loss; what demonstrable benefits arise from making that loss much bigger?
If you’re interested in GB Sleeper services but missed the mapping story.
http://cdn.retours.eu/nl/45-schematische-spoorkaarten/enlarge/Intercity-night-BR-1976.jpg
A2CV & others
Having used the blue & yellow services on that diagram, in the days when they were affordable ( & nearly used one of the GW ones ) they were a great way to travel.
But that was last in 1979 ….
Don’t see a better place to ask 2 queries ..
1) If captive stock guage is higher but UK won’t use double deckers is there any chance of seeing a VistaDome coach ?
2) re concerns about OOC has anyone a reference without downloading a 200 page manual on platform layout
https://cdn.londonreconnections.com/2013/OOC-WCML-sm.jpg
was an early view but some here said HS2 may rise to the surface.
Are there any cross-platform interchanges proposed anywhere at OOC?
Are there any cross-platform interchanges anywhere between GWR and EL?
If dwell time is a factor for HS2 at intermediate stops why do they not have single road platforms and use both doors like Central inbound at Stratford for EL & Jubilee?
@ALEKS2CV 1 January 2018 at 15:13
“1) If captive stock guage is higher but UK won’t use double deckers is there any chance of seeing a VistaDome coach ?”
I don’t think there’s any long term resolution over whether bi-level will ever be used in UK on HS2. There certainly will not be any double deckers for Phase 1 as the initial fleet is all going to be conventional network compatible. There were equivalents to US vista domes in Europe, notably on the Rhinegold TEE so the European gauge could certainly accommodate such vehicles, although I can’t see much use for them for them on HS2 infrastructure which will not be very scenic at all! The current Scotrail franchise had some sort of aspiration for special scenic stock for selected lines but I know nothing of any progress on this and they won’t be bi-level clearly.
“2) re concerns about OOC … some here said HS2 may rise to the surface.”
I don’t think there has been any significant change from the original sunken box idea.
There are no cross-platform interchanges between GWR and EL (Elizabeth Line?), nor can there be realistically with the current paired by use layout. For most people I think interchange between GW services from the west and onward EL services to central London and the East will take place at Paddington, whether or not most GW fast services call at OOC or not.
“If dwell time is a factor for HS2 at intermediate stops why do they not have single road platforms and use both doors like Central inbound at Stratford for EL & Jubilee?”
Sometimes known as the “Spanish solution”, probably more suitable for higher density urban applications than high speed railways.
Heathrow trains will stop with a facing platform to up GWML.
Will those all be non-stop Reading-OOC.
The routing from the west country will be change at Reading and stairs again at Hayes.
That will get tiring until a western turnout.
@ALEKS2CV 1 January 2018 at 17:06
“The routing from the west country will be change at Reading and stairs again at Hayes. That will get tiring until a western turnout.”
I think the Reading Railair bus will survive until a western rail connection is built.
Re: Mark Townend “The current Scotrail franchise had some sort of aspiration for special scenic stock for selected lines but I know nothing of any progress on this and they won’t be bi-level clearly.”
This has been much misunderstood! The requirement for scenic trains in the ScotRail invitation to tender did *not* specify any non-standard rolling stock in terms of windows, i.e. bodyshell, i.e. a major and basic component of vehicle design.
The solution proposed in Abellio’s winning bid was Class 158s with a revised seat layout, which was *completely* compliant with the ITT.
(I am not however totally clear whether that remains the plan as it seems that 158s may be more difficult than foreseen to approve for operation on the West Highland Line.)
Aleks2CV
The routing from the west country will be change at Reading and stairs again at Hayes
Hayes & Harlington should be totally step-free accessible by December 2019 if Network Rail don’t let us down. And what do you mean by ‘stairs again’? Reading is also totally step-free accessible.
PEDANTIC OF PURLEY 1 January 2018 at 18:46
And what do you mean by ‘stairs again’?
I mean a train full of airport travellers and a disabled lift for four.
Even at a quiet West Brompton I’ve had to let a train go by fortunately not the MK.
MARK TOWNEND 1 January 2018 at 15:54
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheingold_(train)#/media/File:TEE_Rheingold_Dresden_pic01_2007_04_23.JPG
That’s gorgeous. and they are are still running it after 50 years. Thank-you for the reference.
@A2cv – no, they are not; the vista dome cars, apart from the preserved ones, were sold to the Swedes about 15 years ago. I travelled (breakfasted) in one returning from Gallivare to Stockholm about 15 years ago.
Should have clarified – not on the original TEE but operating in preservation in good condition with seeming market appeal,