UK High Speed Two

A few months ago, the UK government released High Speed Rail with several supporting documents. The proposed route is:

London Euston station
Junction with line to Heathrow Airport
Birmingham Interchange near that city's airport
Branches:

Downtown Birmingham

Manchester and West Coast Main Line

East Midlands (Derby, Leicester, Nottingham)
Sheffield
Leeds

Possible extensions:
Euston - St. Pancras
Manchester - Glasgow, Edinburgh
Leeds - Newcastle

The major parties support or at least profess to support this scheme or some variants of it.

But with the recent election, the plans may not go ahead very fast.

No Heathrow direct link in high speed rail plans | UK news | The Guardian - the Tories would prefer for the line to go through Heathrow.

Tory fears of vote backlash put high-speed rail route in doubt | Politics | The Guardian - some Tories don't like it because they don't want to lose the votes of possible NIMBY's that the line will go very close to.

When we finally get a government I think cuts in public expenditure will be the main theme. I doubt if HS2 is going to happen soon.

The current issues with HS1 might not help!

High-speed trains hit by lack of passenger demand

Train bosses have been forced to remove 18 carriages from the celebrated high-speed rail link after it failed to generate enough demand from passengers.

The revelations – confirmed by Southeastern – will come as a bitter blow to politicians who hailed the new service a huge success after the full timetable was launched in December.

http://www.kentnews.co.uk/kent-news/Hig ... news=local

[quote="Jack the Steam"]The current issues with HS1 might not help!

High-speed trains hit by lack of passenger demand

Train bosses have been forced to remove 18 carriages from the celebrated high-speed rail link after it failed to generate enough demand from passengers.

The revelations – confirmed by Southeastern – will come as a bitter blow to politicians who hailed the new service a huge success after the full timetable was launched in December.

http://www.kentnews.co.uk/kent-news/Hig ... nger-fares are much higher, and the time saving is very modest. I think they will have to bring the fares down.

Most of the commuters want to go to the City, whereas the High Speed trains go to St Pancras. People would need to change at Stratford for the City instead of walking across the bridge at London Bridge.

All these doubts were rehearsed in the rail press before the trains were even built. It has turned out that these criticisms have proved correct.

The "classic" routes have been slowed down to give the Javelins an advantage but that won't work.

george matthews wrote:
Most of the commuters want to go to the City, whereas the High Speed trains go to St Pancras. People would need to change at Stratford for the City instead of walking across the bridge at London Bridge.

London's situation of having several stations scattered about the city seems like a problem. In 2008, my brother and I missed a connection because our train was delayed 15 min by signal problems, and then the underground line we had to take to make our connection was closed for maintenance, forcing us to take a more circuitous route. Then, thanks to all that, we missed our ferry at Dover! Granted, New York has several stations, but really Penn and Grand Central are the main ones. Boston has North Station, South Station, and Back Bay. Two or three seems reasonable for a city, but it's tough to make connections when the endpoints of various routes are scattered about the city!

Is the Crossrail project supposed to address this (among other issues)?

Matt Johnson wrote:

george matthews wrote:
Most of the commuters want to go to the City, whereas the High Speed trains go to St Pancras. People would need to change at Stratford for the City instead of walking across the bridge at London Bridge.

London's situation of having several stations scattered about the city seems like a problem. In 2008, my brother and I missed a connection because our train was delayed 15 min by signal problems, and then the underground line we had to take to make our connection was closed for maintenance, forcing us to take a more circuitous route. Then, thanks to all that, we missed our ferry at Dover! Granted, New York has several stations, but really Penn and Grand Central are the main ones. Boston has North Station, South Station, and Back Bay. Two or three seems reasonable for a city, but it's tough to make connections when the endpoints of various routes are scattered about the city!

The reasons are of course historical. When railways were first built government had no policy other than to leave it to private enterprise. They didn't want stations in the centre of town (London was of course much smaller then).
Much the same happened in Paris.

Compare with Brussels where railways were planned by the government. There were only two terminals (which were eventually linked in the 1950s (the main station is called Brussel Zuid). Amsterdam also has a central station.

Yes, you do need to allow for crossing London. I suppose you left from either Charing Cross or Victoria for Dover. You would now go from St Pancras so that people from the north could get there quite a bit faster. But if you are going to Paris now you would go from St Pancras. It is several years now that I have used the ferries, though I used to go quite often (cheaper than Eurostar). Before HS1 was built I would usually go from Charing Cross via Gillingham.

My local trains go to Waterloo, so that I have to go to St Pancras whereas I used to be able to go to Paris from the same station. (But I haven't used St Pancras so far.)

If HS2 is ever built it will probably terminate at Euston (but I doubt if it will be built in my life time.)

djlong wrote:Is the Crossrail project supposed to address this (among other issues)?

No. It will connect east and west. It will relieve pressure on the Central line and the east west Metropolitan and District lines.

george matthews wrote: I suppose you left from either Charing Cross or Victoria for Dover.

I believe it was Charing Cross. We were coming from York, and I think we came into Kings Cross.

It is several years now that I have used the ferries, though I used to go quite often (cheaper than Eurostar).

We were originally going to take the Eurostar, but this was September 2008, when they had the Chunnel fire that shut down service for a while. That forced us to change our plans! Also, we each had both a Britrail pass and a Eurail pass, but discovered that the Eurostar falls under neither! And it's not cheap. So, it was just as well that we took the ferry. It was fun, and I got to see the white cliffs of Dover!

I find London very confusing. I found in WIkipedia the London station group of central-London stations, and it lists 18 of them, with 4 former ones. Checking on National Rail Enquiries - Maps, I find at least one more - Farringdon.

About 13 of them are terminal (line-end) stations or former ones. Two of them are connected by Thameslink in a north-south line: St. Pancras and Blackfriars. Crossrail will connect two more in an east-west line: Paddington and Liverpool St., and will also connect to Thameslink.

Wikipedia to the rescue again: High Speed 2 -- it's indeed planned to have its London end at Euston station.

As to other European cities, Paris has 7, Moscow has 9, St. Petersburg (Russia) has 5, though several other European cities have only one major station.

The city with the most in the US is (I think) Chicago, with formerly 7, now 4 terminal stations. New York City and Boston have only 2, Philadelphia had 2, etc. Several US cities have had only one.

London stations.

If you are coming from most of Wales (south and mid) you will come into Paddington.
Also west of England: Penzance, Plymouth, Bristol.
From Exeter you will come into Paddington or Waterloo (usually cheaper and slower).
From the southwestern south coast you will come into Waterloo.
From the Central south Coast (Brighton) you will come into Victoria.
From eastern south coast you will come into either Victoria or London Bridge or Charing Cross or Cannon Street. These are all mainly commuter stations.

North of London you have Liverpool Street for east Anglia, including Cambridge.
Then there is Kings Cross for the East Coast mainline - Scotland and Yorkshire for example. There are also commuter lines, including another line to Cambridge.
St Pancras was built for Midland trains but now also has an international section, and the fast trains for Kent (not all that fast as it turns out).
Euston is for the west coast mainline - Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. Also north Wales. There are also commuter trains.
Fenchurch Street is a commuter station for Southend.

There is also a through north and south line from Brighton to Bedford (Thameslink) which allows through London service (like NJT ought to pass through New York to New Haven for efficient use of tracks). It is on that line that Farringdon is an important station. Eventually there will be a connection with the Crossrail line.
There is now another north-south line in the east (East London line) just reopened after extensive building.
I forgot Marylebone, which is a useful station for a cheaper route to Birmingham, Stratford on Avon and some commuter routes.

I don't find any of this confusing but then my earliest memory of travelling from Euston is 1944 being taken by my mother to Scotland to escape from V1 and V2 weapons.

With a new government in charge, is UK HSR 2 as visualized by the last government, still possible?

I think that it may still be possible. The Tories also support it, if they can stomach spending money on it. However, they prefer going through Heathrow Airport, which may cause trouble for the planning of that line.

I understand the London-station arrangement a bit better now. Thanx, george matthews.

Since HS2 will most likely go to Euston station, it won't go to the station that HS1 goes to, St. Pancras. The two stations are close, however. They are 0.85 km and one London Underground stop away, but even that will be unsatisfactory to travelers with a lot of luggage. It gets worse for other pairs of stations, though the LU Circle Line connects several of them.

Any chance of building a bypass line like the LGV Interconnexion Est at Paris? That short line connects the north, east, and southeast LGV's, with a proposal to built from the southeast to the west LGV.

Not only London, but all of the other cities I've mentioned also have urban-rail stations near their commuter and intercity rail stations, with one exception: Chicago. Only one of its stations, LaSalle, is near a CTA "L" station; the rest are 2 or 3 blocks away, including the intercity Union Station).

electricron wrote:With a new government in charge, is UK HSR 2 as visualized by the last government, still possible?

We must remember that Crossrail was first proposed at least as early as the 1950s (and maybe in the 19th century). Even now it is by no means certain it will be finished.

I can't see the new government finding any money for a high speed line.