Intercity Express Programme (IEP) - ongoing discussion

[whole diary]

[broadgage]

With todays announcement that most planned electrification is cancelled, and with passenger numbers still growing rapidly, perhaps the time has come to lengthen some of the IEPs^▸ (Intercity Express Program / Project.) ?

SNIPPED!

I understood that the latest figures showed a slight decrease in rail travel in London and the south east. Not all of this is attributable to TSGN's problems.

Rail passenger numbers have been increasing for some years and seem likely to increase for some years into the future. A short term decline in London commuter traffic is IMHO^▸ (in my humble opinion) largely due to the incompetence of Southern and Thameslink, or whatever they are called this week.
However bad it may seem at present, this level of disruption wont carry on forever.
One of the reasons that I left London was the appalling "service" offered by Thameslink.

[Richard Fairhurst]

IEP^▸ (Intercity Express Program / Project.) at Charlbury this evening...

[PhilWakely]

If everyone gets a seat out of Paddington regularly <snip> .....

Oink, Oink, flap, flap............ plummet   

[Rhydgaled]

Todays announcement comes just days after HMG announced the go ahead of HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) then why not cancel HS2 and invest the money in completing the previously committed electrification projects. I am no economist but it does not make sense to me to go ahead with HS2

WHAT! Even on a railway fourm, why is nobody else is calling for road bypass money to be diverted to fund electrification instead of HS2 money? It was one thing reading the comments on the newspaper sites yesterday, with people calling for HS2 money to be spent on electrification instead, but I have yet to see anyone asking for bypasses to be scrapped instead of electrification. In December 2014 the government boasted a £15.2 billion investment in the road network from 2015-2020; admittedly some of that will probably be maintenance spending that is needed but the bypass schemes are counter productive and should be scrapped. They should also keep the Severn Bridge Tolls to continue raising money for road maintenance freeing up funds for investment in the railway and avoid negative modal shift as driving across the Severn becomes cheaper relative to rail fares.

HS2 is a right mess; a new line is needed for the reasons quoted by HS2's supporters, but many of those outcomes will not be delivered with HS2 due to poor design. I should mention I am no economist either, but applying my own brand of common sense if you want HS2 to rebalance the economy away from London it needs to make a network centered on Manchester or Birmingham with links (including electrified classic routes) to Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool etc., otherwise London will continue to grow and you'll need new lines to relieve the GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line) and ECML^▸ (East Coast Main Line) (and probably other routes from London) as well in due course. Yet HS2 is still a better investment that all these bypasses (and extra lanes on motorways and other roads) which should be blasted off the hard drives of the planners in the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about), Highways Agency or wherever.

[ellendune]

Todays announcement comes just days after HMG announced the go ahead of HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) then why not cancel HS2 and invest the money in completing the previously committed electrification projects. I am no economist but it does not make sense to me to go ahead with HS2

WHAT! Even on a railway fourm, why is nobody else is calling for road bypass money to be diverted to fund electrification instead of HS2 money? It was one thing reading the comments on the newspaper sites yesterday, with people calling for HS2 money to be spent on electrification instead, but I have yet to see anyone asking for bypasses to be scrapped instead of electrification. In December 2014 the government boasted a £15.2 billion investment in the road network from 2015-2020; admittedly some of that will probably be maintenance spending that is needed but the bypass schemes are counter productive and should be scrapped. They should also keep the Severn Bridge Tolls to continue raising money for road maintenance freeing up funds for investment in the railway and avoid negative modal shift as driving across the Severn becomes cheaper relative to rail fares.

HS2 is a right mess; a new line is needed for the reasons quoted by HS2's supporters, but many of those outcomes will not be delivered with HS2 due to poor design. I should mention I am no economist either, but applying my own brand of common sense if you want HS2 to rebalance the economy away from London it needs to make a network centered on Manchester or Birmingham with links (including electrified classic routes) to Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool etc., otherwise London will continue to grow and you'll need new lines to relieve the GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line) and ECML^▸ (East Coast Main Line) (and probably other routes from London) as well in due course. Yet HS2 is still a better investment that all these bypasses (and extra lanes on motorways and other roads) which should be blasted off the hard drives of the planners in the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about), Highways Agency or wherever.

Heartily agree that HS2 should come from cuts in new roads spending rather than existing rail. Only the other day I saw some pressure group saying trains would be rendered obsolete by driverless cars and we should scrap HS2 and build a road instead!  Presumably this is so the super-rich who are funding that campaign don't actually have speak to any ordinary people. 

To be fair the HS2 network is centred on Birmingham.

[JayMac]

Bypass schemes are counter-productive? Tell that to users of the A358 through Henlade in Somerset, and to the residents of Henlade.

That road links large areas of Somerset to the county town Taunton. Areas which are very poorly served by public transport. No rail alternative and a woeful bus service.

The congestion is constant, from early morning to late evening.

Henlade Bypass, Now!

[Bmblbzzz]

"Behold," said the Lord High Governor, "this marvellous High Speed Railway my Lord High Government has built for you. Travel upon the fast, silent and luxurious trains as they speed highly from my capital to my second city. See that we are now the envy of the French for we have built a High Speed Railway that is higher, speedier and more railway than theirs, and join me in thanking my Controller General of Transportation for bringing it to you."

And the entire country did say "Oooh!" and "Aaah!" and "Isn't it good."

"Behold," said the Lord High Governor, "this marvellous High Speed Railway my Lord High Government has built for you. Travel upon the fast, silent and luxurious trains as they speed highly from my capital to my second tier provincial city. See that we have spent much time and effort and money in overcoming the technical difficulties brought about by your rugged provincial landscape, and join me in thanking my Second Deputy Controller of Provincial Transportation for bringing it to the people of The West Of England^{(TM‡(resolve))}."

And the people of The West Of England^(TM) were indeed most thankful, they did go down upon their knees and cry out "We thank you with all our souls for this wonderful railway which is as if God himself has brought it to us." And the people of the rest of the country did say, "What the f*** is that? What a stupid waste of money! Get out of here!" And they did cast stones upon the body of the Second Deputy Controller of Provincial Transportation, and then their ire was not assuaged but they did turn their wrath upon the people of The West Of England^(TM) and they did refuse to eat their pasties or lay their bodies upon their beautiful sandy beaches and no more did they drink the cider of the apples of The West Of England^(TM).  

[ChrisB]

HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) is no vanity project. THe argument has been made successfully many times around the internet.

It will also benefit far more pax than electrifying the remaining GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line) and other cancelled electrifications.

[Tim]

HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) is no vanity project. THe argument has been made successfully many times around the internet.

I agree but with the caveat that the arguments in favour stop being valid when the cost rises significantly.  The cost benefit analysis with a price tag of £55 bn gives a benefit to cost ratio of less than 2.  This is lower than the value for plenty of other projects which do no go ahead but just about good enough for the project to go ahead.  If the cost rises above about £100bn then the project is a proven waste of money.  Support for HS2 must therefore depend on costs being absolutely nailed down before serious money is spent. 

[Rhydgaled]

Bypass schemes are counter-productive? Tell that to users of the A358 through Henlade in Somerset, and to the residents of Henlade.

That road links large areas of Somerset to the county town Taunton. Areas which are very poorly served by public transport. No rail alternative and a woeful bus service.

The congestion is constant, from early morning to late evening.

Henlade Bypass, Now!

I don't know Somerset at all well and I certainly don't know Henlade, so my points are general not specific but... WHY is the bus service woeful? Because too many people drove and didn't use the buses so the subsidy requirement for running the buses got too high? Why did they drive, because the bus was too slow? Why was the bus too slow, because it went through every little village while cars could speed past on the bypasses? The government go on about the 15 minute time saving from London to Cardiff in December 2018 when electrification finally arrives, which should create modal shift to public transport. By the same logic, making car journeys faster encourages modal shift in the other direction, hence bypasses are counter-productive.

To be fair the HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) network is centred on Birmingham.

Birmingham is near the centre of the HS2 network yes, but the planned routes mean that, operationally, the HS2 network is London centric. You could perhaps argue that it is centered on the Birmingham Interchange station near Birmingham International, but the central Birmingham station is on a dead-end spur. Manchester to London trains using HS2 will be unable to call at the central Birmingham station and Manchester to Bristol services would be forced to use Birmingham New Street*. You also cannot take advantage of the HighSpeed to insert a Birmingham stop into London-Liverpool and London-Chester services (improving the service between Chester and Birmingham enormously, which currently requires a change at Crewe or an indirect route via Wrexham and Shrewsbury), because under HS2 Birmingham is BYPASSED. The likely outcome therefore is if you get on a HS2 train you are either in London or boarding a train that will be running non-stop to London (I'm counting Old Oak Common as part of London here) apart from the out-of-town Birmingham Interchange (ok, there might Sheffield stops in Leeds services, but apart from that it isn't linking regional city centres together, just linking regional cities with London).

* Admittedly, I cannot see a way of avoiding New Street for Leeds to Bristol services, but it might have been possible for Manchester to Bristol services to use the HS2 'Curzon Street' station if they had gone for a tunnelled route north out of Birmingham towards Crewe.

[Zoe]

Bypass schemes are counter-productive? Tell that to users of the A358 through Henlade in Somerset, and to the residents of Henlade.

That road links large areas of Somerset to the county town Taunton. Areas which are very poorly served by public transport. No rail alternative and a woeful bus service.

The congestion is constant, from early morning to late evening.

Henlade Bypass, Now!

The current A358 dualling plans don't seem to do much for Henlade though with the new route going offline from West Hatch to a new junction with the M5 to South West of Taunton (which isn't even going to be freelow).  I expect most of the traffic using the new route will be from the A303/A30 Blackdown Hills route (which currently wouldn't be going anywhere near Henlane) and so the current Taunton and North traffic will continue to use the old route through Henlade.

[NickF]

Bypass schemes are counter-productive?

It kind of depends what 'sort' of bypass it is, if it's a bypass that's used predominately by through traffic then I would say no it isn't counter productive, but the trouble is a lot of bypasses are built and then in fill development is allowed so the so called bypass if used just as much by local traffic as well as the through traffic.  Chippenham springs to mind as an example of this (of which some sections are currently being dualled)- Infill housing development (with more planned) plus retail stores at every junction. 

[CyclingSid]

The issue with bypasses and other new road schemes, that the motoring lobby conveniently forgets is that they generate more traffic. In the case of bypasses they generate more traffic, both on the new road and quite often on the road they are supposed to be bypassing. Some indication of this can be found in the Five year review of the Newbury Bypass:

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100812083220/http://www.highways.gov.uk/roads/documents/Newbury_Bypass_Five_Years_After_1.pdf

So they are not the panacea extolled by ministers, but the make the motorist feel loved.

[didcotdean]

That report attributes the increase mainly to strategic re-assignment from other routes. During the preceding few years where the A34 through Newbury was almost continually a half-hour queue at minimum, many people decided to take alternative routes either long distance to the South Coast or locally. Things may be different today nearly another 15 years on.

A similar case can be seen with the completion of the A43 dual carriageway between the M40 and M1 via Brackley and Towcester. This was engineered as a 'no increase' in traffic scheme, but in reality there was significant re-assignment from the M1 itself from London as well as other local routes such as the A361 leading to a fairly quick 45% increase.

These re-assignments at a regional, almost national level are not in general modelled beforehand.

[Zoe]

That report attributes the increase mainly to strategic re-assignment from other routes.

Which is one concern with the A303, I expect quite a lot of traffic currently goes via the M4 and M5 due to the low standard sections of the A303, with the A303 fully dualled this traffic will switch and so the extra capacity will be filled very quickly.  It's also possible some South Coast to South West traffic will switch from the A35 which is mostly single carriageway and is most likely never going to be improved.