By: Philip Alexander

Philip Alexander — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 06:52:26 +0000

The answer is staring everyone in the face, it’s not rocket science. There is absolutely no point in running a bespoke, unique stand-alone 400kph railway between two obscure locations and expect to get any economic benefit from that outcome at all. There was never going to be sufficient patronage to fill a 400m long high speed train between Euston and Curzon Street anyway, at the frequency proposed. Just about the whole of London and Birmingham would have to be travelling back and forth to justify the seat capacity provided by HS2 (only joking, but seating provision is massively over-provided unless the journey costs are ridiculously cheap). Now that the London end stops at the great metropolis of Old Oak Common there is even less justification of continuing with the delusional idea of running 400kph trains over a distance of about 150km. Because the HS2 trains are designed to run at 400kph on a more or less straight alignment, they would be non-tilting and therefore have no ability to travel up the WCML north of Birmingham at more than about 160kph, about 50kph SLOWER than the present tilting Pendolino trains. Therefore the massive cost of developing these one-off 400kph trains and getting them to work is completely unjustified for use over such a short distance.
Given that the sane, sensible decision to cancel the whole sorry charade was not taken, the solution now (as I have said time and again) is to re-design the operating environment of the twig of HS2 as a conventional railway, fully integrated with the rest of the railway network and derive benefits of inter-operability between the WCML and HS2 south of Birmingham. Run existing Pendolino trains on HS2 . That would probably save at least 2 years in bringing HS2 into passenger operation, since it is guaranteed that due to the hugely ambitious speed parameters for HS2 trains the commissioning of this rolling stock will take far longer than anyone in HS2 is prepared to admit.
Please join up the dots and just integrate HS2 into Network Rail and get on with it.

Comments on: Decisions are needed now to deliver best value out of revised HS2 line

By: Philip Alexander