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Towards a New Golden Age of Rail?
By Andy | August 5, 2009
You know that something interesting is happening when Michael O’Leary gets really upset about something (http://tiny.cc/4mtkj)
At education Andrew Adonis was a dangerous man with an elitist vision, thoroughly stubborn, an ability to completely side-step any meaningful exchange with the outside world and — somehow — the absolute confidence of Number 10 through the Blair years. But as he sets out to plan a course for a new high speed railway, might Adonis be just the right man in the right place?
I never thought I’d be praising the work of Lord Adonis. But now this famed train spotter has begun to unveil his vision for high speed rail I’m going to have to take my hat off to him.
High Speed rail is something of a no-brainer. Just look at mainstream Europe to see the benefits. London to Scotland in three and a half hours? Why not. And why would you bother with internal flights when you can go centre to centre so quickly. London to Birmingham in next to no time. Wow.
The big problem here is the ability to deliver. But Adonis has set out his ideas in a very genuine way. He recognises that he has to build political consensus across Westminster. He also recognises the problems in funding such a venture and has begun a debate on that as well. I wish we’d seen more of this kind of advanced thinking during the last ten years. I hope Adonis’ plan begin to build some real momentum.
It’s not all wonderful of course. Planners and communities will need to think hard about the implications of a shrunken Britain. The Economic Development professionals in the Midlands, the North West and the North North East (as well as the Scots) will be delighted by this. Such a system will make them much closer to the economic powerhouse of the South East.
It would be foolish, though, to go overboard with the economic development arguments just for the sake of it.
For example, just what pressure will this put on our rural communities and on the green belt that surrounds it. Here South of Birmingham we saw great changes when the M40 was extended from Oxford. But with such short journey times long distance commuting and distant suburban living will become a real option for many. Both regional and local planning authorities will have to think hard about the downsides and well as the benefits of high speed rail.
But overall this is a welcome development, albeit a long term vision for change. We simply do not need short hop internal flights and I expect to see O’Leary and others really beginning to mount a serious campaign to destabilize Odonis. Let’s hope No.10 is robust enough to give him the space to continue to develop his plans.
There is enough time here for investors in airlines to begin to move into other areas. No doubt Branson will embrace this as will others. It is about time that this government thought about leaving us something of a legacy over high speed rail. But they should be congratulated for getting this far, even though they should have done this far earlier. Brown I guess also deserves some support here. Would Blair have been brave enough to do this in the face of opposition from the world of air, particularly at a time of recession? I doubt it. And Cameron will probably be in the same place.
Adonis offers the chance to build a national consensus. But if Cameron gets this one wrong he will have also helped Labour carve out some real space for the General Election and the years that follow.
Topics: Infrastructure |
August 5th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
If climate change/carbon is our biggest concern, then HSR may not be the answer as it uses about twice the energy of conventional trains. As the recent white paper notes:
“carbon emissions per passenger for a journey between London and Edinburgh will be approximately 7 kg of carbon for conventional-speed rail, 14 kg for high-speed rail, and 26 kg for aviation.”
And HSR only saves about 15 minutes time London-Birmingham, and about an hour to Scotland. So a lot of extra energy for relatively small time improvements that might not reduce air travel demand that much. The 2004 Atkins/SRA High Speed Line Study looked at exactly that question and concluded:
“Although the modal shift from air travel to HSL is expected to reduce passenger kilometres travelled by air, the reduction is likely to be insufficient to reduce the number of flights; hence emissions from air transport are unlikely to be affected by HSL.”
If climate change is our main consideration we should be looking at increasing train frequency rather than speed to increase convenience and reliability. Also investment in wider and/or double-decker track and trains at conventional speeds would decrease carbon use.
Another issue is that a special HSR track has immense capacity (no slower trains blocking paths), more than the entire current London-Scotland travel demand. To recover the investment cost the operators may need to increase travel demand (special offers etc). If we don’t fill the HSR trains to a reasonable level, the energy per passanger used will actually be higher than flying in a near full airplane.
I don’t think HSR (using seperate tracks) is a no-brainer in relatively small UK, and it needs careful evaluation. We need extra capacity to Birmingham, so it may make sense for new track that far, then ustilise existing tracks
beyond.
Worth reading the “Delivering a Sustainable Railway” White Paper and the Transform Scotland briefing.
http://www.dft.gov.uk/about/strategy/whitepapers/whitepapercm7176/multideliversustainrailway
http://www.transformscotland.org.uk/GetFile.aspx?ItemId=176
August 10th, 2009 at 9:01 am
I have some sympathies with that.
One of the big problems here is the chance that investment in local rail will still be tight.
I take the point about demand but I do think this is something that is going to happen. But,will this be about quicker routes in London or the building of local and regional economies.
I appreciate that the verdict is out, but it is a shame that government cannot act like this in other areas.
Mind you, there are rumors that the Tories will offer Adonis a job!
August 10th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
One thing that intriuges me about the HSR proposals is the impact on Heathrow, and what the Heathrow lobby is doing on this.
A Heathrow branch is fairly central to the Greenguage HS2 proposal. They argue it would allow long-haul air passangers to avoid additional flights to Paris or the North, and provides another fast London to Heathrow link.
But it seems to me the main effect of Heathrow on HS2 would be to increase the Heathrow catchment area, bringing considerably more passangers to Heathrow.
I note they argue it would make Birmingham International Airport (BIA) a better secondary airport for London than Stansted, supporting BIA. But it seems to me the reverse of Midlands people getting to cheaper flights at super-hub Heathrow would be the dominant change, reducing BIA traffic.
It will be interesting to understand what the Heathrow lobby really think about HS2, rather than the spin.
http://www.railwayforum.com/admin/project/uploaded-media/jim-steer-greenguage-21.pdf
http://www.greengauge21.net/assets/GG21_HS2.pdf
August 10th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
I’ve been no fan of Adonis, but I am impressed how quickly he agreed to electrification of the Wales/West route. That does take one fear I had that funding sexy HSR would stop more sensible capital spending.
On the capacity issue, I’ve looked at some of the numbers (back-of-envelope style).
Greenguage say HSR max is 15,000 seats/hour in each direction, using 11 trains/hour (1360 seat trains).
Currently ECML + WCML run 4 trains/hour London-Scotland, or about 1900 seats/hour. Guessing, 6 flights per hour (A320 180 seat) is 1080 seats/hour. Say 500/hour car and coach tranfer. That makes current capacity about 3500/hour.
So current total capacity is about 23% of HSR capacity, or 2.5 HSR trains per hour, though of course not all the air passangers will change to HSR.
They would probably run 4 smaller trains per hour all the way to Scotland, matching current train frequency. But I would doubt HSR all the way to Scotland would be economic at that level of utilisation, which probably means prices cannot be reduced to the level that would force flying the route out of business.
This is not to say HSR as far as Birmingham or Manchester might not work OK. But this isn’t a simple decision.