UKC

According to the Chancellor it will be "the engine for growth in the North and the Midlands of this country".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21221828

Is there any evidence for this?

In reply to EeeByGum: I skim read this

http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/jtrc/discussionpapers/dp200816.p...

my conclusion: It can, but may not, depends on the route and circumstances.

Intersting they have put a stop at Mcr Airport.

In reply to EeeByGum:
I'm a bit confused about the route, Birmingham, toten (just south west of Nottingham for those like me who didn't know), sheffield, manchester +airport, and leeds.
sounds like a really winding route.

In reply to gethin_allen:

It's two lines that split at Brum, isn't it?

In reply to Papillon:
The airport stop makes sense to me.

In reply to gethin_allen:

It also doesn't serve the cities themselves very well and will create car journeys.

If we must have it, it would be better to do it Swiss/Germany style and use it as "infill", but serving the main city railway stations with junctions either side.

But personally I believe it to be a waste of money that would be better spent improving our atrocious city public transport networks, e.g. building trams, underground systems and the likes, that any self-respecting German city has but few of ours do. City transport is the big problem, not long-distance travel.

Neil

In reply to gethin_allen: Scroll to the bottom of the bbc article, there's a picture.

In reply to andy:
I was thinking that this would make sense but also that this would be enormously expensive and that you'd do better continuing a single line as far as possible to maximise the impact of being a fast train.

In reply to gethin_allen:

It's Toton, they said it was not too winding so they could keep the speed up, that's why it's meadowhell not sheffield proper.

In reply to Papillon:

Ahh, Makes more sense now, I had read it this morning on my phone while laying in bed and had missed the full thing.
I'd still stick to my previous comment though

In reply to winhill:
Toton or Toten a spelling mistake doesn't detract from the fact that it's in the middle of nowhere and you'll probably have to wait 30 min to get a connecting train to the place you want to go.

In reply to gethin_allen:

All the waits still add up, no matter where the train leaves from, the old city centre stations, like nottingham and sheff are time consuming to get to, so if you're going out of town it's a bonus, if you're visiting town, less so.

In reply to EeeByGum: Finally , we will get station in Toton ! Not so ''miles from anywhere'' and a place crying out for a decent passenger train station as it is located next to what is one of the largest train depots in the UK . Although it will take years for any construction to even start , when it is finished it will be nice to not have to drive or cycle for half an hour before even getting on train .
Whether it is a good use of public money or not is another argument ...

In reply to winhill:

I wonder if that's why they want to move a bit of the M1 as well

In reply to winhill:

But if you are selling this scheme as a may of shaving 20 min off a trip to the north but you have to spend 30 min changing trains to get to the city centres, where most of the big businesses that are likely to want to cough up extra for a fast train service are, you may as well save the 30 odd billion pounds and not bother.
Take it, you want tot go to Sheffield. The slow train takes ~2:30 you catch a cab outside the station and for ~£5-10 in 10 min you are where you want to be, nice and simple. Or, you take the fast train takes 2:10 but it dumps you in Meadowhall and you wait 10 min for a tram on a dank dingy platform then spend 15 min on a tram that doesn't take you exactly to your destination, which if you were visiting a new unfamiliar city could be a problem.

In reply to Neil Williams:

Totally agree - you could do a lot to improve local transport with 32 billion quid (and of course it would end up a heck of a lot more than that).

This is justb a bullshit vanity project.

In reply to winhill: Toton is (was?) a huge depot/ sidings area - so in theory it's very well connected by rail. I reckon for London the existing service will be as quick if you factor in the additional faff of getting to Toton from anywhere but Beeston! London is only an hour and a bit from Nottm anyway, so extra savings will be marginal.

Unless this government changes the rules so I can never retire, I should be using my pensioners rail pass by the time it's finished,mind

In reply to toad:

I'd imagine that they'll extend the tram out to the new station giving you a reasonably quick connection to the uni and the city centre.

I'm not entirely convinced by the argument that this will drive economic growth in the North, though - the usual effect of improving transport links between economically stronger and weaker areas is to shaft the weaker areas - so in this case, it wouldn't be surprising to see UK-wide companies closing their regional offices or moving staff south (because it's more efficient to send someone out from London where necessary) and Northern businesses suddenly having to compete in their local markets with London based firms.

In reply to gethin_allen: I can't believe that we will still be flying en mass in 2033. We need the 30 billion or so spent on more suitable projects. 'Sooner or later we will have to find a more sustainable, decentralised, less materialistic and local way to live'.

In reply to pasbury:
Totally, totally agree - Concorde on rails!!
As for helping north's economies - it will help London get more from them, a bit faster. Think what else you could do for local economies with all that money. It will just extend the SE commuter belt into parts of Brum, which will up local house prices.
If you want to improve infastructure, how about spending a fraction of this on the M6 between our 2nd & 3rd largest connurbations; Birmingham and Manchester - the most constipated, awful motorway in the country, and a major drag on the linking of these two economies.
Madness!!

In reply to Jim Nevill:

It would be sensible to have a rolling programme of upgrading all even vaguely busy motorways to Managed Motorways with hard-shoulder running. I suspect this will happen over time whether HS2 does or not, including that one.

Neil

In reply to Jim Nevill:


I am no advocate to HS2, but will there not be a possibility for trains to turn left out of Brum and head to Manchester, thereby providing a good reason for drivers heading from Brum to Manchester not to use the M6?

In reply to EeeByGum:

Yes there will. Brum to Manc in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

In reply to EeeByGum:

I can't see this being used much if it doesn't join the dots. The transport hubs in Nottingham, Derby, Leicester and Sheffield are pretty much central and will still have to be served with other trains, buses and taxis. If an HS2 ticket costs half as much again as the slow train but you have to get to the city centre station for connecting services then it will be a no-brainer to use the slightly slower, cheaper and more direct service in the first place.

Toton is well connected at the moment but they are mainly dedicated freight lines IIRC so there will be more work required to link the new station with Derby, Leicester and Nottingham.

In reply to Clarence:
To be honest, I expect that the Toton stop isn't a particularly strong part of the argument for HS2 - more of a "since we were passing by" thing.

Although a reasonably fast connection to the west midlands rather than the bimbly local service you get at the moment would be kind of nice...

In reply to Ramblin dave:

It is described as "The East Midlands Hub" and was one of the promises made to the region in order to get HS2 off the drawing board. Maybe not so big in terms of HS2 in total but I can't see much love for the new plans locally today.

An awful lot of money to shave not much time from the exisiting route

In reply to Clarence: Quite a few French TGV stations are some distance from the town they share a name with - look at Aix en Provence or Mâcon

I can't help feeling that giving the current crop of rail franchisees a good kicking would improve rail transport no end. Overcrowding a problem? Well, that might be down to the number of near-empty first class carriages compared to the number of rammed-to-the-gills cattle class carriages...

In reply to Cú Chullain:

How much time it will save is debateable but the key thing about HS2 is it provides more capacity. We can't fit that many more trains on the route to Brum and Manc.

In reply to paulcarey:

Perhaps not, but we could lengthen platforms to allow them all to be 12 coaches or longer rather than the present fad for silly 2 to 5-car trains.

Neil

In reply to EeeByGum: To the trains only run one way? Or is there a risk that it just makes it easier for businesses to base themselves in London and for people to travel there?

And, I am sure I'm being stupid, but how does the provision of a railway actually become an engine for growth? What's the mechanism?

They could just put some cables in that run super-fast broadband and then let people do business by skype. That would save a lot of money.

In reply to Submit to Gravity:

I've been trawling the web to find an answer to that one. No-one has explained how moving a few people at above airline prices between two cities, a bit faster than the current system, will boost the economy to the tune of £33+ billion.
There will be the spin off from building it, staffing the trains and stations, but who is going to use it? We could just build a big pyramid instead.

In reply to butteredfrog: I suppose rich people would use it. A bit like normal trains really...

In reply to EeeByGum:

I assumed that people whose houses have been bisected by the proposed route might have been told personally. It's a bit poor that they've had to read about it and discover it on maps for themselves.