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Post by metrailway on Sept 13, 2012 23:44:56 GMT
30% of all traffic coming from 5% of the population suggests that HS2 is going to struggle to achieve the volumes needed to justify 3 tph. The single WC hourly service is going to be relatively slow if it has to serve Watford, MK, Coventry, Brum Iinternational and maybe Rugby also. GH The current service pattern planned by HS2 (from the document I quoted above) is 3tph to Brum, 3tph to Manchester, 2tph to Liverpool and 1 tph to Scotland. None of the services going north of Birmingham will stop at any Birmingham station. I've used Euston - Manchester several times and I have generally found it dead and 3tph is really not justified currently. The reason why an Anytime Return to Manchester costs £296 is probably to subsidise the carting of fresh air every 20 minutes at 125mph! Although there will be an increase of demand with HS2 I suspect that they will quickly find out that there isn't enough demand and they'll stop most if not all at one or both Brum stations. At least the infrastructure will still be there in 60-odd years though, and surely by that point the population will be vast enough to actually make good use of the capacity. If it is, but they don't, then someone should have the balls to encourage them! Bletchley Flyover was built in the 1960s and has been barely used for 50 odd years but has been kept in good condition. Without it East West Rail would not go ahead so you could argue that it was great that it was built. I would argue that it has been a white elephant for the past half century. Although I like the idea of HS2, I do think that the current economic case for it is fudged. If the numbers don't add up when HS2 is operating, the danger is that we could see heavy cuts in services on classic lines to balance the rail budget. |
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Post by andypurk on Sept 14, 2012 20:26:50 GMT
30% of all traffic coming from 5% of the population suggests that HS2 is going to struggle to achieve the volumes needed to justify 3 tph. The single WC hourly service is going to be relatively slow if it has to serve Watford, MK, Coventry, Brum Iinternational and maybe Rugby also. GH The current service pattern planned by HS2 (from the document I quoted above) is 3tph to Brum, 3tph to Manchester, 2tph to Liverpool and 1 tph to Scotland. None of the services going north of Birmingham will stop at any Birmingham station. I've used Euston - Manchester several times and I have generally found it dead and 3tph is really not justified currently. The reason why an Anytime Return to Manchester costs £296 is probably to subsidise the carting of fresh air every 20 minutes at 125mph! Although there will be an increase of demand with HS2 I suspect that they will quickly find out that there isn't enough demand and they'll stop most if not all at one or both Brum stations. May I ask what sort of times you have used the Manchester train? As a commuter through Euston, I have seen a large increase in the number of 'Inter City' passengers in the last five years. Other than during the peaks, the station only used to be really busy on a Friday afternoon, now the concourse is often crowded on other days. Whilst the trains to Manchester are not stuffed full, they certainly seem to have a healthy loading. And how much of the cost is inflated due to contingency allowances etc.? These always seem to get forgotten when people question the finanical benefits of a project, but take the quoted costs as read. Crossrail managed to save a substantial part of the costs by altering the schedule for the construction, delaying the final opening. Similar savings may also be available with HS2 and, if passenger growth continues as projected, HS2 needs to be planned now so it is available when needed, not five years too late. |
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Post by metrailway on Sept 14, 2012 23:08:18 GMT
May I ask what sort of times you have used the Manchester train? As a commuter through Euston, I have seen a large increase in the number of 'Inter City' passengers in the last five years. Other than during the peaks, the station only used to be really busy on a Friday afternoon, now the concourse is often crowded on other days. Whilst the trains to Manchester are not stuffed full, they certainly seem to have a healthy loading. I've mainly used it during peak times. Since I'm based in London, if I have to use it I tend to leave Euston in the morning and be back in the evening. Most recently on Wednesday this week. The train I took to Manchester in the morning was near empty leaving London (less than 100 people using a train with a capacity of 589 seats) and coming back was more busy I would say at about 150. It might be busy between on the approaches to Manchester (e.g. Stoke on Trent) as it sometimes doubles up as an express commuter service which is not what the pendolinos were intended for. I'm assuming the numbers are less off peak (apart from the first off peak train in the evening due to huge cost savings). Admittedly I am travelling 'contraflow' so the services might be slightly busier the other way. There certainly has been large growth in InterCity passengers from Euston but I believe the services which have very good loadings are to/from the West Midlands and Glasgow/Preston, not the Manchester or Liverpool services. And how much of the cost is inflated due to contingency allowances etc.? These always seem to get forgotten when people question the finanical benefits of a project, but take the quoted costs as read. Crossrail managed to save a substantial part of the costs by altering the schedule for the construction, delaying the final opening. Similar savings may also be available with HS2 and, if passenger growth continues as projected, HS2 needs to be planned now so it is available when needed, not five years too late. I wasn't talking about the construction costs of HS2. I was talking about the income/benefits predicted due to HS2. As I stated above according to the IFS, 30% of HS2 passengers are going to be people earning £70,000. That is never going to happen. The same thing has happened with HS1 - the passenger numbers has not materialised. The pax numbers using HS1 are 1/3 of what was predicted in 1995, causing a £4.8bn cost to the taxpayer. |
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Post by andypurk on Sept 17, 2012 20:41:22 GMT
May I ask what sort of times you have used the Manchester train? As a commuter through Euston, I have seen a large increase in the number of 'Inter City' passengers in the last five years. Other than during the peaks, the station only used to be really busy on a Friday afternoon, now the concourse is often crowded on other days. Whilst the trains to Manchester are not stuffed full, they certainly seem to have a healthy loading. I've mainly used it during peak times. Since I'm based in London, if I have to use it I tend to leave Euston in the morning and be back in the evening. Most recently on Wednesday this week. The train I took to Manchester in the morning was near empty leaving London (less than 100 people using a train with a capacity of 589 seats) and coming back was more busy I would say at about 150. It might be busy between on the approaches to Manchester (e.g. Stoke on Trent) as it sometimes doubles up as an express commuter service which is not what the pendolinos were intended for. I'm assuming the numbers are less off peak (apart from the first off peak train in the evening due to huge cost savings). Admittedly I am travelling 'contraflow' so the services might be slightly busier the other way. Why shouldn't the Pendolino services also be used as more local commuter trains? After all, the three companies running Stoke - Manchester (Virgin / Cross Country and Northern) all operate about 1/3 of the trains, but the Northern trains take considerably longer. Virgin services are certainly used for such in the West Midlands and the London - Milton Keynes markets. Overall, long distance passenger numbers have risen from 77.2 million (in 2002-03) to 125.3 million in 2011-2012. See dataportal.orr.gov.uk/displayreport/report/html/22c71959-3f97-405f-8342-e4981745d08bThere have been no signs of the increase in numbers stopping, despite the recession. So when HS2 is due to open, the extra capacity will be needed. But the reason for high fares would have to be to pay back the costs of construction. All the calculations are cost/benefit not income / benefit and I would be interested to know why IFS think that 30% of passengers will be earning over £70,000 when we don't even know what the fare structure will be when the line opens. High Speed 1 is a bit of a different case, as the passenger numbers quoted relied on Eurostar growing the market from an already dominant position (currently they have 80% of the market). I can't find information regarding the expected passenger numbers on the domestic services, which also contribute to the revenue of course. The diversion of Eurostar services over HS1 has allowed increased frequencies (from 2tph to 4tph) of local services from Orpington - Victoria but these improvements don't seem to have been included in the initial cost / benefit calculations. |
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Post by norbitonflyer on Sept 17, 2012 21:43:29 GMT
Why shouldn't the Pendolino services also be used as more local commuter trains? Horses for courses - local communter trains need big doors, lots of them, and easy circulation. For long distance services comfort is a higher priority anmd circulation less so. You wouldn't use a C stock on an Anglo Scottish service. |
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Post by andypurk on Sept 17, 2012 23:26:25 GMT
Why shouldn't the Pendolino services also be used as more local commuter trains? Horses for courses - local communter trains need big doors, lots of them, and easy circulation. For long distance services comfort is a higher priority anmd circulation less so. You wouldn't use a C stock on an Anglo Scottish service. But the trains under discussion are not used on 'local' stopping services, but limited stop longer distance trips (Stoke - Manchester is ~40 min on a Pendolino compared to around an hour on the local stopper). Even the West Midlands trains would be stopping at Coventry, Birmingham International and Birmingham New Street anyway, as the Manchester trains do at Stockport, so use for commuters make sense. |
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Post by Chris M on Sept 18, 2012 15:27:34 GMT
I think the key difference is that the Pendolinos are being used for regional commuting rather than local commuting, and the design requirements of the two are different - you[1] wouldn't use a C stock on a service with no stops between Stoke and Manchester.
[1] Although I wouldn't put it past First Great Western, who treat 1 DMU as equalling any other DMU and put a class 143 on a Cardiff-Penzance service...
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Post by metrailway on Sept 18, 2012 15:39:13 GMT
But the trains under discussion are not used on 'local' stopping services, but limited stop longer distance trips (Stoke - Manchester is ~40 min on a Pendolino compared to around an hour on the local stopper). Even the West Midlands trains would be stopping at Coventry, Birmingham International and Birmingham New Street anyway, as the Manchester trains do at Stockport, so use for commuters make sense. Why shouldn't the Pendolino services also be used as more local commuter trains? After all, the three companies running Stoke - Manchester (Virgin / Cross Country and Northern) all operate about 1/3 of the trains, but the Northern trains take considerably longer. Virgin services are certainly used for such in the West Midlands and the London - Milton Keynes markets. Of course it makes sense for commuters to use Pendolinos if they are quicker. I'm not disputing that. But it doesn't mean that Pendolinos are suited for this traffic. Just like the Pacers are not suited for a large number of services they operate in the North. The reason why a large number use the morning InterCity services instead of locals is because there are only 2 locals departing Stoke which arrive between 8 - 9am in Manchester (dep. 7:17 arr. 8:21; dep. 7:57 arr. 8:56). In between these locals is one Pendolino which arrives in Manchester 8:28. Due to the low peak frequency it is inevitable that the sole InterCity service will be heavily used by Stoke commuters. For comparison there are 5 services from Crewe to Manchester (1 from London) arriving between 8 - 9am. Anyway my initial point was that the traffic between EUS - MAN doesn't justify the current 3tph frequency. I've certainly thought that there would be significant demand for a separate Euston - MK non stop shuttle. But the reason for high fares would have to be to pay back the costs of construction. All the calculations are cost/benefit not income / benefit and I would be interested to know why IFS think that 30% of passengers will be earning over £70,000 when we don't even know what the fare structure will be when the line opens. I'm not the IFS so I have no idea how they have got these figures. The Govt has said that there will be some £34 bn income over a 60 year period from fares on HS2. See this Channel 4 blog about dodgy Government figures on the project: link. A more recent example of poor DfT forecasting is the 2012 Olympics. The DfT predicted £15 million extra revenue for Virgin WC due to 2012 Summer. Virgin only gained an extra £1 million (according to Tony Collins, Chief Exec of Virgin Trains EDIT:Graham Leach, VT). Anyway it is impossible to predict income 60 years from now. Very few in the 1890s would have thought that rail would have significant competition from road transport yet in 40 years time, the Big 4 were struggling. Most thought in the 60s that rail usage was in terminal decline. Beeching had no idea that usage of the railways will have significant growth since the 80s. There could be some sort of new technology which reduces the number of rail passengers, or that rail continues to grow strongly for the next 60 years. We just don't know what will happen in the future so it is futile to predict revenue that far ahead. I'm actually in favour of HS2 (albeit not in its current form). I take Pete Waterman's view. Don't try and justify it in quantifiable economic terms because you will always lose. Just build it. Network Rail, TfL etc don't claim economic benefits for the infrastructure improvements they carry out every year. They do it because it is clear that their networks needs it. |
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