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| Re: Phila Inquirer: Gas prices, global warming renewing interest in high-speed rail (488007) | |||
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Re: Phila Inquirer: Gas prices, global warming renewing interest in high-speed rail |
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Posted by Rail Blue on Sat Sep 8 23:53:03 2007, in response to Re: Phila Inquirer: Gas prices, global warming renewing interest in high-speed rail, posted by AEM-7AC #901 on Sat Sep 8 22:33:27 2007. "I'd rather see Warrington, Wigan, Preston, and Lancaster get a full service."But, um, they're pissant towns? Urban area populations 158,195; 166,840; 264,601; and 95,521 respectively. So they're fairly reasonable. And Preston is the junction point for Blackpool (142,283) and Blackburn (136,695). The real pissant towns are beyond Lancaster: Windermere (7,941, and off on a branch line from the sub-1,000 Oxenholme), Penrith (14,471), Carlisle (71,773, but already 69 miles from Lancaster), Lockerbie (4,009), Carstairs (2,501), Motherwell (30,311). The whole purpose is to bypass them with HSLs so we don't have to bother serving them. But the HSL would have to go somewhere. It's 175 miles of horrendous terrain from Lancaster to Glasgow (170 to Edinburgh), with Carlisle the largest intermediate settlement. Give them some regional service that connects to a useful town that has service, Not really sensibly possible, as Preston is already such a town, and the only possible useful HSL place would be Stoke-on-Trent, as Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham would all be big deviations for London. or do what SNCF does and run a spur off the HSL to the regular tracks so they can their service. I don't see there being enough traffic north of Lancaster to justify a by-pass of these four towns, especially with Scotland increasingly turning inward. And the time lost on those four stops (and in practice, no trains currently skip all of them) would be far less than that gained on the London-Warrington section. Furthermore, all trains making those four stops would create more paths on the northern part of the WCML. High Speed to Scotland ultimately is something that sounds good to politicians, but is really quite a weak aspect of HSR in the UK. |
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