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| Re: Phila Inquirer: Gas prices, global warming renewing interest in high-speed rail (488636) | |||
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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 Mon Sep 10 10:27:56 2007, in response to Re: Phila Inquirer: Gas prices, global warming renewing interest in high-speed rail, posted by AEM-7AC #901 on Sun Sep 9 23:49:06 2007. Actually, I was thinking of a London-centric HSL model with a LGV basically running along a London-Birmingham-Manchester or Liverpool axis. I'd leave Leeds and Newcastle as a spur off the mainline with some improved tracks.The north-east was served by a branch off the WCML in the 1840s. There wasn't enough capacity then, and there isn't now. BTW, why a HSL to Bristol? You're almost as optimistic as the planners at RENFE. OTOH, my plan reeks of the "Paris as hub of the universe" model that SNCF has operated under for nearly 25 years. Well, it's no more absurd than TGV Atlantique... And Paris-hub-of-the-universe only works because France is so centered on Paris. "This includes factors like the basic fact that getting in and out of Birmingham would kill all the time savings of HSR" You do realize that you don't have to run into the existing terminals, and you can build new stations along the outskirts of towns with connections to local transport to avoid having to run into classical terminals? SNCF uses this with Lille Europe, the Interconexion LGV, and the LGV Rhone Alpes Bypass of Lyon. Of course I realize that, but there are limitations to such a strategy given the population distribution of England. If your non-conventional trains are beating the high speed trains, your high speed line wasn't designed correctly or you placed way too many stops on the line. SNCF goes from Paris to Marseille in 3:30, the least we can do is London to Glasgow in 2:45. That would be at a far faster speed than the SNCF does (you'd be looking at at least 3 hours in terms of mileage), and the population distribution is totally different (two thirds of the population live in urban areas in the rough shape of the letter "Q", with London on the tail, Birmingham at the join, and Leeds at the top). What you think are "way too many stops" are the basics needed to serve England before absurd money-wasting trains to Scotland (and quite frankly, London Euston, Watford Junction, Birmingham International, Stoke-on-Trent, Warrington Bank Quay High Level, Wigan North Western, Preston, Lancaster, is not exactly a vast number of stops for the distance -- it's equivalent to an average spacing of about 35 miles). The conventional/HSL equation is a special case: it's a big problem with any concept of HSL in Britain that getting back out of Birmingham to the north-west involves 36 painfully slow miles to Stafford. The way that the numbers work out are that Stafford would be the same time from London by the conventional route and by an HSL to Birmingham. And even then you couldn't prefer the route via Birmingham in this case anyway, as there are massive capacity constraints, particularly between New Street station and Grand Junction. But this is ultimately just why what looks like the hypothetical ideal network would never work. There are actually good ways of using HSL in England, but the result looks somewhat different from that map. "Erie, PA, (102,036) probably deserves an HSR stop." Erie, PA is *pissant*. There's much there except for a couple of abandoned factories and a manufacturing centre for locomotives.* I'm sure it could be a perfectly nice place to live. It's at least a serious old city. And it plugs what would otherwise be a 190 mile gap between Buffalo and Cleveland. "More significantly, as land is severely limited in London, it would essentially make a central Birmingham location as good for business as being shunted out to the Isle of Dogs." Hey, I like Canary Wharf! It's pretty, shiny, modern, and new! Oh, I totally agree, but that doesn't get around the big problem of a finite quantity of land between the Chiltern Hills and the North Downs. |
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