Modern Railways article

8/8/2019 Modern Railways article

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Fig 1: High Speed 1 passenger numbers30.---------------------------------------------------------------,

- lCR 1998orecast- 1999ownside case

25 - low case- Actual passenger numbers

eQ).cE15:Ic. .~c~1011 >& .

~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -5

o~----~----~--_----_----~----~----~----_----_----_--~1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006Source: c&AG's Reports (HC302f Session 2000/1,ig. 6; HC 77f Session 2005/6,ig 8)

..

TI le n um ber of Class 395 s in dai ly use hasbee n red uc ed, as p lanne d tw o-unit formations areno t ne ede d for a number of pe ak service s. If youliv e in the M edway towns, would you choos e totak e th e H igh Speed train at a signific antpremium to take you to a generally lessconveni ent term in al? Or would yo u continue tous e th e c la ss ic r ou tes to Victoria or C annonSt reet, for in most cases a qu ic ke r journey toyo ur fin al d estination, albeit a lO-m in ute lo ng erstatio n-to -station journey? No t s ur pr ising ly, Go-Ahea d's 24 J un e T ra di ng update sta tes: ' ... th isfra nc hise b ec am e e lig ib le fo r 80% revenuesu pport from I A pril 20 I 0, fo llow ing thein trod uction of the H igh S peed services inDec ember 2009. Rec ent Na ti on al P a ss en ger

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Survey r es ul ts s howed that the high sp eedse rvices are very popu lar w ith customer s bu tec onomic conditio ns mean tha t r ev enue is belowthe bid assumption prepared in 2005'. So let usremember HS 1 before we lull o urselve s in tobeliev ing th at the pl anning for m ajo r sc hem es isbound to be righ t.Economic regenerat ionHS2's supp or ters argue tha t th e project w illp um p p rim e e co no mic grow th in th e re gio ns. A nequally c re dible a lte rn ative v ie w is th at it w illmake B rita in e ve n m ore L on do n-centric than ital rea dy is. Fo r exampl e, w ill the W est M idlandsbe nef it from a kick sta rt to its economy - or w illit gradu ally become a satell ite of Lo nd on , th eplace where the back office jobs are lo catedbecause it is cheap er and staff can be paid les s?

Th e report fo re casts the w i de r e co nomicbenefits at 3.6billion - a bi g sum but on ly am od es t p art of th e t ot al f o recast benefits of3 2.3billion. But the devil is in the deta il: almostall of this is a benefit fro m in cre ase dco nv entional capacity. It de riv es from betterreg ion al and lo cal services , most ly at th e southend of the route , and reduced road congestio n. Sothere are lim ited direct bene fits for B irm inghamand Man chester .

Whi le there are m ajo r claim ed tim e savingbe nef its fo r p ass en gers, a report commissionedby H S2 from Im pe ria l C olle ge, published w ith inth e moun tain o f m ateria l on the H S2 w ebsite,es timates t he o th er w id er e co no mic b en efitsresul ting from the reduced joum ey tim es on H S2a t o nly 8million pa.

Might a b ette r re sul t for the North o f E ng la ndbe de livered at much less cost by upgrading andel ectr ifying the exi st ing rail n etw ork? T he L ee dsNorth W es t e le ctrifi ca tion shows the grow th thatcan be achieved by t ot al r ou te mo de rn isa tion, bu tmuch of th e n etw or k, pa rticularly in the N orth


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West, is still Pacer territory, with little use outsidethepeaks, and the Liverpool- Leeds - NorthEast core route isstill slow.Environmental benefitsAgain, our politicians 'know' that HS2 willproduce major environmental benefits, with asignificant reduction in carbon emissions. But theHS2 team has done the analysis, and claims nomore than carbon neutrality. At first glance, thisfeels counter-intuitive, but i t is easy to explain inqualitative terms.

On the benefits side, transfer from airproduces a benefit, but this is limited unless anduntil High Speed goes all the way to Scotland-rail already has 80% of the raiJ/air market fromManchester to London, and what is left is mostlyinterlining.

In opposition, the Conservatives arguedstrongly that High Speed was an alternative toexpansion of Heathrow. The facts don't supportthis, and indeed Lord Mawhinney's recent report(p8, last month) argued against the immediateconstruction of a link to Heathrow from HS2.Domestic air traffic atHeathrow has beendeclining (from 7.4million in 2000 to 5.6millionin 2008), and now makes up only 11% of thetotal passenger numbers through the airport.There are now only five mainland domesticroutes, to Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow,Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and the initial HS2route will make little impact on any of these.

Transfer from road produces some 'green'benefit, although the gap with rail has beendropping sharply as cars become more fuelefficient, and will shrink further if and whenelectric cars come into widespread use for longerdistance journeys.

On the other side of the equation, fastertrains sharply increase carbon emissions forexisting rail passengers, and additional

High speed rail:London - Birmingham Key~ HS1

Initial core high speedne twor k=Heathrow Express

'/ / / / Possible H S1 connection

( Birmingham > 0 o () Birmingham. . Interchange

The proposed first phase of HS2 construction would linkin with the West Coast main line north of Binningham.

'generated' traffic is al l negative. Also, thereare of course significant carbon costs dnringconstruction,

Overall, of course, the best policy to reducecarbon emissions would be to incentivisepeople to travel less!'Replacing a Thi rd World railway'Most Modern Railways readers will know verywell that much of Britain's network is far fromthird world, with high speeds, high frequencyand, recently, increasingly respectableoperational performance. We do not matchsome of the end-to-end speeds on other

'. .. ~i

. . EustonCrossrail 9-0;Interchange (f)Hea thr owAirp ort ( P A R D .

(BRUS;~'LS \( ~M~~~R~~~S

countries' high speed networks, although we d(manage 100mph start-to-stop timings on threeroutes (the East and West Coast main lines andHSl domestic), and there are some surprisingcomparisons: for example my local station(Leighton Buzzard) has an hourly non-stopservice from London at an average of 83mph(29 minutes for 40.25 miles). In contrast,Tokyo to Oyama (50 miles) on the TohokuShinkansen averages 68mph.

More importantly, because inter-city service:from London are already generally good anddistances are relatively short, High Speed doesnot have the potential to produce the step


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ange that has been achieved, for example, inance and Japan. Elsewhere, President Obarna

as announced high profile support for highpeed rail: the only two high speed linesroposed as we would understand them are in

and California. Elsewhere, the currentns would only raise speeds to, say, those on

he Midland main line, lower in many cases.There are, of course, many cross-country and

egional routes for which significantmprovements in terms of journey times,olling stock and frequency would be highlysirable. Although these could be achieved at

a fraction of the capital cost of HS2, there is nolikelihood that they will be taken forward in thecurrent public expenditure crisis - indeed it islikely that the second High Level OutputSpecification (HLOS2) will include nosignificant enhancements to the existingnetwork.But we need the capacity ..The proposed HS2 route provides a stepchange in capacity on the West Coast main linecorridor, at least between London and theconnection in the Lichfield area north of

Birmingham. But the through services toManchester, Liverpool, the North West andScotland will have to find their way through onthe existing infrastructure - not entirelystraightforward between, for example, Stokeand Manchester. The 'classic' route is alreadyclose to capacity between Euston and MiltonKeynes, so if growth continues, demand wouldhave to be crowded and/or priced off, or analternative solution found.

The first step is to recognise the scale of thecapacity uplift already in the pipeline. An 11-car Pendolino will have 150 extra standard

Path-eater? Class 350/2 Desiro No 350231 passes South Kenton on 5 April 2010,forming the 11.36 London Midland service from Tring to Euston. Br ian Morrlson'I

ii;

www.modernrailways.co.uk O CTO BE R 2 01 0 !,lodern Railways


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class seats, an increase of 51% on the presentcapacity. It is also probable that one (possiblyeven two) first class vehicles could beconverted to standard with minimal revenueloss, giving a further capacity increase. Firstclass loadings are now generally depressinglylow on West Coast, reflecting corporate costsaving in the recession and, more recently,Government restrictions on civil service firstclass travel. And many first class passengersare now travelling on advanced purchase fares,so if capacity is tight on a few trains, revenuecan be broadly maintained by yieldmanagement.

So an increase of over 50% is achievablesimply by lengthening all the existing trains,(although lengthening the whole Pendolino fleetwas apparently not value for money!). Inaddition, the Evergreen 3 upgrade on Chi Itemwill provide an attractive altemative route to theWest Midlands, taking only about 10 - 15minutes longer, with scope for doubling ortrebling its capacity with longer trains.

What more can be done? Fast line capacity atthe south end of the route is constrained byoperation of some slower Class 350 commutertrains. If these were replaced by units capable ofthe same performance as Pendolinos - thejustification for the proposed use of Inter-cityExpress Programme (IEP) trains on the route -and ifLedbum Junction were grade separated, itwould be potentially possible to increase peakModern Railways OCTOBER 20 10

The Evergreen 3 project will speed up serv ices on the Chiltern main line. Here unit No 168004 is seenpassing Haddenham & Thame Parkway with the 12.24 Mary lebone - Birmingham Snow Hill service on 1.March 201.0. Roger Marks

paths from 11 to 13 an hour in each direction,giving a further capacity increase of 15%.

Further north, the current bottleneck atStafford could be relieved by constructing theproposed by-pass, and there are no doubt othersmaller scale schemes which can be developedover the next five to tem years.

The HS2 documentation itself makes asimilar case: 'Rail Package 2', one of the'alternative interventions' evaluated as part ofthe overall HS2 work, provides almost thesame capacity, with a net benefit to cost ratio of3.63, against 2.7 for HS2 itself. And these arechanges which can be taken forwardincrementally, and can be implementedrelatively quickly as growth emerges, ratherthan betting everything on the sort of growthforecasts which came unstuck on HS I.A robust business case?The first big point to understand is that the netbenefit ratio for HS2 is not in fact that exciting,and all the risks are downside. The analysis isbased on a 60-year project life fromcompletion, which obviously has its owninherent risks - it would be a brave sou l whoforecasts what the world will look like in 2086.

The total investment is estimated at 17.Sbillion, generating additional fare incomeof l5 .1 billion, so it is nowhere close to havinga conventional financial case. Tills is notunusual for major rail schemes, although there

VlW\'!. modern railways. co, uk

are some exceptions, such as Chiltern'sEvergreen 3 project, which will reduce journeytimes and increase capacity on the parallelroute to the West Midlands on a commercialbasis and at no cost to the taxpayer. In additionto the additional revenue, the benefits claimedinclude economic regeneration (discussedabove), the benefits of reduced journey timesand the creation of additional capacity.

The most obvious risk is that if the demandforecasts prove to be dramatically overstated,then all these benefits, including of course theincreased revenue, are reduced proportionately.If demand growth is 'only' 134%-halfthelevel projected by HS2, but far above theemerging results for Eurostar on HS I - thenthe net benefit ratio is way below the thresholdof2.0 used recently by DIT as a cut-off pointfor further consideration of rail schemes.

More importantly, the biggest single benefitclaimed by HS2 relates to reduced journeytimes, valued at 15billion for HS2 users.Inevitably this gets technical. Buried within tbedetail are some pretty brave assumptions, forexample the analysis assumes that 30% ofpassengers are travelling on business, at animplied very high average salary of 70,000pa, also that traveIJing time is not productive orpleasurable. But recent research shows that thisis not the case, and casual observation on anyinter-city train supports tills: many businesstravellers are working on lap-tops or reading

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orts. positively benefiting from undisturbedt' time. Tbis is bow it is now: with

vancing technology in the time to come,g on the train will hardly constitute being

ut oftbe office or living room.The business case also assumes a Stalinistew both to pricing and to rail competit ion.e revenue projections assume a continuationpricing at RP! + 1% until 2033. By then,

ices would have increased by 27% above, although the projected modal shift

om air and road to rail is not apparentlyfected by this assumption. And the impact oftential competition from the classic routes

been completely ignored. Unless there is toabsolute, minute control of all fares on alltes on the West Coast corridor, this is an

traordinarily brave assumption.Taking London to Birmingham as anmple, there would certainly continue to be

st services on the classic West Coast routelf, to serve flows such as London -ventry and London - Wolverhampton, andtford and Milton Keynes to Birmingham. So

ll the operator on this route actually benstrained to charge the same fare as the HS2rator from London to Birmingham? Andll competition on the separate and upgradedltern route be constrained too? If not, howch of the rail market will remain on existing

, which would be cheaper and, for manye, more convenient: for example,

rmingham New Street is a much morenvenient interchange for many journeys than

the new HS2 station would be. Is tbis anunnecessarily gloomy view? Not judging bythe revealed preference for the classic routeover HS I in the Medway Towns.

So all the sensitivity tests point to greatlyreduced revenues and benefits, and if thedownside risks on passenger volumes are thenfactored in, the business case for HS2evaporates like morning mist in summer. Ifweare brutally honest, this is similar to HSI - aqualitative success, but an investment disaster.

The opportunity costMost Government department budgets areexpected to be cut by 25% in the currentspending review, with transport clearly not anexception. Spending cuts will impact on all ofus, from reduced benefits to fewer police andageing school buildings. There is anopportunity cost here, both in relation to otherpublic services and rail itself

Whileconstructionexpenditure on HS2will not start for atleast five years,even before thenthe developmentcosts will beconsiderable, andwill undoubtedlyrepresent anopportunity cost forthe industry. Forget

smaller scale improvements, projects like EastWest Rail and additional roll ing stock. Somecuts have already taken place, like the50million 'Better Stations' fund and theuncommitted HLOS I additional rolling stock,and HLOS2 is likely to be steady state at best,with the risk of route closures looming over thehorizon. In this context, and given thedownsides to the business case, HS2potentially looks like a vanity project, and Iwould argue the case needs to be rigorouslychallenged.

Tbe problem faced by heretics such asmyself is that there is a prevailing myth thatHigh Speed rail is a good idea for this country,with massive environmental and economicbenefits. As John F. Kennedy once said 'Thegreat enemy oftbe truth is very often not the lie- deliberate, contrived and dishonest - but themyth - persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic'[email protected]

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e 07.27 St Pancras International - Paris service powers up the Nashenden valley towards the North Downs tunnel on HS1 on 28 July 2010. David Staines

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Modern Railways article