Comments on: High-Speed Rail’s Airport Connection

By: John W

John W — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:15:24 +0000

“There’s a good graphic illustrating journey time savings to points within London (eg Leeds to Canary Wharf), which demonstrate how useful the connection to Crossrail at Oak Common will be. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an online version.”

Forgot to mention that it’s in today’s Independent newspaper.

By: John W

John W — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:06:59 +0000

Loads of coverage in the British press (Google news roundup) about the route announcement. Phase 1 London-Birmingham. Phase 2 branches from Birmingham to Manchester and to Sheffield/Leeds And it is Euston for the terminal, which will require a fair bit of rebuilding to accommodate the 400m trainsets. Overviews and route details as PDFs on the Department for Transport website. There's a good graphic illustrating journey time savings to points within London (eg Leeds to Canary Wharf), which demonstrate how useful the connection to Crossrail at Oak Common will be. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an online version.

By: AlexB

AlexB — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:43:54 +0000

they should just have the spanish build it. they build these things for cheap and they certainly need the work.

By: AlexB

AlexB — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:42:48 +0000

I only mentioned Stratford because Crossrail connects directly to it. I would think that HS2 will eventually be linked to HS1 so that someone from Birmingham can travel directly to Paris, which means they would connect with Stratford. That being said, Stratford is way out of the way for someone coming from the northwest, which is why I suggested it would be useless. The Stratford connection is only useful for someone coming from Kent, as you mentioned. That’s why I suggested a connection from the northwest to Heathrow, which is what Jonah shared in the following post.

By: Nathanael

Nathanael — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:45:05 +0000

There’s clearly room to build a set of covered moving walkways — a pedestrian-only link suitable for persons with baggage, such as found in airports — from Euston to St. Pancras. Under Midland Road, the British Library, and Eversholt Street, and it could probably be sloped to the surface for the rest of the distance. I’m not quite sure *exactly* where to run it, but there are enough back streets, parks, gardens, etc. to avoid knocking any buildings down.

By: BruceMcF

BruceMcF — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 05:48:12 +0000

A connector service to the next northwest HSR station is exactly what came to my mind. For HSR to take pressure off an airport, it has to have a lot of flights that can be replaced by HSR. However, in part because of its limited runways, I wonder whether Heathrow's traffic includes a lot of very short haul flights. If you can get the train terminal inside the airport, and its an airport with long haul / short haul connections where the HSR can replace some of the short haul connections, it can make a useful supplement to the main patronage of the HSR. But it needs to be a good fit in reality, and not just a general stereotype.

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 05:37:48 +0000

The expected 16 tph traffic is overoptimistic – Tokaido has 12 peak. The only way HS2 might get 16 is if all the excessive splitting forces separate trains to each destination. Even then, 6 tracks would be enough, and by jiggering the existing platforms for commuter service, they could probably come up with 6 existing tracks.

Increasingly, this project looks like building for the sake of building.

The worst thing about the post is that one of the commenters is producing $8.3 billion/2.5 km East Side Access as an example London should follow.

By: John W

John W — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 03:27:42 +0000

May have spoke too soon. The articles I’ve read made it sound like Euston was a done deal (“London’s Euston station has been earmarked as the main terminal, according to rail industry sources” – from the Guardian article linked to in this post). But this very amusing Londonist blog post suggests otherwise. Guess we’ll have to see what’s in the report next week.

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 02:58:57 +0000

It’s nearly criminal for the UK to assume by default all HS2 services will feed into Euston. It might be that it has some advantage in routing over St. Pancras, but did they ever study the question?

By: John W

John W — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:00:05 +0000

I think the idea originally was to allow trains from elsewhere in Britain to have direct access to the Channel Tunnel without stopping in London. However, I think that idea’s been pretty much quashed as ridership would not allow the necessary service levels.

Unfortunately, it looks like it’ll be a schlep between Euston and St Pancras. It’s maybe a 10 minute walk but after faffing about getting on the tube and off again for just one stop, it’d be simpler. (I think it’s about the same distance as between Gare de l’Est and Gare du Nord in Paris? Minus the stairs).

So you’ve given up on the floating airport too? (Evening Standard article)