Talk:High-speed rail in the United Kingdom

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Contents

[edit] To Do

  • Funding
  • Political process
  • Environmental benefits
  • Effects on demand for domestic air travel
  • Social and regeneration benefits
  • Safety
  • More detail on pros and cons of wheel-on-rail and maglev
  • HSR vs improved local services
  • HSR vs new slower lines
  • Tidy up references and citations



[edit] Scottish Developments

From what I have read and heard second hand, there is a lively debate going on in Scottish politics and the press - and to a lesser extent in the North East of England - about more localised HSR or Maglev which may form the first stage of a national line. To an extent, this seemed to become an election issue. This is obviously important in a UK context, so does anyone with a better view of the situation want to contribute? 33 15:57, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article name - propose "High-speed rail in the United Kingdom"

In my opinion, the article name "UK High Speed Rail" should be changed at the very least because of Wikipedia:Naming conventions#General_conventions whereby the second and subsequent words should not be capitalised (unless a proper noun). Also, to be more grammatically correct, there should be a hyphen between "high" and "speed". Normally, I would just go ahead and do the necessary renaming myself. However, I think an even better name would be "High-speed rail in the United Kingdom" for two reasons:

  1. I have a feeling (but can't prove it) that there might be a policy or convention that "United Kingdom" (and similar) should not be abbreviated to UK in article titles — see Category:United Kingdom.
  2. "High-speed rail in the United Kingdom" would then be consistent with High-speed rail in the United States. (See also Category:High-speed rail.)

If nobody objects in the next few days, I'll go ahead and do the page move. --A bit iffy 21:05, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

No problems with the name change, but the capital letters in Speed and Rail are surely recognised "title case"?33 15:22, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent article. Arce 20:47, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. It needs a bit of a revamp in light of developments in the last 8 or 9 months. I will do this soon, work allowing.33 19:36, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A few problems with this article

"of PPPs promoted elsewhere." -> unclear what PPP means - the link certainly doesn't help (point-to-point protocol? something about penises?!) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.224.0.158 (talk • contribs)

 :-) it actualtl stands for Public-private partnership. I'll make it a wikilink. Tompw 20:14, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

"Although Virgin teamed up with experienced civil engineering contractors such as Bechtel, their tender was rejected for the reasons outlined above. " -> I can't find any arguments above! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.224.0.158 (talk • contribs)

The reason is "[Virgin's bid was] not welcomed by the government, who in the wake of the Hatfield rail crash, were focussed on - as they saw it - getting the rail network back to reliable operations", which is given above the bit you quoted. I've amended it to sayign "the previous section", for extra clarity. Tompw 20:18, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

The box refers to no British domestic service being able to travel faster than 125mph. That is not true. The Class 91 trains do up to 140mph on sections of the ECML. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.152.171.111 (talk • contribs)

140mph on the ECML was an experiment that was discontinued. IIRC it used some funky extra colour on the signalling to allow it. But HMRI eventually got upset and have capped conventional lines to 125 mph because of signalling (the CTRL uses moving bloc). Pickle 23:59, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
The CTRL (HS1) uses TVM-430 cab signalling, which isn't moving block. I don't think any HSL anywhere in Europe uses moving block yet, that is for a future iteration of ERTMS. The ECML used a flashing green aspect to indicated 140mph clearance, but as Pickle says, this was discontinued fairly quickly and HMRI mandated cab signals for all running over 125mph. Interestingly, Virgin are trying to challenge this on the WCML, where they argue that 135mph would be safe on the upgraded track through the Trent Valley with just regular signals. It is expected that cab signalling will be something Network Rail implement on various routes medium term, but I don't hold out much hope of that leading to immediately faster speeds, particularly as the government has only asked for 125mph as the baseline in the tender for the Intercity Express Project (the replacement for the ageing HST/IC125s) and the recent HLOS doesn't mention it. 33 19:26, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Just because the experiment was discontinued does not mean that services are not capable of running faster than 140mph. That should be clarified (i.e. "sections of the ECML and WCML are capable of running at speeds up to 140mph, but for signalling reasons this is not done") or something similar. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.152.192.111 (talk • contribs)

[edit] Even more recent developments

On Wed 20th June, The Times released an article about new proposals for a high speed line from St Pancras & Heathrow to Birmingham International & Birmingham (new central station).

It would mean:

  • London to Birmingham = 45 minutes
  • Birmingham to Paris = 3 hours
  • London to Manchester (via WCML after B'ham) = 1 hour 30 minutes
  • Manchester to Paris = 3 hours 45 minutes

This should be added to the article, but where should it go?

Please view website and advise about/add the content. Dewarw 18:11, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

See High Speed Two Pickle 23:56, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I've merged the information in this section back into the paragraph about Greengauge 21's proposals for HS2. I didn't see the point in having a section called "Recent Developments" and then another called "Even More Recent Developments" (or words to that effect!) following it. The nebulous information that was around on the Eddington Report at the time when I first wrote this page has now become clear and therefore needs to form an integral part of the article. Likewise discussion on HS2 in the context of the government's recent white paper and the HLOS. Also - with all due respect to the page author - I'm not sure that the HS2 proposals deserve their own page on this site. It is effectively just a press release from one of a number of organisations campaigning in this arena and does not form a concrete proposal for a new line (as IMHO the page implies). I'd propose that page is merged with the very similar content here. What do others think?

From the point of view of HSR, the most recent (and to me worrying) development is the direction of the IEP/HST2 tender, in that I cannot see DfT making an investment of £2-3bn over ten years in new stock, particularly for the ECML, if a high-speed line is anywhere near the top of the agenda.33 15:39, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Definiton

The BBC have throw up a good article which sites a broad EU defintion of "high speed rail" - see this BBC news article - its right at the end.

There is no single globally agreed definition of what constitutes a high speed rail line, but the European Union defines them broadly as:

  • Recently-built lines designed specifically for high speed travel, where speeds of at least 250 km/h [150 mph] are attained
  • Upgraded but generally older lines where speeds of at least 200 km/h [124 mph] are possible

Might be useful somehwere Pickle 02:53, 5 September 2007 (UTC) Pickle 02:53, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Intercity Express Programme

April 2008, Modern Railways, 'Informed Sources' reports that the Department for Transport has asked bidders to price a 250km/h (155mph) option for the electric version of IEP 172.212.50.75 (talk) 18:06, 5 April 2008 (UTC)