Could HS2 Unlock New Development Areas – Yes But not with Outdated European Push Pull Trains
Mr Boles disclosed he was planning to speak to the Department for Transport to see if the Coalition’s planned new road building and high speed rail line through some of England’s finest countryside could stimulate more building.He said: “Everyone is prodding me to say if you don’t talk to the Department for Transport about those requirements you are not going to unblock a lot of these problems.“It is one of my new year’s resolutions to seek a meeting with my opposite number in the department of transport to understand their perspective.“What are we doing to make sure when we are putting in HS2 or when we are putting in major road schemes we are actually thinking from the beginning – because that is the cheapest place to do it – about how it can be used to actually unblock new settlements or other miniature schemes?”
Is is a good idea, after all there are no stops planned on HS2?
Yes it is but only if HS2 abandons its outdated ‘push pull’ technology for trains, which France and Germany are already abandoning in favour of the superior superlightweight Japenese distributed power system.
This is probably one of the very few issues I can state with some justification I am a global expert on after working with many months with japenese engineers on High Speed rail and associated new settlements and major developments in India. by planning new development and the route and engineering together over 65% of the total development period costs of the route can be covered by land value capture, probably making the difference between the route going ahead and not.
Why are european HSR trains outdated and superceded 19th century technology - because push pull trains are so slow to accelerate and decelerate, whereas Shinaknsen trains being superlight weight and having power to every wheel can accelerate and decelerte must faster enabling stops every 40km or so whilst losing very little of the crucial time advantage. Also it removes the need for the superexpensive acceleration and decleration lanes that could add so much to HS2s cost especially around Birmingham international.
Nick Boles (or Richard Branson) give me a call, within a few days I could have a team of engineers and financial planners on the case demonstrating how to make HS2 pay for itself in good part.
Posted on January 10, 2013, in urban planning. Bookmark the permalink. 18 Comments.
Dear Andrew:
On land value capture being vital to the business case, you’re right. The Metropolitan Raiwlay knew this when it bought swathes of green land NW of London over a century ago. So did Foster and Beesley when they appraised the Victoria Line nearly 50 years ago.
But on the operating characteristics of European high speed trains you are not. The more recent Siemens trains (ICE3 operating in Germany and as Velaro in Spain and being built for Eurostar) and Alstom trains (AGV operating as Italo in Italy), even the rather slower Pendolini on the West Coast Main Line all have distributed power. HS2 has not specified the trains which will operate on it, only that they will meet EU interoperability requirments. The evolution of high speed train design makes it likely that an operator would use distributed power. It does give some advantage of acceleration and of seating capacity, but not the radical difference that you suggest. It definitely does not make it possible for HS trains to stop intermediately without hugely extending their end-end journey times – this is a function of their high maximum speed. The ‘acceleration lanes’ are neither vital to the case, nor much reduced in length by the traction choice; and if you did stop more often you’d need more of them.
with regards, from a background in Eurostar and the West Coast Main Line, James Mackay
No this was precisely the point im making that European operators are now adopting distributed power, however the route design and station spacing all seem to assume a stopping patterm (i.e. none dicated by push pull technology). The end jouney times are not hugely extyended and I can provide data to prove this. For example many intermediate shinkansen stops stop at platforms for less than 30 seconds, and cab acheive top speed within 1 minute 30, meaning the extension to jouney times would be around 1 minute per additional stop. You do not need accelleration and decleration lanes with that swiftness of acceleration/deceleration. I had a long discussion over this with a service pattern engineer when I argued that one particular proposed station wo0uld not be physically possible without such lanes. He showed me a computer similuation showing I was wrong aned I gladly admitted I was.
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Dear Andrew:
Your assertion on the increase in journey times caused by intermediate stops, whatever the traction technology or the weight of the train, is grossly underdone. Your use of the phrase ‘acceleration lanes’ suggests no close familiarity with railway infrastructure. You ignore the effect on capacity of intermediate stops – if one train on a HS line stops, all the others behind it must too – with long diverging and converging tracks to parallel platforms – otherwise the restarting train and the one behind it will be competing for the same path forward. That means that the journey time of every train on the route will be increased – for the relatively small gain of the number of passengers who can alight and board within a 30sec dwell time. Please stick to planning, for which your readers depend on you, and do not create false information about railways. Happy to discuss in more detail, and with quantified evidence, if you wish.
regards, James
Do you want me to send you a service pattern simulation showing no need to slow down for the following train at all – and that’s with trains with 10 minute spacing? It seems you have no familiarity with the fine details of Shinkansen technology. So please stick to your push pull technology and don’t claim knowledge of engineering infrastructure where you have no experience.
Dear Andrew:
Yes, please, do send the simulated timetable. It will demonstrate that stopping HS trains, regardless of their traction, intermediately, in the way that you propose, would destroy the economic (and the business) case for HS2.
The ten minute headways, needed for deceleration and acceleration, mean 6 trains per hour. HS2 is planned to carry 14 rising to 18 trains per hour. Ergo, intermediate calls reduce its capacity by between 57% and 67% (and its carryings and revenue by even more, as seats filled for short distances from London would remain largely empty further north). Without two-thirds of revenue, there is no case for its construction.
I don’t advocate one form of train over another; but I do understand the connection between railway infrastructure, train operation, and economics.
Happy to talk about it whenever you wish.
with regards, James
Er no lightweight distributed power trains can accelerate decelerate in little over 1 min 30, together with 30 second platform time that’s well within a 15 trains per hour service pattern, even if every train was a stopping train. Of course every train will not be a stopping trains making 18-20 trains per hour feasible. Indeed much higher on JR east you jhave trains with a 30 second headway and some intermediate trains stopping at staions only once every half an hour. Sadly you seen unaware of actual HSR services running now with this service pattern!
I must say I held actually the same view as you in my last project and argued the same loss of revenue as did a non japenese transport planner and a transport economist. We were shown the numbers and simulations, and actual in service timetables and we were happy to be proven wrong. It would be good if you showed the same open mindedness. Indeed the additional stopping added several % points to the EIRR contrary to all our expectations.
Dear Andrew:
This verbal spat is unproductive. We need to dissect the basics of a railway timetable.
Trains’ journey times are defined by the infrastructure characteristics (gradients, curvature, track design and condition and signalling), by the trains’ characteristics (acceleration and deceleration rates and maximum speed, and beneath those by power, aerodynamics and braking capability), and by their stopping patterns.
The capacity of a route (trains/hour = 60/headway in mins) is defined by its signalling and by the range of journey times of the trains using it. If all the trains on a route have the same journey times, that is, the same train characteristics and stopping pattern, headway is defined by how long it takes for a train to stop: a following train must, given the response time of the signalling and control systems and its deceleration rate, be able to stop short of a catastrophic accident to the one in front of it.
At 300km/h, that minimum headway is 3 minutes or slightly more, which means a maximum of 20 paths/hour or a little less.
If one train makes an intermediate call, the capacity of the line is reduced by (time consumed by stop/headway) paths. The time consumed by a stop, its opportunity cost in terms of the extension in journey time, again at 300km/h, on both the DB and the SNCF, is about 6 minutes, that is, 2 paths. It appears to be about the same on the Kyushu Shinkansen, with the newest, aluminium and distributed power, series 800 train. If one train stops, on restarting it will take up the path two behind its original one, and one path (or two paths, if there is no slick overtaking move by the train on the path between) will be lost. The excessive advantage that you attribute to the Japanese trains makes no difference to this loss of capacity and of value.
I hope that this clarifies the issues that you have raised. Do please send references or links to any contrary argument if you have any doubt about the calculations and their effect.
Finally, Britain is not the same shape as Japan, nor is its transport market the same. There are much more important arguments than this about HS2 being the wrong project, happy to talk about those if you want more material on its economic and regional effects, and missed opportunities.
with regards again, James
This formula assumes a train cant stop and resume maximum speed within the Headway. Shinkansen can, push and pull cannot. The formula would be right if it could not, but is flawed because it can, so the technology makes a very real fifference.
Dear Andrew:
I’m sorry that you are unwilling to consider the basics. By definition, no train can stop and start between two nonstop trains and maintain a capacity-maximising headway between all three. If capacity is thrown away by intermediate calls, the case for HS2 evaporates.
Repeating the false mantra on Shinkansen and ‘push and pull’ (which does not in any case describe most of the European trains to which you refer) does not change the laws of maths or physics.
I repeat my offer to inform and advise you on railway issues, especially this one, if you wish to regain your credibility with your audience at large.
with best wishes, James Mackay
You dismiss it without even considering the evidence that there are service patterns which exhibit precisely this characteristic. you do not answer my mathematical point about the falw in your formula.
Dear Andrew:
There is no flaw in ‘my formula’, it just restates the basic principles of timetabling a railway. The flaw is your assumption that a slightly different technology changes everything, it doesn’t.
There is no service pattern which mixes trains with different journey times and maximises capacity. The Japanese ones which have intermediate calls do so with much lower capacity utilisation than is proposed for HS2, without which the case for it falls. Do send an example of such a pattern for my scrutiny, perhaps it would help me explain better what is not yet getting through.
yrs, James
There is an obvious flaw in your formula as it assumes that any stop consumes capacity – it does not if the stop is swift enough and there is sufficient headway between trains through automatic trains protection to ensure that the stop does not ‘knock out’ slots either side. Sorry I cant see why you do not get there is a minimum period at which the formula applies. It’s a simple matter of modelling the time buffers.
Your assume of lower service intervals is wrong, Tokyo has services with intervals of 2 minutes with a service pattern which includes intermediate stops.
Dear Andrew:
Not so, what you suggest is a flaw is in fact the essence of the argument. If a train stops at B, it will take longer from A to C than a nonstop train. Unless the headway between trains leaves lots of spare capacity for which there is no demand, capacity will be lost, and with it the revenue on which the business case depends.
Example:
train A train B train C train D train E train F path train G
unusable
London 1000 1003 1006 1009 1100 1103 1106 1109
Milton Keynes nonstop nonstop nonstop nonstop nonstop 1133 nonstop
Rugby 1048 1051 1054 1157 1151 1154 1157
From 1000, four trains can run in the first nine minutes of the hour, from 1100 only three can. 20 versus 15 per hour, if the pattern repeated. There can be no 1106 departure from Euston, because the space on the track that it needs after MK is taken up by the 1103.
This is inevitable, unless the headways between trains are greater than the minimum possible, as between 1103 and 1109. That is what makes the intermediate stops reduce capacity. Again, if there is no longer distance demand, that does not matter, but if the line is full – and HS2 has to be to have an economic case, revenue will be foregone.
If the trains are going more slowly, headways can be less, the Victoria Line is much doing as well as any other in the world with 33 trains per hour. All trains have the same stopping pattern. Going faster means longer headways, irregular stopping patterns mean less capacity. It’s why busy railways have four tracks, one each way for faster trains, one each way for slower. Their capacity is more than double what it would be if the same mix of stopping patterns were carried on a double track railway, one line each way.
I don’t know if any of your other eaders has followed this dialogue, but hope that someone else may be able to help resolve our difference. I’m right!
Yrs, James
Not so the trick is using the spare capacity which the ATP creates anyway
Dear Andrew:
Further confusion. ATP is Automatic Train Protection, a safety system which prevents trains from proceeding where they have no authority, from either a proceed signal or its electronic equivalent. It has no effect on capacity, except to reduce it slightly by increasing safety margins. That’s why Reading station, a critical point on a main line using a crude early form of ATP, works so badly.
If you are mixing it up with moving block signalling, labelled in Europe ERTMS level 3, the illusory advantages that were claimed for it were a major cause of the financial collapse of Railtrack, which depended on it to deliver more than it could.
I really do think, with all these faintly technical terms in use but misinterpreted, and some others, like ‘acceleration lanes’ and ‘slots’ that are borrowed from other contexts and are not used on railways, the arguments that you present are badly misleading. I repeat once again my offer to give help you on railway technology and operation, especially if you wish to understand better what’s really wrong with the existing HS2 proposal, and how it could be much improved.
Alternatively, please provide some quamtitative analysis to back up your unsustainable assertions.
yrs, James
I used the term acceleration land simply because the HS2 chief used it in a speech in derby last year- there are half a dozen terms for it internationally. Please don’t impute ignorance because of an easy read no- technical style.
Yes, language is flexible, but indicative.
You have still not responded to the real issue, that the suggestion that HS2, built on its proposed route but with intermediate stops, and using a different form of traction, could be both radically different in the markets it serves and have a better economic case, is spurious.
Mnay other changes could be made to improve its economic case and reduce its environmental damage, false hopes of wizard technology from the east are not among them.
regards, J
I certainly have not suggested exactly the same route- on my blog in the past I have suggested two stops:
-an intermediate station between Coventry and Warwick- much like the Derby/Nonttingham station, servicing a new city focussed on the brownfield Stoneleigh grounds -A fourth London airport – four runways – on the site of former RAF Gayton – which has the longest former military runway in the UK, with interchange with the Chiltern Line
There is also a case for a station North West of London – assuming around 50-60 km station spacing as optimum – such as a West of Aylesbury Parkway station though I haven’t written that one up yet. I also have seen that the chief route designer of HS1 has described the lack of intermediate statiosn as unwise and proposed a route similar to this.
Sorry havnt had the time to go through your other points, too busy.