West side or East side to Scotland?

Introduction

In February 2015 HS2 announced that they were not going to develop a route from Manchester to Scotland, saying “it no longer makes sense”. Nevertheless, HS2 still hankered after it, so I summarised the arguments around it as below.

In March 2016 published their document “Broad options for upgraded and high speed railways to the North of England and Scotland”. This document purports to be a review of the “broad options” for taking HS2 north to Scotland, east or west and various options for wholly new high-speed line or slower but cheaper upgrades.

At the end of this section, I critique the above “Broad Options”, summarising the points as fairly as I could, but the arguments seemed so unfairly one-sided that I felt I had to show up the conflicts in the form of a dialogue.

.West side or East side to Scotland?

In their prospectus “High Speed Rail” (Cm7827), HS2 show Fig 1.1, plans for motorways in 1943, and comment that the routes broadly reflect their own proposals for high-speed railways. That includes the very curious way that a route goes north to Scotland. Newcastle is set on a dead end; it an important town.

If Newcastle must be connected to the west-side route, it would cut it off less and go over lower ground to go along the Tyne valley rather than the A66 which goes over high ground, often closed by snow.

It is hard to know whether this preference for a west side route existed before the idea of what we now call “motorways” of the 1930s, or whether the preference for a west side route was created by this decision. Dr Beeching wanted to close the Newcastle-Edinburgh route, but he wanted to keep the Tyne valley route.

What keeps alive this idea that a route to Scotland should be along the west side?

Maybe it is the neatness of a route either side of the Pennines and continuing the route north to Glasgow. What this fails to realise is that the Lakes and the Southern Uplands steer the route a long way west and that Manchester is to the east of Edinburgh. From Manchester it is 45 miles diagonally over the Pennines to Leeds and then northwards to the centres of the North East before reaching Scotland in about the same distance.

In Cm7827 HS2 showed Figure 1.2 and Figure 1.3 showing that the trains were fuller on the east side in 2008 and were expected to even more so in 2033. (Notice the importance of Newcastle in 2033) Nevertheless HS2’s suggestion was a route to Scotland going north from Manchester via Carlisle, Carstairs(fork), to Glasgow & Edinburgh. They even discussed the practicalities of coupling and uncoupling trains at Carstairs!

In February 2015 HS2 formally abandoned their suggested link from Manchester (Piccadilly) to the WCML going northwards to Scotland, saying “it no longer makes sense”.

Why do Greengauge 21 and others still think it does make sense? How may we decide between east and west?

Both options start from the fact that HS2’s plans reach Manchester and Leeds, the Humber-Mersey line. How should the route go on to Scotland? As ever, the costs and the benefits must be weighed. The benefits are the passengers whose journeys would be speeded up.

From ORR Table 15.3. 000s of passenger journeys between Government office regions 2013-14

		East of England	East Midlands	London	North East	North West	Scotland	South East	South West	Wales Cymru	West Midlands
East Midlands		1,571
London		125,610	8,680
North East		333	229	2,332
North West		646	3,097	9,450	978
Scotland		274	201	2,107	1,751	2,085
South East		3,622	1,113	191,006	266	1,474	239
South West		602	346	11,305	98	612	80	6,371
Wales Cymru		158	133	2,225	34	1,825	45	664	2,650
West Midlands		809	3,904	11,028	237	4,277	281	2,959	1,538	1,170
Yorkshire, Humber		920	3,418	6,464	2,570	7,858	918	714	394	151	961
Passenger journeys between groups of regions, from the table above.	Journeys/year
Humber-Mersey line and south – North East	7,077,000
Humber-Mersey line and south - Scotland	6,226,000
Scotland – North East	1,751,000

Note the heavy traffic between the North-East and Scotland; it is natural for there to be heavy traffic between neighbouring population centres. Note also that there is more traffic from the Humber-Mersey line and southwards to the North East than there is to Scotland.

The distances, and therefore roughly the costs, are as follows:-

Route	Miles	Journeys	Utility: Journeys/miles
Leeds, Middlesbrough, Newcastle	105	7,077,000	67,400
Manchester, Carstairs (fork), Glasgow and Edinburgh	251	6,226,000	24,804
Leeds, Middlesbrough, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow	257	13,303,000	51, 762

“Utility” is calculated as passenger/miles of route because “miles of route” is a rough measure of cost. So the best route is Leeds, Middlesbrough, Newcastle, which is far better than the Manchester, Carstairs (fork), Glasgow and Edinburgh route. The next thing to do is to do is to extend the Leeds, Middlesbrough, Newcastle route to Edinburgh and Glasgow. This route captures the Scotland – North East traffic, as measured at the Humber-Mersey line it has a utility of 6,226,000 + 7,077,000/ 257 = 51, 762 passengers/mile of route. The extra passengers have not quite balanced out the extra distance.

So I argue that the route should go north from Leeds via Middlesbrough and Newcastle to join end on end to the Edinburgh – Glasgow high speed route because this route:-

• 
  Also serves and captures the traffic of the North-East.
  
• 
  Goes over lower ground.
  

Critique of “Broad Options”

In March 2016 HS2 published “Broad options for upgraded and high speed railways to the North of England and Scotland”, hereinafter referred to as “Bo”.

Bo presents itself as a list of the broad options for extending from the tips ofHS2’s “Y-shaped route”, Manchester and Leeds, to Scotland serving places in Northern England along the way. It is a poorly compiled document, and it is a “compilation”. Different ideas have been put into a pile and no effort has been made to put them into any kind of order. There is no discussion of conflicts between the different ideas.

The most striking defect of Bo is that it assumes that the main route to Scotland will be Manchester, Carstairs(fork), Glasgow & Edinburgh. It has set its face against, and does not discuss the other option, Leeds, Middlesbrough, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow. Figure 11 studiously avoids drawing a route (Leeds, Middlesbrough, Newcastle), Edinburgh to Glasgow.

A reader who already knows the material could follow it, but it took me hard work to understand in places. I have had to explain to lay readers what might be unfamiliar jargon. There are quite a few “straw men”, obviously silly ideas, there only to show that they have been considered and rejected, mostly for good reason. I have not wasted words on them.

As planned in July 2016, HS2 trains would leave both Leeds and Manchester going southwards, turning left or right to go north to Scotland. Bo does not mention a high-speed line Manchester –Leeds (HS3), but I assume that such a line will be built and joined onto HS2 for English reasons. HS3 changes the reckoning.

Stepping outside the corner which Bo has painted itself into, it seems plain that there are two possible high speed east-west routes within Scotland; either Edinburgh – Carstairs or Edinburgh – Glasgow. Which would be more useful?

But Bo does discuss interesting things within their limits. I can only pick out the most striking points.

Bo starts by comparing high-speed railways (by this Bo means completely new railways built to the standards of HS2’s main lines London – Manchester & Leeds) along the west coast to Glasgow and along the east coast to Edinburgh. Journey times from London to Glasgow or to Edinburgh Bo are very similar because the distances are almost the same. But the costs are significantly different.

Via the west coast to Glasgow would cost £32- 34 billion, a rather narrow range. It includes a link Carstairs – Edinburgh.

Via the east coast would cost £27 – 43 billion, with the comment that it would cost more (how much?) to reach Glasgow. Bo consistently fails to discuss the possibility of continuing a route (Leeds, Newcastle), Edinburgh to Glasgow. See Figure 11. Or is the lower minimum cost because the land on the east side is flatter? And what of the upper estimate, £43 billion? Bo 5.5.7 recognises that Newcastle will be a very important station, but in Bo 5.5.7 assumes that Newcastle Central cannot cope with the traffic, and discusses the option of crossing the Tyne further to the west. This will be expensive, does that account for the £43 billion? But Bo 3.4.30 and Figure 9 show that there is room in Newcastle Central for a pair of platforms 400M long. To take a new high speed line into Newcastle Central might be putting new wine into old bottles, but I see no harm in it and Newcastle Central has plentiful connections.

Bo 2.2.2 says that London is the biggest English destination for journeys from Scotland, but Figure 6 shows Scotland exchanges more traffic with Northern England than it does with London. Placing the blue dot in Figure 6 in the middle of the North-West area of Figure 6 might be standard graphic design, but it suggests that a route Glasgow – North-West England would be a shorter route than it really is, but it hides the fact that the real traffic centre of gravity of North-West England must be between Liverpool and Manchester, making the “bent” route Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool more favourable because it passes more traffic sources.

Bo 2.2.5 says that Preston will pick up significant traffic, no other point on the west route will do so. Following material discusses where trains should divide before forking to east to Edinburgh or west to Glasgow, should this even be so far south as Preston? Not a point that needs to be discussed at this stage, but it shows where Bo’s attention is focussed.

Bo 3.4.4 says that by-passing York shortens the route significantly and says that even after putting a station on the shortened route, 14 minutes of journey time would be cut out. I can’t find this shortening.

“Newcastle” (aka the Tyne-Wear conurbation) has a population of 1.1 million and is the most important centre of the North-East. Middlesbrough (aka “the Lower Tees”) has a population of 560,000 and is the second most important centre of the North-East. Railway services to Newcastle are poor and it lost “direct services” in the 1950s.

Bo 1.3.8 says that the speed limit though Durham is 75 mph. This is not the only speed-limiting curve on the route, the rest can be improved, but Durham cannot. A by-pass is suggested, but it is quite long, stretching almost all the way south to Darlington. I suggest making a virtue out of necessity and taking a new route from Northallerton to Middlesbrough (much bigger than Darlington), a new parkway station on the A690 at Middle Rainton serving Sunderland and Durham and then into Newcastle. If a high speed route is to be built in stages, this would be a good stage.

Bo purports to be a list of possibilities, but it has deliberately missed out a very important one. I had hoped for better.

Michael Bell 18 July 2016

Dialogue between Stalwart and New Broom

on the subject of

Extending HS2 from Manchester and Leeds to Glasgow and Edinburgh

Stalwart

I put before you the standard route for going from England to Scotland, commemorated in poetry (“This is the night mail, crossing the border”), the natural route, and drawn on maps since the 1950s. It has been approved by generations of engineers. Of course we must go to Scotland this way.

New Broom

It would be more useful to go along the east coast, via Middlesbrough and Newcastle. As traffic sources they far outweigh Oxenholme and Carlisle. And looking from the Scots point of view, these are the nearest big English towns to the Central Belt of Scotland.

Stalwart

Pah! They are trivia. The objective, the political imperative, is to reach Scotland!

New Broom

There is more traffic to North East than there is to Scotland. If we are going to build and England – Scotland route in stages, a route from Leeds to Newcastle is a natural stage, only 100 miles over easy country.

Stalwart

The speed limit through Durham is only 75 mph. That is OK for passengers who are stopping at Newcastle, but Scots passenger won’t put up with it.

New Broom

Indeed, the speed limit through Durham cannot be raised, and Bo shows a by-pass which starts only just north of Darlington. It would better to start a new route from Northallerton (the ECML is only 2 tracks north of Northallerton), to a new station at Middlesbrough and then Newcastle. Middlesbrough is half the size of Newcastle and bigger than Edinburgh

Stalwart

Middlesbrough! A stinky place! Nobody wants to go there. It lost direct services in the 1950s

And what’s this about taking the route through Newcastle. The traffic forecasts for going on to Scotland say we would need 400M long trains and there isn’t the space for them. We would have to build a new station in the Team valley, and taking that on would mean a tunnel under Fenham, highly unpopular and expensive!

New Broom

I thought we were meant to be looking for a route which brought in a lot of traffic!

And there is space for a pair of 400M long platforms in Newcastle Central. An aisle in this 19^th century station seems to have been built with that in mind. A pair of platforms is enough, trains going on to Scotland will go on, those “terminating” will go on to Heaton (only 2 miles) and reverse there.

Stalwart

I won’t let you put that slot in Newcastle Central into the main piece.

New Broom

I’ll put it in the appendix

And then the route by-passes Berwick to reach Edinburgh. The only natural obstacle is the stretch Reston – Cockburnspath, the “pass of Penmanshiel”. A high-speed route can be imagined over Coldingham Moor, but accepting the route through Penmanshiel pass would add only 5 minutes to journey time.

And then through Edinburgh Waverley across central Scotland roughly following the M8 to Glasgow, thus building the Edinburgh – Glasgow high-speed link that SNP want to build as an internal Scottish venture, but as a link to England paid for out of English money.

Stalwart

That is immoral and unacceptable. I will not allow such a route to be included in Bo. The west route has to fork at Carstairs; the Scots can’t be allowed to get a freebee, luckily the Carstairs- Edinburgh route will be less useful to them than your route.

The west coast route allows trains to be run from London to either Glasgow or Edinburgh without stopping. Older versions of the plan were for trains to stop and divide at Carstairs, but newer thinking sees that it would be better to divide the trains at Preston and run the divided pair close together.

New Broom

Run 2 trains as close as possible over such a distance? That’s a very weak idea!

Stalwart

The idea is to get from London to Central Scotland as quickly as possible. Intermediate stops slow down the journey.

New broom

So why did you go to so much trouble to calculate the value of Preston to the West Coast route and not do the same for the contribution that Newcastle and Middlesbrough could make to the East Coast route?

I had hoped that Bo would be a discussion document. But it is not. Even while not deciding between the various possibilities, a “discussion document” should list the conflicting possibilities. Bo hides, or “writes past”, the choices that are there. I started writing this piece as honest appraisal of a document, but I see now that I have to make an accusation of dishonesty. Bo is a dishonest document. It plainly prefers the West coast Route, and dishonestly undermines the case for the East Coast route. There is no way of telling whether that is because the assembler (he’s hardly an “Editor”) does not want to give up an established idea, or whether the motivation is to by-pass the North-East or there is some other unknown reason. I have put words into Stalwart and New Broom’s mouths which are not openly said in Bo but which are certainly implied.

Michael Bell.