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Originally Posted by Jonesy55
They are going to have to be a lot cheaper than current season tickets if anybody is going to commute using HS2.
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As per the previous Financial Times interview with Sir Higgins; they anticipate on accommodating up to 600,000 passengers a day on HS2 through affordable fares similar to the model used by Eurostar/low-cost-carriers to maximise utilisation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonesy55
It's only 75-80 minutes by train now on the Virgin services which are every 20 minutes through the day. There are also slower and cheaper London Midland services which stop at more intermediate stations and take over 2 hours, plus the Chiltern Line services into London Marylebone which take around 1h45.
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The standard journey time between London and Birmingham on Virgin Trains West Coast (VTWC) is currently 84mins; HS2 reduces that by 42% to 49mins. HS2 improves on the current frequency to every 15mins at peak, on trains which have twice the capacity.
One other important point to add is that of reliability. The West Coast Main Line has the dubious honour of the being the busiest trunk route railway outside of Asia. Despite significant and costly upgrade works over the years, including grade separation, quadrupling of the tracks all the way to Crewe, and so forth, it is operating at capacity, and fundamentally still a Victorian route. As a consequence, the line has mixed punctuality. That is borne out in Office of Rail & Road statistics for VTWC services running to/from London and Birmingham:
- 57% of services arrived at the right time
- 10% of services arrived >10mins later than timetabled
- 4% of services arrived >30mins later than timetabled or were cancelled
HS2 overcomes the reliability headache of VTWC by providing dedicated tracks and platforms.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonesy55
The 50-60 minute trip on HS2 would be fine if you happened to live right next to the new HS2 station in Birmingham and worked right next to Euston but for the vast majority i don't think that would be the case and once you add on extra transport time at one or both ends it's soon going to add up to a long commute anyway. Those few homes right next to Birmingham HS2 are soon going to get expensive too I think, you can see the same in Milton Keynes now, housing there is generally reasonable by Southeast standards but the central apartments right next to the station are a lot pricier than average for the city as you can get into Central London within 35 minutes if you live in one of them.
I'd suggest if you are going to live in Birmingham you might as well get a job there too and save yourself the expense and time of the commute.
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I totally agree that the reduced journey times and other benefits of HS2 are not going to make the commute suitable for everyone as not everyone will live/work adjacent to the HS2 stations.
However, you need to consider than in 2015, 1-in-7 (3.7mn) commuted for more than two hours every day, up from 1-in-9 in 2010 (2.8mn). People are taking the decision that a long commute is a sacrifice worth making to own a home. As the following graphic demonstrates, the commuter catchment of London is already pretty vast; HS2 merely increase the catchment of homes that are within a commutable distance of London.
Source: The Guardian – https://www.theguardian.com/cities/g...-cities-mapped
Another point to make is that the area surrounding the future Curzon Street station is littered with wasteland and low-yield industrial land that could provide a substantial number of new units. The future Birmingham Interchange also provides connectivity in the West Midlands region. HS2 also unlocks substantial capacity on the West Coast Main Line, East Coast Main Line and Midland Main Line for a whole array of improved services to/from London, which in turn makes development in towns north of London far more viable.
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Originally Posted by Crawford
Supercommuting is one of those myths that is fun for articles, but doesn't exist, for the most part. At the least, it's pretty rare, because it usually isn't worth the massive time and stress. Fastest train line in Europe is Paris-Frankfurt but it isn't like people are supercommuting between France and Germany.
I doubt too many people in, say, Mannheim, are gearing up for their daily train to Paris just because the speeds over the northern French plains are fastest in Europe. NE France and adjacent parts of Germany are dirt cheap and relatively proximate to Paris but doesn't seem to make much of a difference.
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There are probably as of right now some 4mn Brits commuting in excess of 2hrs every weekday, primarily due to the silly house prices in and around London. I don’t think that Birmingham will become a dormitory suburb of London, but there is certainly credibility for Birmingham to become a more viable place to call home for those priced out of London or who want their pound to go further.
In the context of the current discussion, I’m not sure Frankfurt to Paris is a good example as the quickest journey time is just under 4hrs, whilst London-Birmingham and London-Manchester will average 49mins and 68mins respectively on HS2.