Where is the economic benefit?

What is the economic benefit of high speed rail? How is it measured? How can it be measured, let alone forecast? And who gains anyway?

The usual benefits of transport schemes are reduced costs or reduced travelling time. Although economists put a value on "time saved", this usually ends up in land values as the areas that benefit become more attractive. Reduced costs also ends up as a land value enhancement. This was seen dramatically in the Docklands area where a study commissioned by Transport for London revealed an aggregate land value uplift of £10 billion attributable to the Jubilee Line Extension.

It is known that high speed rail results in land value uplift around stations, by concentrating large numbers of people into a small area. It also depresses land values along the route through which it passes, due to disturbance and restriction of access. The winners and losers are those who own land.

What is less certain is the overall effect on land values in a region. What would happen to land values in Scotland if the journey time between London and Edinburgh were reduced to three hours?

If the aim of high speed rail is to promote the economies in regions remote from the capital, would it not be simpler to re-balance the tax system in favour of the more distance regions?

The GWR main line to Birmingham

Until the West Coast Main Line was electrified in the mid-1960s, there was a second main line from London to Birmingham. This was the Great Western Route which was originally very indirect and ran via Oxford. In its last years, it diverged from the main Great Western line at Old Oak Common and ran parallel to the Central Line as far as Ruislip. The line from Marylebone joined it at Northolt Junction, and from there northwards through High Wycombe to beyond Princes Risborough it was a joint Great Western and Great Central (later LNER) route. The section from Old Oak Common to South Ruislip, which has been selected as part of the new High Speed 2 route, is not at present used for passenger services.

At Ashendon Junction north of Princes Risborough, there was a connection to the main Great Central main line at Grendon Underwood. The line crosses over the mothballed Oxford to Cambridge Line at Bicester, with a station at Bicester North, and rejoins the original Oxford to Birmingham line at Aynho Junction south of Banbury. From there it continues, at one time as a four-track main line, to Leamington, Warwick, Solihull and Birmingham Snow Hill. The latter station is still open, though much reduced in size. Much of the site is occupied by a car park. A single line route provides a connection between Leamington and Coventry.

The line has recently been upgraded, with double track from Northolt Junction to Aynho. A new service now runs from Marylebone to Wrexham. Plans are in hand to add a spur at Bicester to enable Chiltern Railways to run a service to Oxford. There is no firm´proposal to electrify this increasingly busy route.

The proposed subterranean terminus at Euston

One of the most costly elements of the proposed high speed railway, and one that will take the longest time to construct, is the subterranean terminus at Euston and the 10km tunnel to the Crossrail interchange at Old Oak Common.

The long tunnels will mean that the trains will have to be built to the special stringent standards of fire resistance required for underground trains, adding considerably to the cost.

If an alternative surface route could be found, this requirement could be relaxed, with consequent savings.

The previous posting suggests that there is spare capacity at Euston, currently taken up by the lightly used London suburban services operated on lines with DC electrification. This may be the key to avoiding the great expense of a new terminal and all the tunneling.

The spare capacity at London Euston

London Euston with Watford line train (1985), originally uploaded by seadipper.

It may come as a surprise, but there is spare capacity on the route into London Euston, all the way out to Queen's Park.

These are the so-called New Lines opened in 1912, which comprise a two-track suburban railway running from Euston to Watford, and now run by London Overground. At Queen's Park, trains from Euston are joined by Bakerloo Line trains which run northwards as far as Harrow and Wealdstone.

Between Euston and Queen's Park the service is lightly used, there being little traffic at the two stations, Kilburn High Road and the almost-deserted South Hampstead.

If the New Lines could be used by some of the outer suburban trains that run towards Milton Keynes and Northampton, this would release capacity on the four tracks of the main line. It would also be possible to extend the Bakerloo Line the 4km from Queen's Park to Willesden Junction.

How the route might be used
The details of such an arrangement would of course need working out. The lines follow a complex arrangement of burrowing junctions at Chalk Farm, which provide flexibility in routing, before entering the twin-bore tunnels at South Hampstead on the east side of the running lines. At Queen's Park, the northbound and southbound lines diverge, and the Bakerloo Line reaches the surface between them. Queen's Park station has island platforms between the Bakerloo and Overground tracks, and the remains of platforms on the four main line tracks.

The Bakerloo Line tracks continue parallel for a short distance, passing through car sheds before merging with the Overground tracks, which then continue on the east side of the main line until Willesden Junction, where there is a bay for terminating trains. The next stations northward are Harlesden and Stonebridge Park, and the line then dives under the main line tracks, continuing northwards on the west side of the main line tracks from Wembley Park to Carpenders Park. The New Lines then separate from the main line, calling at Watford High Street before reaching the terminus at Watford Junction.

The main difficulty that would need to be overcome is that the main lines are arranged (from west to east) down fast, up fast, down slow, up slow, which means that a grade-separated junction would be needed to enable trains on the slow lines to cross onto the Overground tracks without conflicting movements.

However, if only the stretch of line south of Willesden Junction, were taken over, which is adjacent to the slow lines, the difficulty of conflicting movements is much reduced. But that raises the question of what route a main line could follow from Willesden northwards.

A railway is a conveyor belt - not an airline

The London to Brighton line has frequent trains. You go to the station, buy a ticket and get on the train. It is not particularly fast but you know exactly how long the journey will take and plan accordingly. Buying a ticket is slow because of the rotten machines, and you may need to get on the train five minutes before it leaves to be sure of a seat, but you just build the necessary extra ten minutes into the journey.

If you get delayed, it is not a problem because there is another train leaving soon.

This is exactly the opposite of the high speed rail concept. Because such trains are very costly to build and run, every seat has to be filled. So passengers end up being confronted with complex fares and find themselves booked into a particular seat on a particular train.

Of course, if they miss their train they have lost their booking and wasted their money. To be certain not to miss their booking, they must allow  an hour or more. 

High speed rail leads to the paradoxical situation that although the train is faster than an ordinary train, the journey time can be longer! And a frequent service is of little use to the passengers who cannot make use of the potential freedom of choice it gives.

When railways cannot offer an affordable walk-on service, they need to re-think their entire operation. A railway is not an airline and should not be run as if it was.

Willesden Junction

Willesden Junction, London, originally uploaded by looper23.

Willesden Junction is a major and strategic transport node in west London. It lies on the edge of the high density suburbs that developed up to the beginning of the First World War. London Overground lines converge from five directions, and there is also a tube. The routes are

• Stratford to Richmond
• London Euston to Watford
• Clapham Junction to Willesden Junction
• Bakerloo Line

Willesden Junction also enjoys direct access via the West London Line from routes to the South Coast and South West.

This means that a substantial proportion of the population of the Victorian suburbs of north London can reach Willesden Junction without having to go into central London, and within half an hour, without having to change trains. There is also potential to serve it directly from places such as Gatwick and Brighton.

If all West Coast Main Line trains called at this station, many passengers could avoid having to travel to Euston. They would also save useful amounts of time on their overall door-to-door journey, without the need for 250 mph railways.

The large areas of grass between the tracks in the picture are where the platforms used to be before Willesden Junction main line was closed in the 1960s. Reopening stations such as this is the way to improve connectivity and cut journey times.

New high speed rail network announced.

The Secretary of State for Transport, Rt Hon Lord Andrew Adonis, announced the government's proposals for a new network of high speed railways in this statement. Further details are given in the 152 page DfT report which you can download from the link on the right.

Having long been against the concept of high speed rail in Britain, my first impressions are that the route is an ingenious and rational choice for an additional railway, which could provide additional capacity. Superficially, the case for the project looks overwhelming. But it is telling that the report admits that

Any new line, whether high speed or conventional, will transform capacity. This is because:

• Firstly, any new line would in itself provide the opportunity to run very significant numbers of additional services.
• Secondly, in contrast to upgrading an existing route, a new line can easily be constructed in such a way as to permit the operation of longer trains. Current European standards for new lines require them to allow trains of up to 400 metres (in comparison to the 207 metre Pendolinos in use on the West Coast Main Line).
• Thirdly, a new line would enable faster long distance services to be segregated from slower regional and commuter services, which stop at more stations, as well as from freight. The capacity benefits from segregating service types in this way can be substantial, given that a single slower train can cut across the paths of up to seven high speed services, as the diagram below shows:
• Fourthly, the use of a new line for long distance services from London to Birmingham and beyond would release significant capacity on the existing West Coast Main Line for other service types – including commuter and regional passenger trains and freight.

It is argued that the cost of building a high speed line is not significantly more than building a conventional one, which may well be true but is far from the whole story. Running costs of a high speed railway are much higher, due to the greater energy consumption (energy is proportional to speed-squared) and the need for specially designed and complex rolling stock, capable of running at the proposed speed of 250 mph - substantially faster than the French TGV which runs at 186 mph. This will be a particular problem in the British context because whilst it is proposed to build to the European standard loading gauge, a specially designed and constructed interim fleet of trains will be needed for running over both the high speed line and then continuing onto existing lines constructed to the smaller British standard.

The report argues that the benefits of higher speeds are substantial, pointing to big cuts in journey times between the main city centres. But how valuable are these time savings? The high speed rail line would reduce the time it takes to travel from Birmingham city centre to London by more than 40 per cent from the current 1 hour 24 minutes to as little as 40-49 minutes. However, adding in say, half an hour's travel at each end gives a door-to-door journey time saving of 45 minutes on a 2½ hour journey, which is less impressive.

They've got one so we must have one
This reveals the weak foundations on which the proposal is constructed. The principal argument the report presents is that other countries have built or are building high speed line so Britain needs one.

There is no reference anywhere to origin-and-destination travel surveys, which would undoubtedly show that most journeys start and/or finish within an area extending fifteen miles or so from the centre of a conurbation. Britain's population may be concentrated into a small fraction of the country's land area, but within that area it is diffused. It is to tap into this diffuse pattern of settlement that most trains on the Great Western main line now call at about half a dozen places between London and Bristol, whereas thirty years ago many trains made just a stop or two. Even when the high speed line is running, faced with a long journey to a city centre, most people who live outside the inner suburban ring will either pick up a train at a location such as Watford or Stevenage, on the classic network, or they will make the whole journey by car. Whilst it might take passengers off the airlines, the high speed line just does not provide an attractive alternative to the car for those in the outer suburbs, or, indeed, most people living south of the Thames.

Land value effects
One test of the value of infrastructure investment is the aggregate change in land value to which it gives rise. A railway creates land value only around the places where it stops. Elsewhere, its effects are negative, hence the NIMBYs in the Chilterns who have already announced their opposition to the project. Has anyone tried to calculate how the proposed line would affect land values in the aggregate, bearing in mind the possibilities it opens up for improved stopping services on the classic routes?

My first impression is that the report actually makes a good case for building a new railway to conventional standards, possibly on the route identified, which leaves London alongside the High Wycombe route to Birmingham, passes under the Chilterns in a tunnel and then continues through Aylesbury, mostly on the Great Central route.

It also makes the case for building the line to a larger loading gauge, though this should surely be to the Scandinavian standard which allows vehicles 3.2 metres wide rather than the standard that applies in the rest of mainland Europe? The Scandinavian standard provides sufficient width for reasonably acceptable 2+3 seating (below), which is worth having.



Other important benefits of constructing the line to run at conventional speeds are that sharper curvature is possible, giving a greater choice of route alignment, and that existing 125 mph stock such as mark 3 can run on it. And the construction can be done in small stages, with each enhancement or addition being brought into use as soon as it was complete. For example, the new London terminal and link out towards the former GWR route to Birmingham via High Wycombe could be brought into use as soon as it was complete as an supplement to, and possible replacement for, Marylebone, there being no longer spare capacity at Paddington.

These comments are first reactions. The report gives a slight impression of disingenuousness, to the extent that it seems to be trying to make the case with minds having been made up already. And to say that a Pendolino train is only 270 metres conveniently ignores the fact that the Department of Tranport has blocked the purchase of additional carriages to make the Pendolinos up to 11 cars, and that in the 1950s trains on the West Coast Main Line were up to 360 metres long (17 mark 1 vehicles and a locomotive).

The proposal will obviously be examined in the minutest detail over the coming months and other issues will no doubt emerge in the process.

To discuss this article please contact me on 0044 7985 07438 or emaail henry.bn{at}gmail.com

Keywords objection high speed rail britain countryside chilterns economics land value hs2