The Case for High Speed Rail

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The Case for High Speed Rail

• Independent supplier of strategic risk management
  consultancy to the international transportation
  industries.

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The Case for High Speed Rail

• What is High Speed Rail (HSR)
• Why is it necessary?
• What will it cost?
• The UK Market for HSR
• International Comparisons
• Benefits
• Current Proposals and Strategy
• Conclusions

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What is High Speed Rail?

• High Speed Rail
• Inter City or Inter Regional Travel at gt250kph
  (gt150mph) typically 300 to 350 kph (180-210mph)
• High Frequency ca. 10 trains per hour, per
  direction
• High Density gt 500 750 seats per train
• Central Manchester Central London in under 80
  minutes! Not possible by car, conventional rail
  or air.

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What is High Speed Rail?

• There is no internationally agreed definition of
  what constitutes a high speed railway (HSR)
• EU directive on interoperability defines HS rail
  as routes operating at gt 200 km/h (125 mph)
• Typical speeds for HSR elsewhere are 300 km/h or
  greater
• High speed railways do tend to share certain
  characteristics including
• New or substantially upgraded infrastructure
• Wide minimum track radius to allow high speeds
• Wide spacing between tracks to reduce air
  pressure between passing trains
• No level crossings

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High Speed Rail in the UK

• The UKs only HSR route is the channel tunnel
  rail link (now known as High Speed 1), which
  consists of
• 109 Km long new high speed route
• 3 major tunnel sections totalling 25 Km

High Speed 1 Medway Viaduct
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High Speed 1 (CTRL)

• London Paris (via Tunnel) 135 min
• 1998 - 2007
• On time, on budget
• Mainly French standards, equipment
• PM, Design Bechtel, US
• Cost 5.8bn

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High Speed 1 (CTRL)

• 4 new station developments (St. Pancras,
  Stratford, Ebbsfleet, Ashford)
• Major bridge across the River Medway (the longest
  span high speed rail viaduct in Europe)
• 117 other bridges and structures
• traverses rural and major urban areas

Eurostar train
St. Pancras extended roof
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Technologies

• Rolling stock
• EMUs
• Double-decker trains possible on new
  infrastructure
• Trains can run at speeds of up to 350 Km/h
• Powerful - about 10 12MW continuous
• Reliable distributed traction

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Technologies

• Signalling and communications
• In cab signalling, transmission from track to
  train
• Moving block, high capacity 3 to 5 min headways
• Automatic train control / protection
• Very safe ERTMS level 3 (under development)

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Technologies

• Track, Civils and Power
• Continuously welded rail
• Resilient trackform (quieter)
• Viaducts, tunnels common
• Substantially straight
• Fairly large gradients
• Dedicated no mixed train types, little or no
  freight
• 50kV autotransformer OLE
• Nuclear powered.in France.

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Technologies

• Maglev
• Magnets floats over track
• Ridiculously fast (600 kph)
• A very, very risky investment
• And very, very expensive
• Prestige, demonstrator, conceptual
• Largely unproven in revenue service
• It wont happen here for a very long time indeed
• We did have one though

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HSRs Key Competitive Advantages
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HSRs Competitive Advantage

• HSR offers an advantage for journeys over medium
  distances but relatively little incremental
  benefit over either very long or very short
  distances

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Competitive Advantage of HSR
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Door to Door Journey Time (Hours)
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2
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High Speed Rail Overseas
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Overseas HSR

• France has over 1500 km of HSR route serving 9
  major cities
• Germany has 4 HSR routes covering almost 900 km
  with 3 further routes planned

TGV, France
ICE, Germany
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Overseas HSR

• Spain has several HSR routes open or under
  construction totalling over 1000 km
• Japan opened the worlds first HSR in 1964, the
  Tokyo to Osaka Shinkansen, which has since been
  expanded (now over 2400 km)

Alaris, Spain
ShinkansenJapan
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Overseas HSR

• Other countries in Asia such as China, Korea and
  Taiwan have introduced HSR
• Some US states (such as California and Florida)
  are considering HSR links between major cities

Further HSR development in Europe is underway in
Italy, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and
several other countries
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Demand
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Demand

• The West Coast Mainline and M6/M1 are full
• Standing commonplace!
• Scrum at Euston!!
• M25!!!

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Demand

• Demand for HS rail will be greatest where there
  is a significant benefit in journey times
• I.e. for journeys greater than 150 km and less
  than 800 km
• Between areas of relatively dense population
• Particularly where the densely populated areas
  are aligned in corridors E.g. Manchester to
  London.
• Source Steer Davis Gleeve / Atkins / DfT

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Demand

• Lord Adonis noted the similarity between
  population densities and distances in and around
  Japanese cities being similar to those in the UK
• Backed by Govt and senior Conservatives

23
Demand

• Traffic The National Audit Office said in 2006
  that the WCML might not be able to cope with
  current levels of growth beyond 2015

24
Capacity

• Many countries have built high-speed rail lines
  as much for reasons of capacity as for reasons of
  speed
• Signalling systems can handle trains every 3-5
  minutes
• Trains tend to have a large number of seats
• French TGV duplex trains approx 1000 seats
• Japanese HS trains up to 1600 seats
• A large capacity system

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Capacity

• All this equates to the same capacity as a Boeing
  737 every 45 seconds or 3 parallel motorways!
• It is needed, as forecast growth in rail/road
  traffic gtgt GDP growth over the next 20 years

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Capacity

• Reliability is important to capacity
• Largely or substantially new infrastructure
• Modular, standardised, homegenous
• TSI-compliant, attention paid to systems
  integration issues
• Built for maintainability, redundancy, resilience
• High reliability will make people trust the train
  and like it success will breed success..

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Something Happening?The Headlines

• 05 September 2008
• High-speed rail link inquiry
• 24 June 2008
• RAIL ALTERNATIVE TO HEATHROW PLANS
• 05 January 2009
• Heathrow could get high speed rail hub

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New HSR Routes for the UK

• Proposed routes for new HSR links
• Any routes that are taken up are likely to be
  developed in stages from London northwards

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New HSR Routes for the UK

• High Speed 2 an option proposed by Greengauge
  21, 2007
• A new HS line to the North West with connection
  to HS1

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Benefits Economic and Business
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Benefits Economic and Business

• A report by Greengauge 21 in June 2006 entitled
  High Speed Trains and the Development and
  Regeneration of cities, which examines the
  effects of HSR in Europe states that
• Travel by high speed trains ... is focussed
  very much on the service sectors of the economy
  business, public administration, leisure,
  commerce and tourism.
• The report concludes that... HSR services can
  serve as a major factor in the development of
  city economies reflecting gains in the following
  3 ways
• Cities are brought closer together boosting
  business activities
• Gains are most likely to be made by cities
  oriented to service sector businesses
• Effective movement within and beyond the
  conurbation is vital for cities to benefit from
  high speed rail access

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Benefits Economic and Business

• Connecting regional UK to the Capital/beyond
• Like it or not, London is the economic epicentre
  of the UK gt30 of GDP
• Proximity of the customer, economic stimulation
  and regeneration more likely
• South-east capacity constraints can be reduced??

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Benefits Economic and Business

• most obvious benefit is reduced journey times
• London to Edinburgh 2 hours 35 minutes
• London to Glasgow 3 hours
• London to Manchester 1 hour 20 minutes
• (based on TGV style North-South link, source
  Department for transport, 2004)
• Other, regional, benefits include
• Inward investment
• Housing and economic development
• Additional opportunities for tourism
• Business linked and integrated to the SE

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Benefits Economic and Business

• A cost to benefits ratio can be developed
• Methodology widely open to interpretation but
  overall C/B gt 1
• Benefits shown to exceed costs by gt2 3
• Source Steer Davis Gleeve / Greengage 21

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Environmental Benefits

• Land take is significantly lower for HSR than for
  motorways
• Capacity has to be put somewhere
• Land use very significant in crowded UK, less so
  in less dense France
• Much more energy efficient

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Environment Benefits

• On main European journeys, high-speed trains
  generate between 4 and 40 times less C02 per
  passenger than other modes of transport
• Travelling by rail uses 2 to 3 times less energy
  than journeys by road
• A high-speed railway line takes up half as much
  space as a motorway
• Trains return energy to the grid when braking

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HSR Rationale

• Alleviates overcrowded conventional rail networks
  particularly on routes in and out of London
• Reduces demand on busy road networks
• Enables provision of environmentally friendly and
  energy efficient transport systems
• Provides convenience the main alternative to HSR
  on journeys above 400 km is air but most airports
  are on the outskirts of cities

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Case Made?

• A no-brainer?

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Case Made?

• Not quite
• There are significant financial, management,
  technical, political and environmental problems
  to overcome

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Financial
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Financial

• Costs of recent new HS rail routes have ranged
  from around 7m per km (Madrid to Lerida, Spain)
  to 50m per km (CTRL, UK)
• Part of the reason for the high cost of CTRL was
  due to high proportion of tunnels
• Other reasons include the cost of land, labour
  costs, regulatory/approval processes
• We need to get to the bottom of rail project
  costs in the UK..

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Financial

• Recent cost estimates for HSR in the UK (March
  2008 Atkins)
• London to Birmingham 9 billion
• London to Leeds 12 billion
• London to Edinburgh and Glasgow 31 billion
• Ian Coucher of Network Rail recently estimated
  the cost of HSR at between 15m and 19m per
  kilometre.

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Financial

• Public-sector infrastructure provision
• DfT specified and paid for, private project
  management?
• Government underwritten SPV (c.f. Network Rail)
• Unlimited liability
• Raising the funds may take some time
• Post credit crunch?

44
Financial

• Risky venture for private investors
• Tube PPP Metronet collapsed
• Many uncertainties, risks unquantifiable
• Private sector ROSCO for the trains (proven),
  private operator for the services/stations/mainten
  ance (proven?)

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Project Management
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Project Management

• National Audit Office (NAO) head Sir John Bourn
  said of the WCML The weaknesses in the
  management of the project before 2002 should
  provide ample warning of the dangers of entering
  into a scheme on this scale without clear
  leadership, plans and project management
  expertise without fully engaging stakeholders
  and using untried technologies.

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Project Management

• We need all of these tools and techniques at the
  projects disposal, properly implemented
• HS1 A resounding success
• Capacity to do more than one thing at a time new
  nuclear, Tube upgrades, Crossrail, Thameslink,
  Metrolink, etc, etc,etc

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Technical
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Technical

• Finding an adequate route
• To attain high speed, trains need a straight
  line/very gentle curves
• Tunnelling is extremely expensive and can be
  technically very, very difficult
• Systems Issues (not just civils) likely to be
  challenging
• Use existing approaches to cities could reduce
  costs significantly

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Technical

• Proposal for Manchester as a stop on the line
  to Leeds.
• Nice idea. How?
• More likely to be a secondary HS route in the
  East?
• Heathow Hub 4.6bn Arup Finish 2019
• HS1 comes to London via the east.LHR in West.
• Tunnel to connect HS1 to HS2not direct
• Implications for regional airport strategy?

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Political
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Political

• Planning
• Act of Parliament will almost certainly be
  required re Crossrail, PPP, etc. Not likely to
  be an uncontroversial/easy passage
• Govts planning commission could overrule local
  authority restrictions no Sizewell B epic?
• Effect of road congestion charging policy, e.g.
  National, City (C. London, Manchester)?

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Political

• What marginal constituencies will be affected??
• Third Runway Debate
• What else could be affected?
• Integrated Kent Franchise Javelin
• White elephants and stations in the middle of
  nowhere?

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Environmental
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Environmental

• Noise
• Solutions special earthworks, skirts,
  aerodynamic pantographs, resilient wheels, etc.
  etc.
• Construction works
• Particularly those close to population centres
• Depot activity
• SSSIs
• re HS1 experience

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Options
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Options

• Meeting Demand
• Do nothing the NW economy will become steadily
  more isolated, seize up / become less competitive
• Increase road provision drastically
  environmentally and politically unsustainable
• Invest in upgrades / tilting trains again
  disruptive, expensive and no less difficult
• Adding airport capacity makes no difference
• Build an HS Network!

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Conclusions
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Conclusions

• Can afford it similar price to cut in VAT!
• Economically viable B/C 2 maybe more
• Provides additional diversity and capacity into
  the transport system
• Integrates the high growth economy of the SE with
  the NW
• Some significant problems to overcome
• Environmentally sound, most sustainable solution

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Thank You

• Any questions?