Campaign grows to switch the building of HS2 station to Sheffield city

[Bargepole23 337]

school holiday time

 

Or bicycle. I can get to town in the same time from Ecclesall by bike, term time or no term time.

[iainski47 10]

I really think HS2 is fast becoming a white elephant. Far better to spend the colossal sum of money required on upgrading and electrifying the whole of the line from St Pancras to Sheffield and then spending the money left on a high speed line to Manchester (again upgrading the existing line) and extending supertram to Rotherham and, if practical, Doncaster and Barnsley

[Guest busdriver1]

I really think HS2 is fast becoming a white elephant. Far better to spend the colossal sum of money required on upgrading and electrifying the whole of the line from St Pancras to Sheffield and then spending the money left on a high speed line to Manchester (again upgrading the existing line) and extending supertram to Rotherham and, if practical, Doncaster and Barnsley

 

The people of Rotherham when asked said they didnt want it and I doubt if thats changed.

[1978 14]

Far better to spend the colossal sum of money required on upgrading and electrifying the whole of the line from St Pancras to Sheffield and then spending the money left on a high speed line to Manchester (again upgrading the existing line)

 

A nice idea to upgrade the existing line to Manchester, another case of DfT lack of focus.

 

Since conception to delivery (assuming it does get delivered) the Hope Valley Capacity Scheme to provide two passing loops for freight trains, and to redouble the lines through Dore & Totley Station, will have been well over 10 years. It may be almost as long as it took to build the entire line from Dore to Chinley including the long Totley and Cowburn tunnels that are relatively narrow. Trains are limited to 60mph through those tunnels. All plans have to take that into account, and the heavy cement and stone trains using the line. They also need to allow for the loading gauge not permitting the largest modern freight trains for container traffic.

 

Upgrading that line significantly will be very expensive and inconvenient. Widening the tunnels and keeping them open for traffiic at the same time would be almost impossible.

[WestTinsley 11]

1978 . Great post.

With all the talk of more transpennine links and expanding of the Northern rail network .. do you see the re opening of the woodhead line as a viable option/addition?

[1978 14]

1978 . Great post.

With all the talk of more transpennine links and expanding of the Northern rail network .. do you see the re opening of the woodhead line as a viable option/addition?

 

In a word, no. Both old lines have tunnels that are unsuitable for modern high speed trains without incredibly expensive engineering. Basically, if we really want a 30 minute city centre to city centre service (do we?) HS3 is the best solution proposed. At currently prohibitive expense.

 

It's not just the tunnels. Manchester Piccadilly needs more platforms, and they are planned, but that u expenditure is now in doubt too.

 

Electrifying links from Manchester to Leeds and the North East is another project that is suffering.

 

The positive announcements made in recent years for all these rail projects looked very generous in financial terms, but the engineering challenges to deliver on time to budget were just too great, and should have been spotted early on. Anyone with the most basic knowledge of civil engineering projects should have seen they could not all be reliably delivered in the timescales being suggested. However, politicians love making positive statements. That's not aimed at one party, but all.

 

Rail management and the media are sometimes too reluctant to openly question how our Victorian rail network can be easily integrated into a modern rail network on a crowded island.

[Cyclone 10]

Just how prohibitively expensive would widening the tunnels be when we're talking about budgets of 10s of billions?

[Eccy Beach 11]

At least they've found the money for Cross Rail 2...........

[ads36 214]

1978

 

... Both old lines have tunnels that are unsuitable for modern high speed trains ...Basically, if we really want a 30 minute city centre to city centre service...

 

... if we want a 30min centre-to-centre service, we don't need high-speed trains, we just need slightly-faster-than-an-old-donkey trains.

[pss60 10]

At least they've found the money for Cross Rail 2...........

Its money no object when it comes to satisfying those in the South East. Crossrail 2 will cost £31 billion. But if we dare to want an inch of line electrifying, its "Oh no, you filthy Northerners, you can't have that". One thing we do know, old bowling ball head won't have the courage to explain his decision in Nottingham, Derby, Leicester or Sheffield. Like the typical Tory, he's thick skinned and yellow.

[onlineo 10]

Has any other station or part of the route got messed about in the same way as Sheffield has? Did every other area go "awesome, let's do it" or did they ask for the impossible?

Liverpool have got a similar solution. They campaigned for dedicated track to the city centre.

 

So we are now in the same league as those particular cities (no disrespect to any of them) rather than competing with the Birminghams, Manchesters and Leeds of this world.

 

In my opinion this decision is a huge public relations disaster for the city.

 

In terms of rail passengers travelling to London, Sheffield has never had anywhere near as many passengers as Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. The council even had to pay Stagecoach to get the city 2 trains per hour to London

Birmingham and Manchester are significantly larger cities and whilst Leeds is not it has a thriving dense urban city centre that helps with passenger numbers.

[geared 303]

Just how prohibitively expensive would widening the tunnels be when we're talking about budgets of 10s of billions?

 

Probably cheaper to cut new ones as silly as it sounds.

 

The oldest tunnels are pretty much derelict, so before any work could start they'd need making safe.

Then there's the question if there is sufficient room between the tunnels to make them wider without having issues with weakness and such.

 

The more recent tunnels now contain alot of national grid cables and stuff, so again before even getting any work started you'd need to spend loads of money sorting that lot out.

 

Thats before you get into the question of where do you actually want the new line to go? Follow the path of the old woodhead line or take a new one ???

Edited July 25, 2017 by geared