HS2 - TARMAC THE RAILS!

Letter to The Guardian - 23 OCT 2013.

There is a third way to use Britain’s 21,000 miles of rail tracks and 2,516 stations (It’s either HS2 or more M-ways, rail project’s chairman warns – Guardian 23 Oct 13). The Great Iron Horse that Crosses Prairie was wondrous in 1780 but is now irredeemably inefficient, mostly due to the “vehicle weight per passenger or freight-ton ratio” and safe train spacing. Any given section of line is empty of trains for 23 hours per 24 hour day; check this from a day on any rail bridge (take sandwiches).  The town centre to centre routes are however priceless. The answer is to tarmac the 21,000 miles exclusively for coaches, buses, lorries and vans. This will fill the routes, bring goods to city centres, clear existing roads, be wholly flexible and reduce passenger travel prices by 80%. The cost/benefit analyses are entirely positive. Tarmac The Rails!  - Noel Hodson, Oxford.

Notes for non-Brits - The UK plans to spend £50 billion to carve a 100 mile high-speed rail track from London to Birmingham - HS2. The main justification is saving 20 minutes per passenger. Tickets will be beyond the reach of most pockets - so it will be a VIP train. The route is so short that the 150 mph, 450 tonne, 100 yard long train will have to start slowing down almost before it reaches maximum speed. The highly controversial route through the overcrowded UK destroys many homes and invades peaceful rural idylls. My guess is it will never be built; but influential, public servant, elderly choo-choo train advocates are pressing hard, while their opposition want the £50 billion spent on improving the whole network, and call HS2 a vanity project. Trains are inherently inefficient; the remarkable, valuable city-centre-to-centre public routes should be converted to roads.

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UK Railway Data Table

A selection of the available data on UK railways, updated as far as possible to Feb 2011.

Item	Statistic	Comments
Route kms 2010	15,777
Route kms 1961	28,100
Track Miles	21,000
Stations	2,516
Platform faces	5,736
Trains	4,000
Services run	20,000/weekday	This is 16% increase from 1995 to 2009
Operating Staff	5,500
Signal Boxes	1,100
Level (at grade) Crossings	7,000
Level (at grade) Crossing Deaths	13 (2009)	This is low by world standards
Turnouts	19,000
Signals	17,000
Tunnels	674
Overbridges	15,000
Undeerbridges	20,000
Viaducts	2,000
Cuttings	3,000
Embankments	3,000
Electrified areas	40% of total
Electrically operated traffic	60% of total
25kV AC electrified track	7,578 single track kms
AC feeder stations	73
DC electrified track	4,285 single track kms
DC sub-stations	430
Network rail property ownership	4th largest in UK
Listed buildings owned	Cost £50 million/year
Persons visiting stations	1.75 million/year	65% of all rail trips start or finish in London
Passenger journeys per day	2.75 million	In the last 10 years passenger kilometres have risen 36%
Passenger journeys in 2010	1.32 billion	Passenger kilometres were 33.3 billion
Railcards Sold	1.9 million	82% of journeys are made on discounted tickets
Freight carried	400,000 tonnes/day
Energy usage	1 car uses 50% of the energy of a whole High Speed Train (idiotic total bullshit)
Average age of Rolling Stock 2009	15 years
Cost of new rolling stock ordered since 1996	£4.5 billion	4,700 new vehicles at almost £1 million each
Fuel range of UK HST	1,400 miles

Sources: Network Rail, ATOC, SRA