How high-speed railways could change your life

Aug 27 2009 By Jonathan Walker

Jonathan Walker looks at Network Rail’s proposals for a high-speed line from London to Birmingham.

Commuters could leave central Birmingham at 8.08am and arrive in London before 9am, according to a draft timetable drawn up by Network Rail.

The timetable is merely a dummy, designed to illustrate how services could work, but it shows the difference high-speed rail could make to the way we live and work.

It would become feasible to live in Birmingham and commute to work in London, or vice versa.

Business struggling to find affordable premises in the South-East will see the West Midlands as a more attractive alternative once the city boasts rail services with a journey time of 46 minutes.

And that’s not all. Getting to Manchester will take just 38 minutes, and even Glasgow won’t look so far away when a train from Birmingham city centre takes just two hours and one minute to arrive.

Under Network Rail’s proposals, four trains an hour would take passengers from a new station in Birmingham city centre to the heart of London. Another two trains would depart Birmingham each hour headed to Manchester, and on to Preston and Glasgow.

Although Liverpool and Edinburgh would be included in the new train network, there would be no services directly from Birmingham. There would also be four services a day from Manchester to London which would not stop in the West Midlands.

While the Conservatives have already committed themselves to building a nationwide high-speed network, Labour has promised only to build a London to Birmingham line, and to consider expanding it later.

But Network Rail has concluded that “the case for a route and service between London, Manchester and Birmingham alone appears marginal”. Instead, services must run further north for the service to make economic sense.

Services would run at up to 200mph, or 320kmph, and ticket prices would be around 30 per cent higher than on standard rail lines.

And the service, which could be operating by 2020 according to Network Rail, would lead to a reduction in UK CO2 emissions of 39,000 tonnes a year, as people abandoned their cars to take the train.

Even towns and cities excluded from the high-speed route would benefit from the proposals.

Network Rail said a new high-speed line would free up capacity on the West Coast Main Line, allowing a train operator to run a wider range of services rather than focusing on ferrying people to London and back.

Existing markets which are “not particularly well served”, such as the route between Milton Keynes and the West Midlands, could be expanded, the study said.

And new direct services which do not currently exist, such as a service between Shrewsbury and Blackpool, could be created.

Services highlighted in the study which could be created or expanded include:

* Wolverhampton, Macclesfield and Warrington, to and from Milton Keynes

* Telford Central and Shrewsbury to Coventry

* Glasgow Central to Wolverhampton

* Runcorn and Crewe to Sandwell and Dudley

At the same time, services between London and Birmingham on the West Coast Main Line – the existing Virgin Pendolino service – would be cut from three an hour to just two.