These proposals are discussed below. The construction of High Speed 1 also permitted the introduction of a new domestic high-speed service when in Southeastern launched its high-speed route between London St Pancras and Ashford International. In , two privately sponsored proposals were put forward to build high-speed lines in the UK.
Neither was welcomed by the government, which in the wake of the Hatfield rail crash was focused on - as it saw it - getting the rail network back to reliable operations. When the InterCity East Coast franchise then operated by GNER came up for its first renewal, Virgin Rail Group raised the idea in of constructing new track and purchasing a new fleet of trains for the line.
The new track would be from Peterborough to Yorkshire and on from Newcastle to the Scottish border. This first line would have opened in and was chosen for ease of construction in the south and elimination of severe curves in Northumberland. Later, if successful, further stretches would have been upgraded. First sponsored the study and input was given by other stakeholders in the regions to be served.
Although First stated that this report would be published and given to the SRA and government, little has been heard of the plan since the initial press release. This is in part due to the success of the CTRL project, part due to realisation that upgrades to existing infrastructure offer poor value for money and cannot hope to meet future capacity needs, and part due to increasing environmental concerns over the expansion of the short-haul airline industry.
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In , the SRA commissioned Atkins to perform a feasibility study into the transport and business case for high-speed rail. The study, published on 29 October , looked at combinations of 11 routing options to accommodate forecast traffic flows and concluded:. Furthermore, additional work was done to look at the impact of road pricing , downgrading the enhancements to the ECML, and changes to the Treasury 's green book method of assessing project finance. All three areas were found to improve the case for high-speed rail.
The study concluded that new lines should be built each side of the Pennines, with the eastern line continuing to Edinburgh and Glasgow. A branch also serves Heathrow Airport. In the Commission for Integrated Transport commissioned Steer Davies Gleave to produce a report on high-speed rail.
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In British Airways' former chief executive Sir Rod Eddington produced a report on future transport strategy. The report covered all transport modes and had initially been expected to strongly recommend investment in high-speed rail. However, on 29 August The Times reported that Sir Rod would state that given a limited transport budget, a high-speed rail link is not the most cost-effective option to obtain higher capacity on the rail network and therefore should not be built. The report seemed to confirm this:. Faced with such arguments, supporters of HSLs point to the capacity increases such new lines would deliver in London and selected urban areas by removing some or all interurban trains from commuter and freight lines.
Such benefits are likely to be both real and substantial. Crucially though, these goals could be achieved by other solutions, and perhaps at much lower cost.
High-speed rail in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia
The range of policy measures would include fares pricing policy, signal-based methods of achieving more capacity on the existing network, and conventional solutions to capacity problems e. Indeed, in keeping with a non-modal approach, the measures assessed should include improvements to other modes that support these journeys e. New lines — including new very high-speed lines — should take their place within this range of policy measures, and each should be assessed on their merits before selecting the option that offers the greatest returns on investment.
An alternative argument is sometimes made on environmental grounds because a very high speed line from London to Scotland could attract modal shift from air. Such arguments must be made with care given that total domestic aviation emissions, including flight between other cities, account for 1. Furthermore, rail's energy consumption and carbon emissions increase with speed and this would erode rail's environmental advantage and so it is important to consider the costs involved in reducing carbon emissions in this way.
However, Sir Rod later claimed both to the press and to a parliamentary select committee that he was quoted out of context in reports at the time, had aimed his comments specifically at speculative MagLev options, and in fact was in favour of using conventional high-speed rail to relieve congestion once existing main lines reached capacity.
High-speed rail in Europe
The topic remained much on the political agenda in the North East of England and Scotland. In June , the campaign group Greengauge 21 , led by Jim Steer, [ who? This route has the greatest strategic advantage, as the Chiltern Main Line is a popular alternative to the WCML from Birmingham to London, and also lends the opportunity to build a branch line to Heathrow Airport, giving the passengers served by the WCML a direct service to one of the world's premier international airports.
The line would be built to the continental loading gauge, allowing the use of double-decker trains. On 3 July reports appeared in several British newspapers about the UK government's forthcoming year strategy see below. It was stated that "Britain may need High Speed 2 ", but that "the strategy will stop short of promising to pay for the line".
The draft timetable produced as part of the plan estimates that trains could run between Birmingham and Paris in approximately 3 hours. In July , the new Transport Secretary, Ruth Kelly, delivered a white paper on the future of the railways.
High-speed rail in the United Kingdom
The West coast line would run to Manchester, and the East coast line would run to Edinburgh and Glasgow. The UK Government launched a formal high-speed rail project in January , and high-speed rail has the support of all three main political parties. The UK Government has now approved construction, due to begin in , with the first trains running by Subject to consultation, the London terminus for the high-speed line would be Euston, a new Birmingham city-centre station would be built at Curzon Street, and there would be interchange stations with Crossrail west of Paddington and with the existing intercity rail network near Birmingham airport.
In August , Network Rail published a study [42] outlining its proposals for the expansion of the railway network. This plan, whereby the new line would follow a similar but not totally parallel route to the West Coast Main Line, would involve trains running from both London and Birmingham as southern termini to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Included in the report are draft timings which put Birmingham less than an hour from London, Manchester just over an hour, Liverpool just under 90 minutes, and just over two hours to Glasgow and Edinburgh, with sixteen trains per hour estimated from London, and four trains per hour between the regional cities.
Instead, Network Rail's proposal would entail a short spur from the main line terminating at Heathrow, reducing the road and air traffic to the airport from the cities that the line would serve. Network Rail also outlined the case for not including such areas as Leeds and the North-East of England in the proposal, with two main points:. It proposed several projects [43]:.
Osborne suggested the line should be considered as part of a review of the second phase of High Speed 2. Jeremy Acklam of the Institution of Engineering and Technology IET suggested that plans should look at connecting other northern cities; such as Liverpool, and potentially north-east England via York; [46] commentators noted that the proposal could be viewed as an attempt to gain political support in the north of England in the run-up to the general election: The journey would take 15 minutes and provide the first direct rail link between the two airports.
The plan could virtually make Heathrow and Gatwick into a single hub. There are three types of trains in Britain that have been traditionally viewed [ by whom?
A lot [ specify ] of money and resources were put into fundamental research into vehicle dynamics which, among other advances, led to the development of the APT. The APT achieved high speeds around curves by tilting. Although the prototype was deemed successful and production units were built, they never entered regular service.
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By this time, [ when? The InterCity was planned as a stop-gap. Research had begun for the tilting APT but it was uncertain when it could enter service. The increased top speed and its acceleration and deceleration allowed for shortened journey times. The prototype class power cars and took the world record for diesel traction, achieving On 1 November the record was raised to On 27 September a shortened class set carrying passengers ran non-stop from Newcastle to London King's Cross , averaging The InterCity is used on numerous intercity services today [ when?
Although this was achieved during trials, it was not possible in normal service in the UK due to the shortness of British signal spacing, apart from the dedicated CTRL. The earliest replacement of InterCity s started with the introduction of the InterCity , between and in conjunction with electrification of the East Coast Main Line. More recently, some InterCity s have been replaced or supplemented by:.
The InterCity is still [ when? First Great Western planned to supplement but not replace its InterCity s with 14 Class Adelante trains, which can travel at the same speed. Because every carriage has an underfloor engine, they can accelerate approximately twice as quickly, which reduces journey times and allows for more frequent services. However, in-car noise levels are higher than in the InterCity because of the underfloor engines, which, combined with less-comfortable seats and harsh interior lighting, has made them unpopular with passengers.
They also proved to be unreliable, leading to a significant overhaul programme in to fix the major problems. These issues ultimately led to the units being withdrawn from First Great Western services and transferred to open access operators Grand Central and Hull Trains. Two power cars with the new engine were successfully trialled. In , it undertook a trial refurbishment of a pair of InterCity coaches to bring them up to modern standards.
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Another coach has been refurbished with experimental aircraft-style seat-back screens. As part of its franchise commitments First Great Western announced that it will refurbish the entire fleet and re-engine all power cars with the MTU engine [2]. This work has now been completed. Twenty-six of First Great Western's InterCity fleet have been refurbished into a high-density layout of mostly airline seats for services in the M4 corridor to Bristol and Cardiff.
To improve acceleration on this route, where most stations are 20—25 minutes apart, the buffet cars will be removed. The remainder will be refurbished with new seating leather in First Class and at-seat power-points, and retain the buffet for the long-distance services to Swansea and the West Country. Midland Mainline supplemented its fleet with Class Meridian units similar to Virgin CrossCountry 's Class and Voyager trains , replacing the slower Class Turbostar units. The franchise has since been reorganised and transferred to East Midlands Trains. The previous franchise holder, GNER gave the coaches an extensive interior refurbishment upon its taking over of the sets in GNER also began to have their InterCity sets a further refit to bring them to the same Mallard standard as their recently refurbished InterCity fleet, a programme that has been continued by National Express.
The Great Western power cars have had major modifications to their cooling system to prevent overheating on hot days. GNER's solution to the overheating problem was to haul sets under the wires using Class 91 electric Locomotives. A full-scale replacement programme known as the Intercity Express Programme is currently in the planning stages.
This is a development of earlier plans to replace them, known as HST2. The recent interest in high-speed rail generated by the success of the CTRL has led to the formation of several companies and non-profit groups aiming to further the construction of domestic high-speed lines in Britain. The principal groups are:. Greengauge 21 is a non-profit group aiming to establish conventional high-speed wheel-on-rail technology as the mode of choice for new lines.
The group has performed studies on routeing, environmental issues and the use of high-speed rail as an alternative to short-haul airlines. Currently it is proposing a new high-speed line between, at first, London and Birmingham. This is tentatively called High Speed Two.
In several cases the detailed alignment have been decided. The Swedish Conservative government showed little interest in major railway projects. The other railways are expected to be built some years after. The Ankara - Konya line construction began in The Konya - Mersin - Adana and Sivas - Erzincan - Erzurum - Kars lines were mentioned by the prime minister and the minister of transport.
The first 12 high-speed trainsets are ordered from CAF company, Spain.