HS1 Sold

[NoOnions]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11701481

"The UK government has sold the London to Folkestone high speed rail link to a Canadian consortium for £2.1bn ($3.4bn)."

What do we all think - is this good or bad news? I'm not sure, TBH.

NoOnions

[heofgreatwisdom]

Am I happy? HS1 has cost me, a taxpayer, a huge loss. Why don't those in government listen?

heofgreatwisdom

[paolo]

"HS1, which cost more than £5bn to build,"
"The UK government has sold the London to Folkestone high speed rail link to a Canadian consortium for £2.1bn"

Do the maths, I think we may be somewhat out of pocket on this one!

[Richard Trevithick]

Don't forget it's only a LEASE. It hasn't been sold, the Canadians don't own it. In 30 years time it'll be back in the hands of the government and up for grabs again to the highest bidder.

It will certainly become interesting over the next few years. The French half of Eurostar will take a huge hit on the nose when the competition is allowed to run on their irons. I believe they recently tried to block the German ICE trains running on French HS tracks?

What I think is of most importance to the travelling public is finding out how much protection is there regarding track access charges. As it seems to be some pensions investment company that's bought it, they will be looking for big returns. Will this mean they'll be wanting to ramp charges up 20/30% every year? Or will they be tied to some kind of RPI formula? If they get too greedy, then I suspect it'll backfire and services will decrease. If anyone has any ideas....

RT

[O.V.S.Bulleid]

My Dear Mr Trevithick

How good to bump into you again after so long.

My understanding is that the purchasers have leased the track from the ballast upward although almost all of the signalling is in the hands of Notwork Rail for operational purposes plus Ashford International station.

I'm told that it will be regulated, as other UK rail infrastructure, by the ORR but one would expect that this will still allow them to make enough profit to make their investment worthwhile.

When it comes down to train operation things may be different as the times when trains would be convenient to Notwork Rail may not be the times when that would be the case on the CTRL.

International train paths are currently four per hour divided into two sets of two paths three minutes apart. This is because paths through the Channel Tunnel are paid for by "Shuttle" timings so the difference in speed by high speed trains mean that two sequential high speed paths use one less shuttle path than would be the case if they were not sequential.

As far as North London is concerned there are six international platforms but international trains cannot be turned around in the way that domestic trains are at Charing Cross and require platform occupation for up to an hour. This suggests a peak capacity for up to six trains per hour - which also means that the number of Kent Domestic trains may have to reduce - because the new owners may well have made sure that they have such controls (and the DfT will suddenly have found a political way out of the mess that they originally created).

If the number of international trains reaches anything like the number of TGVs operating out of Paris at peak hours then six platforms may not be enough and the Kent platforms may have to go altogether, or another solution found.

KCC ambitions for an "all stations" service from London to Lille may also not be sensible with impending new international high speed business.

Yours sincerely
O.V.S.Bulleid

[busman]

I wonder if they spend some of the money on new rolling stock!!!!

Then as they say pigs might fly

[Richard Trevithick]

Busman,

Replacing the rolling stock is down to the TOCs and not the government.

However, only a few weeks ago it was in the news that Eurostar were in the process of buying some new HS trains from Germany. Which upset the French as they assumed that for some reason they had the monopoly on everything going through the Chunnel! Cue angry Frenchies making allegations about the safety of said German trains!

RT