Reports in the Yorkshire Post (Hopes of extra high speed rail station for region and editorial here) recently suggest that the HS2 Ltd is considering a proposal for a station near York on the HS2 route.
There’s no timetable suggested for this station. However, this would have to wait until after Phase 2 – which includes the Leeds station – is finished. Even if there were no delays in the building process, this would not be until about 2033 at the earliest. If a York station was added in a third phase of HS2, it is unlikely to to open for years later.
Further, the York station is very much in the ideas stage of the proposal. There have been lots of ideas for where stations could be sited on the HS2 route – and HS2 Ltd have rejected them.
Early maps from HS2 included a station at Stoke on Trent – but no station was included in the HS2 consultation maps published earlier this year.
When drawing up the initial plans, HS2 Ltd looked at stations near Milton Keynes and Bicester. Even though in both cases there was a good case for building such stations, HS2 Ltd decided not to propose them, because it would slow down the non-stopping trains too much.
The York station proposal is a similar idea to the Milton Keynes station which HS2 Ltd rejected. There may be plenty of travellors, but with York’s position being partway between Leeds and Newcastle, an extra station would slow down the other trains, just like Milton Keynes was told having a station there would reduce the speeds of the Birmingham trains too much.
As it is, the time savings expected for Newcastle travellers are only between 0 minutes and 15 minutes. Including an extra station that they pass might mean that the HS2 ‘high speed’ trains are actually slower for Newcastle travellers then the trains they can already catch.
Even Julian Sturdy, the York Outer Member of Parliament and a member of the Transport Select Committee, questioned the proposal, saying
“Nevertheless, as with any such developments, there will be a number of local implications and the proposals would require a far-reaching public consultation.”
York can expect lots of discussion about a HS2 station. But an actual station? – unlikely
give it a rest luke. this blog is supposed to be about the pros and cons of hs2 not maglev. maglev has limitations which i dont want to go into but if it were so much better then hsr why are there so many hs lines and so few maglevs ? and maglev is hardly a new invention, it has been around for a while now.
any maglev i have seen is on elevated concret stilts and unlike hsr is totally icompatible with the rest of the rail network and it is very expensive.
By that time HSR will be even more outdated and the country would have wasted money on a backward thinking transport strategy.
Self-drive car, ultra high speed broadband, even space tourism could all be possible in 30 years time.
And as the great Andrew Marr, Maglev makes HSR “look like a horse and cart”