More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights

Re:More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights by captainbland on Saturday February 15, 2020 @09:09AM (#22335382)

My understanding is that basically HS2 is massively over-specced compared to HS1. It wants high throughput and extremely high speed (80-100mph faster than HS1). I guess you could probably shave a few tens of billions off just by slowing the line down a bit - using ballast rather than concrete slab and such.

See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51415590

The only other thing I'd add is that Euston is easily within walking distance of St Pancras. But given all this already extraordinary cost it seems like you might as well connect St Pancras and Euston HS lines and have the odd Eurostar service run from Birmingham.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights by radicalbyte on Monday February 17, 2020 @03:41AM (#22346367)

The Euston - St Pancras thing is OK if you're commuting for work distance wise - it's just adding 15 mins to your journey when it should be 30 seconds.

For travellers who don't know London, who have to lug around baggage and small children it's a massive pain.

It's well worth the effort to connect it. It would already be way better even if you had to switch train in one station.

[ Parent | on HN ]