The new train of thought

Plans for the UK's second high speed rail line, running between London and Birmingham, are starting to take shape. Estates Review explains, it will have a dramatic effect on regeneration plans across the country

A few years back a leading train operator described this as ‘the age of the train’. In the of recent events, this is still hard to believe. When planes were grounded due to volcanic ash recently, passengers stuck on the continent flocked to the Eurostar service. Ripping across Belgium and France at an average of over 100mph, before arriving at Ashford in Kent, changing onto the new High Speed One train line and travelling the remaining 50 miles to St Pancras International in a mere 26 minutes later – over an hour less than the same journey would have taken prior to the high speed line.

Yet once in London, travellers would have found their pace slowed considerably. The volcanic eruption in Iceland proved how inconvenient travel remains from London to, say, one of the Scottish cities when air travel is taken out of the equation. Train times between Kings Cross and Edinburgh, for example, remain at a staggering four and half hours. It seems preposterous in the twenty-first century that overland travel should take so long, especially when the technology exists to speed the whole process up.

Plans to build a high speed line northwards have been under consideration for sometime. It was hoped that improvements to the West Coast Mainline would help trains achieve speeds of 140 mph on their way to Carlisle and Edinburgh. However, following incidents this has been limited to around 100mph, with signals, stations and points still holding the service back from its full potential. Now, with the Governments seemingly desperate to get people out of the air and onto trains, planning has begun for the first stage of a new high speed line between London and Birmingham, reducing the time to Birmingham to around 45 minutes.

Even though plans for this estimated £17bn scheme are still in their infancy, High Speed Two is already proving a shaping factor on towns and cities along the way. One of the main requirements for trains to achieve their top speeds is for them to have a straight line of track. This was easily achieved by High Speed One due to the space available through the Kent countryside, following the route of the M20.

Getting to Birmingham however is a different story. Though a corridor appears to have been found between the M40 and M1 motorways, various hamlets will have to be destroyed and parts of the Chilterns, an area of outstanding natural beauty, will also be carved through as well.

This has understandably angered those who live in and around the proposed line’s path. Already all along the planned line, opposition groups are mobilising to try and lobby government against it. This ranges from the residents of Old Amersham, who have found the line runs parallel to their high street and cuts through local chalk hills, to home owners in rural hamlets in Buckinghamshire who have found that unless their houses are specifically destroyed they stand to receive no compensation from trains rushing past the end of their gardens.

In all, around 440 houses are expected to be destroyed to make way for the line. Yet there are larger changes that will have to be made. Birmingham itself will have to undergo significant modification to accept the line and bring it into the city at its top speed. As such plans for the regeneration of Birmingham’s Eastside have been revised. New plans are currently being drawn up to include the line as part of the city’s infrastructure. Yet it still means that vital regeneration work will have to be held off until a definitive route for the line is decided upon.

One of the major developments that will need to be moved is Birmingham City University. Current plans for the rail line would cleave the 370,000 sq ft site in half. Tunnelling or bridging to avoid the site would also add millions, possibly billions to the cost of line. As such, a search for a new space for the campus is now being considered.
From this example, the plans for the rail line into Birmingham will be seen both as a blessing and a curse. The economic benefits of the line will be important for the city, particularly if the mooted extension of the line, taking it to Heathrow Airport, is built. This would make Birmingham the same time distance away from the world’s busiest airport as it would take to drive to Heathrow from Central London.

Yet other business opportunities have been caught in the line of fire. City Park Gate is a one million square foot development by Quintain, located close to the Bullring shopping centre. Plans are for 250 apartments and 450,000 sq ft of Grade A office space. Yet with the high speed train line due to cut through it and certainly disrupt any nearby residential dwellings, its future is in question - at great annoyance to the developer. Curzon Park, a mixed-use development spread across 10 acres of central Birmingham, would also need to be seriously reconsidered or even scraped, as the terminus station could well be sited there, making use of the disused Curzon station building.

The full extent of houses, towns and developments effected by this line will likely only become clear when work begins, scheduled for 2019. The project would then take a further 13 years to complete before services began running.

In development terms that’s quite a large period of time to ‘wait and see’. In that period of time, the question remains for other cities further north – and what will happen when the line goes further.

Though by no means a certainty, considering that the line was intended to improve journey times to the northern cities, it is a fair assumption that the line will be extended. If this is the case, Manchester, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow, along with smaller Midlands and Northern cities, could all potentially find themselves with a new line to contend with. Many of these cities are currently undergoing significant regeneration projects and it would be a concern to city councils that tracts of these cities could be torn up for this line. And this is before the towns and villages on the way are considered.

Probably not since privitisation has such radical change been suggested for the UK’s railways. Whether it will be implemented given both the current political and economic situation remains unclear. There is still much to be debated before any more high speed tracks are laid. And  there is still the issue of the Crossrail project, which government advisors have said must be successfully completed before the High Speed Two project can begin. Yet it is clear that from the noises coming from government that rail travel will play as significant part in the UK’s future. And that means it will play an equally important part in our built future too.