General Chat

I did not say that HS1 was flawed.

It does not stop at or provide any service to Dover (or Calais).

The HS1 serves three city centres - Paris Gare du Nord, Lille, London St Pancras.
It has never served Stratford Int. which in any case is not in central London.
HS1 intermediate stations in the UK are Ashford and Ebbsfleet the latter being by far the more important.

There has been a great deal of construction work allowing HS connections northward frpm St Pancras.

The HS1 tunnel has sufficient capacity for 8 trains each hr in each direction. Currently the max frequency operated is 3 trains / hr. London - Paris. There are also TGV services to Marseilles, Marhe-le-vallee (Disneyland ) , Brussels. Also Bourg St Maurice (French Alps) during the ski season.

HS1 into Paddington creates both winners & losers.

Say you live in Kent & want to go to north up the East Coast Route out of Kings Cross. Kent trains tend to terminate at Victoria or Charing Cross. Let’s say a 45min semi suburban train into town. You then have to hike down stairs & escalators to the tube, repeated the other end. For the sake of argument, let’s assume a total travel time of 1hr 10m.

In comparison, 15 mins into Paddington from Ebbsfleet + an additional walk of say 10mins until you’re seated on a train out of Kings Cross. If you can’t manage escalators/stairs, there are lifts &/or slopes at both ends.
......

If, and a big if, a Bridge is part of a long term plan, someone needs to drop a hint to KCC. That way they can identify the likely transport corridors & refuse future planning permission for houses. On a different thread, Rollo had already hinted that Kent will be concreted over. We’re already aware of that!

Two blokes having a chat. Perhaps we should build a bridge across the channel, says one. Good idea says the other. That's all it was. Not a proposal. Look at all the furore it has caused.

HS1 and HS2 rolling stock cannot be used outside of the designated HSx tracks becuause they exceed usual UK loading guage. They would bump into stuff such as tunnels, catenary wiring, platforms and so on.

Bob, plans for a bridge have existed since Chunnel days. These have been updated from time to time such that the route is pretty well fixed and the protected from any other construction.

Who will buy my luverly railway?
Debt so high it touches the sky

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/07/14/canadian-pension-funds-sell-loss-making-hs1-investor-consortium/

Bob there's been a good discussion about if there should be a bridge across the channel or not, also about HS1 and HS2 all good but nobody has said anything about (and I can understand this if you don't live in and around london) cross rail from West to East London

The Crossrail debates were over ten years ago,parts of it should be operational by the end of this year.