On Mar 24, 11:38*pm, (Neil Williams)
wrote:

Yes, but (Crossrail aside, which is a good point if the terminus was
in the west) they will have to use it for longer, which will offset
some of the gains.

Neil

--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.

I think the headline figure of 30 minutes is a little bit misleading
in a number of ways anyway.

Consider that Old Oak Common to Solihull is almost exactly 100 miles
by the Chiltern route. Heathrow to Birmingham International station
is 104 miles by the obvious motorway route. About 5 miles of that is
getting from the M25 to terminals 123 at Heathrow. Willesden
Junction to Birmingham International is 99 miles by the WCML. I
think it’s fair to assume that it’s at least 98 miles from a station
in the Old Oak Common area to a motorway parkway station southeast of
Birmingham. Assume that the train averages 210 mph for the entire
journey. That's 28 minutes right there. That's before you allow
time for the train starting at OOC or stopping at the airport
parkway. I'll leave it to others to comment on whether 210 mph
average is believeable, but I suspect that it's overly optimistic
since it's more than the current operational _maximum_ speed of LGV
Est.

At the Birmingham end, such a parkway station is well located for
those arriving by car, but I’m less convinced about its suitability
for those continuing by public transport, or for those who actually
want to access central Birmingham. Virgin’s trains take an addition
12 minutes to reach New Street from Birmingham international, and
Chiltern’s are timed at 12 minutes from Solihull to Moor Street.
Admittedly in the latter case, the time includes the station dwell
time Solihull. If, as is suggested, you intend to use European
style double deck stock, you either need to build a new line into
central Birmingham, or you need to improve the existing lines, or
passengers will have to change trains. Allowing for some dwell time
at the parkway station, it’s probably 45 minutes to central Birmingham
from OOC. It’s also worth pointing out that the current Virgin
service is 1:10 to Birmingham International. I suspect [without much
real evidence] that with a little more tweaking, 140mph running, and
non-stop service, Virgin could get the Euston-Birmingham International
service below an hour.

At the London end, much depends on whether (as the article seems to
suggest) the OOC station is a terminus, or there is onward service to
central London. In the latter case, Javelin timings from Stratford
(7 minutes) plus time for a station stop suggest that journeys into
central London would require at least another 10 minutes. That gives
a center to center time around 55 minutes. If it’s a terminus, you
are stuck with onward journeys via Crossrail or the WLL. The WLL
offers infrequent services to not much of anywhere. So it’s fair to
say that unless you are going somewhere well served by Crossrail, or
you happen to be trying to get to the Old Oak Common area your journey
from OOC to your destination is going to be longer than it is today
from Euston. Moreover, Euston to Tottenham Court Road is likely to
have a journey time similar to that from OOC to TCR on Crossrail, so
service to the docklands isn’t going to be any better. Notable
destinations that are likely to see significant increases in London
local journey times are Victoria, Westminster, Euston and Kings Cross.