Less Haste, More Speed: How Research Has Been Used to Design Service Improvements Made Possible by the Released Capacity from High Speed 2

In January 2012 the Secretary of State gave the go ahead for one of the largest infrastructure projects ever undertaken in the United Kingdom (UK), the building of a high speed line (HS2) between London and the West Midlands, and ultimately Leeds and Manchester. However, the proposal still attracts heated debate in some quarters, and an Act of Parliament is required before implementation, currently scheduled to commence 2017 and run through to 2026. If a major new rail line, such as HS2, is built between London and Birmingham this should free up space on the existing lines (the West Coast Mainline “WCML”) in two ways. Firstly, if some passengers move to faster services on a new line, this may release capacity on WCML trains. Secondly, if and when fast train services migrate to any new line, this might have the effect of releasing additional track capacity along the WCML. The Department for Transport asked Passenger Focus, in partnership with Network Rail, to find out what passengers might want from this released capacity. This could be more frequent trains, less crowding, faster journey times, or a lesser need to change trains for a journey. Passenger Focus is the representative body for rail passengers in Great Britain and Network Rail owns and maintains Britain‟s rail infrastructure. Network Rail has used the findings from this research to develop a set of potential improvements which could to be made to WCML services, to provide the greatest benefit to future passengers. What these potential improvements are and how they were arrived at is described in the second half of this paper. Views of freight users and local authorities have also been separately collected by Network Rail and have been used alongside this passenger research to inform a set of Conditional Outputs for WCML services.