On May 7, 11:54*am, ian batten wrote:
On May 7, 10:41*am, bob wrote:

But given the requirement for HS2 is driven by capacity rather than
speed, in a "we decided not to build HS2" world, in order to meet the
capacity demands for travel between Manchester, Birmingham and London,
the trains will almost certainly resemble crush loaded commuter stock
much of the time,

So electrify the Chiltern Line, (~£400m), re-open passing loops and do
some selective quadrupling at the southern end (~£500m) and buy a load
of cheap non-tilting 125mph stock to operate an intensive 6tph
Birmingham to London service (say £2m/vehicle, 30 x 10-car sets = ~
£600m), then figure out what to spend the remaining £33.5bn on.

Way to go! I have long thought this the better solution.

And, while they are at it please, please could they do something about
the appalling interchange at West Ruislip. The TfL part of the
station needs to change to side platforms. The platform adjacent to
the GC/GW Chiltern Northwest bound should be the primary one for
terminating trains. The opposing one only used, in the peaks, when
the primary one is in use. Northwest bound Central Line would then
have a cross platform interchange to Northwest bound Chiltern trains.
It is very annoying to arrive next to the Chiltern platform and have
to negotiate two sets of stairs in order to reach it.