UK.gov unveils six areas to pilot full-fat fibre, and London ain't on the list Government has revealed the first six areas in Blighty to trial speeds of 1Gbps in a £10m pilot, as previously revealed by The Register. The areas include Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, West Sussex, Coventry and Warwickshire, Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset, West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester. In August, the Department …
If it was then the whole of the country north of Watford (the town not the M1 Service station) and west of Slough would be complaining loudly.
Note that neither Glasgow nor Edinburgh are on the list but that remote outpost called Aberdeen.
Perhaps this is at least one part of HMG that is aware of the feelings towards London from the rest of the country.
Note that this won't stop the complaints but will lessen them a bit.
Now if HMG were to stump up the cash and electrify the railway lines from York-Leed-Manchester and Sheffield-Manchester (via the Woodhead line naturally as that had 1500v Overhead lines) then a lot more of the complaints from 'up north' about favourtism towards London will go away (for the time being) but they won't.
Don't worry people once all those banks etc have flown the nest to Paris and Frankfurt, London will be out with the begging bowl just like you.
Crossrail 2 will be just another long forgotten pipedream that we won't be able to afford.
We'll be back with the begging bowl to the IMF before long.
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"Note that neither Glasgow nor Edinburgh are on the list but that remote outpost called Aberdeen."
Maybe it was included because it's only one of two regions outside of London that has above average productivity?
The other one is Bristol, which is also on the list, which is also a high-tech industrial centre outside of the SE.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38528549
Don't the tunnels have much higher voltage lines running through them these days?
Er, yes. Might make running trains a bit problematic.
In respect of the Manchester / Leeds / York route there are tunnels on it as well, and I very much doubt if there is the headroom to accommodate a 25 kV overhead and the associated pantographs along their lengths; I expect the tunnels would have to be rebored in their entirety. A project like that falls in to the category of "easier said than done".
A line near to where I live is in the process of being electrified and the amount of work that has been required to either rebuild bridges and / or lower the trackbed to achieve the necessary headroom is |enormous, and that is without any long tunnels; there is a short one.
"I very much doubt if there is the headroom to accommodate a 25 kV overhead and the associated pantographs along their lengths; I expect the tunnels would have to be rebored in their entirety."
That's an interesting point I'd not thought of. If it is the case, I wonder if there might be an option for a third rail in the tunnels? Trains would need adapting to have something to make contact, possibly running less quickly, and some sort of animal grid/protection to make sure nothing too big gets in and fries themselves, maybe have the power only come on when needed. I'm sure the pantographs could be designed to automatically drop/fold down before entering the tunnel, either by signal or power loss sensing.
"I wonder if there might be an option for a third rail in the tunnels? Trains would need adapting to have something to make contact,"
Many designs allow for this, it's not unusual. I expect there are compromises compared to a pure high voltage system though, so you weigh up fixing the tunnels once or constraining trains forever.
Also, as a notable example, the Severn tunnel, built over a century ago and part of the current (half-arsed, but that's another story) Western electrification, did in fact did have sufficient headroom (just, AIUI). Maybe otherwise problems from steam locomotive exhaust?
"possibly running less quickly,"
Third rail means less clearance, means lower voltage, means lower power. That definitely impacts acceleration, but I'm not sure about speed; there may also be mechanical issues with shoe pickup vs pantograph. End result is third rail seems to max out at 100mph or thereabouts.
"and some sort of animal grid/protection to make sure nothing too big gets in and fries themselves,"
Well, animals getting on to the railway is bad regardless of electricity and/or tunnels. Trains often can't stop in the distance the driver can see, and an animal won't get much warning of an approaching train. Admittedly a live one has more chance of getting out of the way, but I don't think being alive greatly increases your chances ;).
3rd rail involves substations and track paralleling huts at frequent intervals, so the supply infrastructure for 600V DC is much, much more expensive than overhead 25KV AC (40 times as much current for the same power transfer). And H&S, at least until the current round of DafT madness, has banned new 3rd rail installations - at least those with exposed top conductors.
"Think of the problems shovelling the wring kind of snow out of the tunnels. Not to mention the leaves"
That reminds me of a cartoon when the Channel Tunnel was being proposed. A Tube station entrance with a notice outside: "Delays due to fish on the track at Tooting."
Nit related to fibre optic lines, but the electrification of Queen Street station in Glasgow involved lowering the FLOOR of the tunnels by a few inches.
Please will a rail enthusiast explain further?
Regarding fibre cable routing, in the early days fibres were run between Glasgow and Edinburgh using the wayleave of the Forth and Clyde canal. Which is strangely appropriate as John Scott Russell discovered soliton waves on the same canal.
@ HPCJohn: Not related to fibre optic lines, but the electrification of Queen Street station in Glasgow involved lowering the FLOOR of the tunnels by a few inches.
Please will a rail enthusiast explain further?
I cannot make any claims to be a "rail enthusiast" but the simple answer is to make space for the overhead 25 kV line and the pantograph.
Or did you mean why lower the floor rather than "raise the roof"? If so then I suggest the following: (a) enlarging the roofspace would have risked a rock fall from above - assuming that it is rock overhead and that the tunnels aren't through softer material with a lining to prevent collapses; (b) enlarging the roofspace would / may have been prejudicial to the integrity of roadways, buildings, or underground services (water mains, sewers, etc) above the tunnel. Lowering the tunnel floor was probably seen as the option with the least likelihood of adverse outcomes. It might also have been less expensive!
Doing either on the TransPennine route would almost certainly require the closure of the route for the duration.
A further thought arises about electrifying the (main) route across the Pennines. The objective always seems to be "faster trains", but there is no clear reason why this can only be accompllished by using electric traction. IIRC the reason for the slowness of services on that route is that the trains stop at intermediate stations, so any significant reduction in journey time can only be achieved by having trains that don't stop at them. It follows from that that either (a) the intermediate stations are closed, with no stopping trains at all, or (b) slow and fast services have to coexist on the same tracks. (b) can only work if there are passing loops available (which there may not be) or if the intermediate stations are big enough to allow fast trains to pass through while the slow / stopping trains are standing at platforms. That may be a possibility somewhere like (say) Huddersfield, but then again it may not.
It all seems to boil down to the fact that the politicians have got it into their heads that faster trains will cure all economic ills, but then as Rich 11 stated right at the start of this thread All politicians create their own alternative reality.
"That may be a possibility somewhere like (say) Huddersfield, but then again it may not."
There seems to be space at s good few stations although the tracks may have been lifted but a few stations run commuter services and don't have scope for passing loops.
Another route which really ought to be looked at is Huddersfield to Sheffield. It's been reduced to single line for the entire length except for Penistone station and a section has been taken out of service altogether resulting in a big diversion through Elsecar. Given that housing plans require more houses to be built in the area it serves and the inadequacy of existing roads for commuting this is another line that ought to be upgraded, at least to its original specification.
Part of the reason for the crazy cost overruns on current electrification schemes (well, now past schemes, thank you Failing Grayling) is that an absolutist spec for separation of the 25KV wires has become accepted, rather than one that is risk-managed by location. Much of the lowering of the trackbed/raising of bridges is considered quite unnecessary by professional engineers.
Dig out everything Roger Ford, aka Captain Deltic, has had to say about it. He recognised the boiling frogs scenario on the GWR electrification 2+ years ago.
In respect of the Manchester / Leeds / York route there are tunnels on it as well, and I very much doubt if there is the headroom to accommodate a 25 kV overhead and the associated pantographs along their lengths; I expect the tunnels would have to be rebored in their entirety. A project like that falls in to the category of "easier said than done".
The solution to that was to propose a hybrid system rather than full electrification which was immediately condemned as being a climb down from the original proposal. If only somebody had given it a few minutes thought before announcing full electrification in the first place...
If only somebody had given it a few minutes thought before announcing full electrification in the first place...
Steady on; we are talking about "politicians" here. A "few minutes' thought" takes them beyond their attention span. On top of which there is the ever - present problem of politicians trying to understand engineering / technology matters, and that is a mix that rarely if ever has a satisfactory outcome.
" Perhaps this is at least one part of HMG that is aware of the feelings towards London from the rest of the country. "
It's not about "feelings towards London," though. If you are looking for economic development, you have to subsidise things that an unsubsidised market won't provide.
Piloting things in London is a total waste of money because it is the one part of the country that has the critical mass to make anything worth piloting immediately economically feasible without subsidy.
The biggest problem the UK has with money is that we are far too prone to giving people money to do things that they were always going to do anyway, and then we let them off the hook when they tell us that doing stuff in certain areas is not "commercially viable".
Bah. Electrification of two perfectly good railway lines? Luxury!
Our railway line isn't merely not electrified, it periodically disappears under water or gets washed out to sea, leaving us nothing. And they won't stump up a few quid to re-open the alternative line running inland!
Writing from Aberdeenshire, in our pollution free nirvana, albeit with no mobile signal, patchy DAB and rubbish - but painfully expensive EO ADSL uploading at 150K - I wouldn't have thought £10m will make much of a noticeable difference. What is to trial, is the technology not well understood? This will just give the broadband providers an excuse to wait for the result of the pilots, and divert them from getting on and making a reasonable difference for a reasonable number of people.
Possibly... But the economic benefit would take years to measure, and in any case is very intangible to measure. However I'm sure the usual numbers will be plucked out of the air to prove that '£39.2million was added to the Aberdeenshire economy by having full fibre in 2018' - all tosh. The uptake could be measured by making it available and counting the orders - that doesn't need a pilot.
"No mate, the UK has full coverage of patchy DAB. In my area it has the bitrate of a potato. Underwater."
I drive approx. 1000 miles per week and the national DAB is pretty good across the north of England and up to the Glasgow/Edinburgh corridor.
It's improved dramatically from the early days. There's there odd short duration drop-outs in dips etc. or when you get into the real countryside amongst the hills and valleys, but FM isn't all that great there either.
"To keep Britain as the digital world leader that it is, ......"
Whatever.
I've just come back from 2 weeks in rural-ish spain where I had a "fibra" connection. Full actual FTTP/FTTH into the house, not even ethernet from the street.
Meanwhile in the UK my exchange has been FTTC enabled but unable accept orders because "waiting list" for almost 2 years.
Very little in this Digital Leader makes sense. My house is on a rural road deep in the sticks yet not only do get a very reliable 15Mb/s ADSL I could get FTTP if I needed more bandwidth. However at my flat in the central postcode district of a large town I get less than 3Mb/s ADSL and FTTC is not available.
My local council at the time (Portsmouth) was begging for companies to take the cash - surprisingly few companies took this up (at least in the beginning).
It was a good deal though, allowed me to crank up the companies interpipes and give us not only better connectivity, but delivery a workable DR (as data had to be replicated offsite).
"£200m "full-fibre" investment pot announced in the Spring budget"
Tiny amount. We know, as an absolute fact that we'll soon have £350 million a week spare change, that's no longer going to support the 'gros chat' in Brussels and Strasbourg. Earmark a couple of weeks of that new bounty, and it'll go a long way to support fibre for the whole nation. Couple of month's worth to sort out the NHS, and let's have some new Nuclear Missiles and a slap up binge at Mrs Miggins Pie Shop as well.
The issue, as I understood it, is around the requirement to Wholesale.
Most network owners don't have that capability in their systems (technical, operational or commercial) and giving up revenue to A.N. Other ISP makes the case for investment much, much harder. Whoever builds and operates the network only gets the £7-8 a month line rental fee rather than the £40 or more fee the customer pays the ISP for their package.
If the government don't insist on Wholesaling, then the operator is gifted a vertically integrated monopoly.
Err, what is all this "pilot" and "trial" nonsense ? There has been a 1Gb FTTP "cable" run down our small street in an average-sized northern city with a particularly poor soccer team for over a year now. The prices are comparable with the Virgin 200Mb offering and its 1Gb up & down - the only reason not to get a connection to the house is that you have to sign up with TalkTalk.
AFAIK companies like CityFibre have been installing FTTP infrastructure for a dozen or so towns so far - looks like they forgot the bit about talking to the right people in Westminster.
Very odd. I live in London and already have fibre to the home, currently the max offer is 300Mb but surely just needs a switch upgrade at the exchange.
Alas my internal home network is nowhere near that speed so anything over 200Mb would be wasted (damn victoran terrace houses with no hollow walls, so have to rely on powerline and wifi)
I don't think that's OR's specific doing. The government subsidy was mandated to be used to cover the largest number of properties in the shortest time for the least cost. That model will always drive investment to the easiest of what remains. I can't imagine that any commercial investor would have vastly different priorities either.
Surprised that Wales isn't included.
For those of you who aren't aware, Wales is a nation that's a part of the United Kingdom and has over three million inhabitants.
Admittedly it's fairly dispersed, but Cardiff would have been a good place to start and it's not much further than Bristol.
Welsh assembly; you toothless tribe of final salary pension-drawing elves, you've failed again.
>It's the cheapest, quickest and easiest way to add capacity to the existing north/south mainlines that are operating beyond capacity.
Err no! The cheapest way to add capacity to the existing north/south mainlines is not to take away capacity! I kid you not part of the rationale for HS2 is to enable the reduction in 'capacity' on the WCML so that more freight can be run on it...
> HS2 has been totally mis-sold. It's absolutely necessary, but not for the reasons generally articulated.
I know that this isn't really about the HS bit, it's about adding capacity, but I'd still argue that adding digital capacity to the country would be a better investment and help more people more of the time. We can't spend the money twice so I'd just suggesting we invest in 21st century capacity rather than 19th century capacity. In an ideal world we'd do both, but HS2 would be tunnelled for most of it's length, We don't however live in an ideal world so choices need to be made.
>HS2 has been totally mis-sold.
Agree
>It's absolutely necessary
Err no! as yet it's backers have yet to produce an economic and business case that firstly stack up and secondly represents the best use of circa £2Bn pa construction costs and then circa £2Bn pa operational costs.
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