Supporting statement for the headway

The request was successful.

Dear Department for Transport,

The publication Review of the Technical Specification for High Speed Rail in the UK A report to Government by HS2 Ltd January 2012
is on line at the link below

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk...

It includes a reference to the following document:

Prof. Roderick A Smith, FREng., 2011,
Supporting statement for the headway
document, http://www.hs2.org.uk/publications/
Supporting-statement-for-the-headwaydocument-
from-Prof.-Rod-Smith-77737

The link to that referenced document has been broken and I am otherwise unable to locate it on line.

I would be grateful if you would provide the information contained in that referenced document and , in addition, the "headway document" for which it is a "supporting statement".

Yours faithfully,

Paul Thornton

FOI-ADVICE-TEAM-DFT, Department for Transport

2 Attachments

Dear Dr Thornton,

Please see attached documents.

Regards,

Ivan Pocock
FOI Advice Team, Governance Division, Group Assurance and Digital Directorate
Department for Transport
D/04, Ashdown House
Sedlescombe Road North,
St Leonards on Sea, TN37 7GA

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Dear FOI-ADVICE-TEAM-DFT,

Thankyou, I am grateful for your prompt response.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Thornton

J Marriott left an annotation ()

The caveats in Prof Smith's statement effectively undermine his assertion that 18tph is achievable reliably. The 18tph refers to plain level track but gradients have a significant bearing on safe stopping distances. There is also a significant problem in merging trains onto one track in the first place. Prof Smith is quite rightly a fervent critic of HS2's non-segregated design & many other aspects of the whole scheme.