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One million HGVs to be taken off the roads as first train departs HS2’s Willesden Logistics Hub

This week, on Tuesday 29th June, the first train carrying spoil removed from HS2 construction works in London left the HS2 Logistics hub in Willesden. Carrying 1,470 tonnes of spoil, the train departed at 03:51 and will travel to Barrington in Cambridgeshire, where the spoil will be reused in a disused quarry to bring it back into use as a new housing development.

The logistics hub has been brought into use by HS2’s main works contractor, Skanska Costain STRABAG joint venture (SCS JV) who are building the HS2 tunnels through London. The hub will be used by other London contractors, Balfour Beatty VINCI SYSTRA JV (BBVS JV) and Mace Dragados JV (MD JV) who are constructing HS2’s Old Oak Common and Euston stations respectively. The site will be the ‘beating heart’ of HS2’s construction activity in the South.

Over the lifecycle of the project up to seven freight trains per day will depart the Logistics hub at Willesden, and will remove one million lorries from the roads in the London area alone. One train per day will arrive at the hub bringing in construction materials, including concrete segments that will be used to construct HS2’s London tunnels.

A six-wheeler tipper lorry typically carries about 15 tonnes of muck. The one train there replaces 100 lorry-loads. Exhaust aside, a hundred lorries daily makes a fair bit of noise and gets in the way of the rest of the traffic. Multiply that by seven at the peak of activity, and you get a pretty big number. Whether it's a million journeys or not doesn't much matter - doing it by rail is definitely a very good thing. Especially given that the UK has a serious shortage of lorry drivers.

Works well in this scenario for a point to point journey and may offset some of the environmental damage being done by HS2, however unless every construction site in the UK is going to be within a short distance of a suitably equipped rail station, long term most of those lorries are still going to be needed.

From Material Handling World (https://mhwmagazine.co.uk/one-million-hgvs-to-be-taken-off-the-roads-as-first-train-departs-hs2s-willesden-logistics-hub.html)


I know rail is good and efficient, but somehow I don't think it will take a million lorries off the road.  A million journeys, perhaps?   Or a million miles or kilometres of journey?

The way I parse the article, it implies that the million lorries (journeys? trips? loads?) are already on the roads.

I don't think it means that the lorries are being scrapped...  :(

Over on the pedants' thread, I would imagine it could mean one million lorries stood on driveways, but not discounting a further million lorries being brought in to take their place. It is ambiguous, and possibly lacking in meaning. If the last half mile of the journey involves a lorry, then the number of lorry journeys will be the same, just the distance travelled by them will be much shorter.

I don't really know what it means in absolute terms, but it does mean the roads will be quieter than they otherwise would be. It shouldn't really be news - every big civil engineering project should have a plan for delivery of goods and removal of spoil that doesn't involve the roads.

Some (most?) railways in the good ol' days were designed to minimise the amount of waste, weren't they? - what came out of cuttings was used for embankments.

I suspect that lines are lower these days - more tunnels, and thumping great matching embankments would give rise to local complaints about blocked views, damaged landscapes and noise.   

Not rail but a different case in Melksham as I write - digging out a stream to help water flow and the council is happy.  Dumping the spoil to form a bund on the side of the recreation field that the stream runs through raises all sorts of issues like "will it block the view" (especially of the children's play area where they want them to be generally seen as a safeguarding thing) and "what wild nasties will it bring into the rec area" and "its going to cost someone more to maintain than the flat field does".

The bund should have rebranded as an "anti-pervert barrier, for child protection" or perhaps as "newt habitat" or even as part of a "wider green strategy"