If they were proposing express trains that would really gain the benefit of the line I could see the justification, but they're not are they?
Most of the claims in this piece are simply nonsense. The Euston to Crewe train that's mentioned doesn't go anywhere near Birmingham, so it's not obvious that HS2 would make much of a difference to traffic on it.
And even if it did, it's merely one of a large number of routes heading out of London in all directions that are ridiculously overcrowded. At best, HS2 might reduce a small proportion of that overcrowding, but it's certainly not going to eliminate it.
The idea that HS2 can make Birmingham airport competitive with Heathrow for Londoners is clearly wrong. Birmingham doesn't have the flights, the destinations, or the capacity. London also has Heathrow Express for quick train journeys from Paddington to Heathrow - concourse to concourse. Even with a shorter journey time, HS2 can't match that.
And HS2 doesn't start to make sense until Phase 2 is built, linking Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds. You might see some benefits then - but the realistic total cost is likely to be the far side of £100bn. Which is madness.
It's actually five years of the total NASA budget, which is supposed to pay for development of the next Lunar program, as well as everything else NASA does.
It would be much better to spend a much smaller sum making the UK's broadband the best in Europe, set up a world-leading incubator fund for digital startups outside of London, with next-generation training and education, and try to persuade existing corporates to consider home working options. The return on that would be huge.
This is just a giant train set for rail nostalgists.
If you let that be a guide then you wouldn't invest in anything outside of London.
The UK has a weird chicken and egg thing going on. Everything is in London because everything is in London. HS2 is an attempt to break out of that. By developing better rail links across England we allow companies to start moving out of London.
> The idea that HS2 can make Birmingham airport competitive with Heathrow for Londoners is clearly wrong.
But that's not the aim. The aim is that we shouldn't have everyone in the country using Heathrow for all journeys. Currently we have about 80 million people going through Heathrow which is stupid if a chunk of them are only using it to get into the UK.
London doesn't just have Heathrow and Gatwick. London has six international airports.
Heathrow alone at 80m people currently carries the equivalent of Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Bristol combined. We urgently need to fix this.
One of the criticisms of HS2 is that it will just facilitate centralisation in London, by helping people get there more quickly!
It will just drag even more resources to london
Despite the topic being divisive, this is an ill-informed comment and does not relect the real purpose of HS2 ─ which is to increase capacity and improve links in the North of England to stimulate local economy and reduce the burden on over crowded services.
I will leave you with a couple of articles, which do a good job at explaining some of the reasons behind the HS2 project; which also serves as a springboard for the Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR).
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hs2-logistic...
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/08/just-when-y...
H2 increases capacity for commuter lines out of London, and one of the reasons it's so f'ing expensive is people in Tory Shires demanding the line is placed in a tunnel
Good one. I can hop on a plane from London to Edinburgh tomorrow for £35 and be there in an hour and a half, call it 3 hours all in. By comparison I can hop on a train and it'll cost me £146 and take about 5 hours.
Hell, just last week I hopped on a ferry to France and back on a whim for less than it would have cost to go 20 miles by train.
Unless you live airside at Heathrow and your destination is the Edinburgh duty free shop, I sincerely doubt your journey will take 1.5 hours total. More realistic timings allowing for 30mins travel either end and arriving an hour early for your flight bring it up to 3.5h - the fastest current London-Edinburgh expresses are just over 4 hours.
At those timings, high speed rail starts to look quite attractive, considering it's much easier to work and relax on a train and you don't have to waste time shuffling through the airport and waiting in queues.
t+0 leave office
t+45 arrive Heathrow
t+90 wheels up
t+145 wheels down
t+150 in taxi
t+160 home
t+0 leave office
t+45 arrive Euston
t+60 train departs
t+170 arrive Wilmslow
t+175 in taxi
t+195 home
t+0 leave home
t+7 arrive manchester
t+10 arrive gate
t+25 wheels up
t+85 wheels down
t+145 arrive officeThat's either a slight exaggeration or an impressive feat
Having ordered Uber during the taxi, it was already waiting for me, so in within 2 minutes of getting off the gate. 5-7 minute drive to home in Hale Barns.
Best I did was 93 seconds from leaving taxi to gate 141, rare to take longer then 5 minutes. Once the taxi didn't arrive and I had to hail one, got in 10 minutes before scheduled departure time and was sat on the plane (in 1C) before scheduled departure time.
BA have changed since then (there's now a business class section so you don't get to choose 1C), and Manchester Airport is very hostile to people arriving/departing via taxi so I suspect it would take 5 minutes longer now.
At most major airports it takes 5-10 minutes just to get out of the duty free shop after security! Even in priority lanes I've never got through security at a big airport quicker than 5 minutes - there is always a line of people ahead.
I know some people who have the "special" invite-only etc airline status where someone physically whizzes you through everything in a few minutes and out into a waiting car to take you directly to the gate etc, but that is hardly representative of the sort of person who might benefit from taking HS2
1tph First Stop Warrington (2h20)
1tph First Stop Crewe (1h40)
1tph First Stop Stafford (1h20)
1tph First Stop Stoke (1h30)
2tph First Stop Rugby (1h)
1tph First stop Coventry (1h10)
Some make additional stops in the peak, but that won't happen with HS
Typical HS2 service will be
Euston (for Crossrail2/Northern Line)
OOC (for Crossrail/GWR/Heathrow) -- 5 miles
Birmingham Interchange -- 100 miles
Crewe -- 160 miles
Euston (for Crossrail2/Northern Line)
OOC (for Crossrail/GWR/Heathrow) -- 5 miles
Birmingham Interchange -- 100 miles
Birmingham Central -- 150 miles
I suspect Curzon Street to Interchange will be relatively slow (7 minutes for 10 miles), like OOC to Euston
It's halving the time from Crewe to London from 100m to 50m, so that's a big plus. Every train going to Manchester, Liverpool, North Wales, North West England and Scotland will be an hour quicker - that's a 2 hour saving on a day trip.
> And would the project be cheaper if it didn't need to be so super-straight in order to be able to achieve the high speeds
No, the extra cost for high speed is negligable in the open country. If it's not straight it's using more land.