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When this one comes up I always point out it would be better to not bother with HS2 and spend the money on making it easier for people not to have to travel around.

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Great, but it's also a goods corridor; the only way around both of those at the same time (absent massive depopulation) is to move the people, would mean building loads more houses.

The WCML is perfectly adequate for that. HS2 is a vanity project for business and general passenger travel, none of which is certain or impossible on the WCML already.

But the WCML is at capacity, so it is not in fact adequate.

"There is no available capacity without significantly impacting performance and causing a reduction in timetable resilience due to the resulting requirement for successive services to run on minimum headway"

https://www.orr.gov.uk/sites/default/files/om/wcml-capacity-...

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