Vocal Voices

The leg to Leeds is about to go - and good riddance.

But get this. Some £96 bn is now (belatedly) going to be spent on the connecting routes of Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds by upgrading exiting tracks and better trains. There is the possibility of this extending to Hull, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Then there is the route out west to Bristol and Cardiff and down to Cornwall.

If only these planners had listened to the people instead of wasting so much money. The above is what we were asking for all those years ago. A lot of those things could be well on their way to completion by now.

Yep, agreed, and about time too.

I only wish they'd scrapped the whole blinking HS2 Project a number of years ago. Trouble is, they've already demolished half the environs of Euston and bored a mile-long hole under the Cotswolds, so it's now a question of "I've started so I'll finish". What the final cost of London to Birmingham will be, I dread to think.

This is great news for people in this neck of the woods, if this is true.
The line would have run along the top of the village and across the Doncaster Road before being carried on a viaduct over open country. The amount of money wasted already must be colossal. All the properties that have been bought up! There is a huge square concrete well, square, in a field off the old Pontefract Road. It was to be a support for the viaduct.
Apparently red wall MP's are upset. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
The only people who do want this are politicians, it seems to me; and that only to stroke their own ego. "Oh yes, big city us you know. We have HS2, oh yes".
Well it would have brought us nothing but negatives. Massive disruption with closed roads during construction. Ruined country views and noise pollution when it was in use, and a worse Wakefield to London main line service.
It doesn't seem to occur to some that cancelling HS2 would actually be a vote winner. If you live in the centre of London, or Manchester, or Birmingham, yes, you may think HS2 is a great idea. If you live anywhere along the hundreds of miles of its proposed route. you probably think it's a rotten idea! The Tories lost that by election (Amersham?) and the disruption and general ugliness of HS2was a big reason for that.

The leg to Leeds is officially scrapped. That's the good news and a blessing in disguise.

Unfortunately there was not much mention of the desperately needed improvements (or building of) any East-West routes, Hull - Liverpool, Anglia - South West, Wales, the North East, Scotland.

I can actually see the Manchester leg being scrapped after the next GE. Super high speed trains are not needed in such a small country, but links between cities are. The only viable long distance route(s), where time could really be saved, would be the Y route from London to Edinburgh / Glasgow, but that would never have the traffic to pay its way, much like all of HS2.

It was always going to be cheaper, less disruptive and more efficient to lay new lines next to existing ones. That 'news' seems to be sinking in. If only we had a transport secretary who could ride a bike without falling off.....

The biggest White Elephant ever!

I'm sure that will eventually be crossrail. If they ever launch it this decade.

Whilst it may, currently be about half the cost per mile of HS2, it hasn't launched yet and launch dates are missed with great regularity. HS2, on the other hand, once the horrendously expensive South England leg is done, will become more cost effective.

Just my view on it.

What is not mentioned is that HS2 does not go into the centre of Birmingham.
You will hav e to change at Birmingham International to getn to the centre of Brum which is where most people willl want to go.

In the old days before Beeching there would be two tracks, one for slow trains stopping at most stations and one for express trains
only going between major cities.

France does that at the stations, but then again so do some UK stations.

I think in fairness, it should be stated that HS2 will go into the centre of Birmingham, as near as dammit, as the intention is to build a new station at Curzon Street, opposite the Science Museum. Curzon Street station was the site of the very first station in Birmingham, and in latter years was used as a major Royal Mail sorting office and depot, in the days when the majority of cross-country letters and parcels were sent using the rail network. The site has been cleared for many years now, despite what Wiki says, and has been used for overflow car parking for the museum, and also as a helicopter landing pad; I recall seeing them there!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingha ... ay_station

A spur will run off the HS1 line near Coleshill, north of Birmingham International Interchange station, and will enter the City Centre alongside the existing Birmingham New Street - Derby / Leicester railway lines. That's quite an easy bit of construction, although I believe a short length of tunnel might be involved somewhere; in fact the only major demolition work required, I'd think, would be a large area of student accommodation for Aston University, currently at the station's throat.

You can walk it pretty easily from Curzon Street Station to the Bull Ring in the City Centre, although it is uphill somewhat. It has been mooted to put in one of they pedestrian travellator thingies, and also to run a spur off the Midland Metro Tram network to it, but what the final configuration will be we'll see in 2029, no doubt. The Birmingham trams have their own problems at the moment - they've all been withdrawn (for a second time) with serious bodywork cracking, and will be out of action for around 4 weeks, last I read. They are Spanish-built CAF Urbo3s, and Birmingham is not the only network to have these problems, Sydney Australia have withdrawn all theirs as well. One is tempted to say "cheap build" but the truth is possibly more complex - both Sydney and the West Midland networks have (comparatively) steep hills and tight curves, and it's possible that these are to the detriment of the vehicles. They seem to be OK on other tram systems.

The problem with HS2, I think, is that people value it based on building it alone.

What the LGV network in France has shown is that the first one or two lines are only the beginning. Then they build a whole network on top of it.

The second anyone tries to do anything new with transport in the UK, the howls begin, then the court cases, then the obstruction in any way possible. Then, when the cost mounts, they point to their own impact on the cost and call it a waste of public funds.....