26 comments to “Breaking News: Leicestershire CC opposes HS2”
if you read between the lines they are opposed to it because it doesnt serve leicester and they want the money for electrifying the midland mainline. anyone who isnt served by hs2 is obviously going to be against it as it doesnt benefit them – or they want it for themselves instead.
the councils who are in favour see hs2 as benefitting them and their residents. and as they are major cities such as manchester birmingham and leeds their support will carry more weight as they represent far more of the population then do the councils who are against it. i believe they are very short sighted.
as far as electrification and worries that the rest of the network will be starved of funds we need only look at crossrail and thameslink and the massive ongoing electrification programme to put these concerns to bed.
Even in Birmingham, over a third of the people don’t want HS2. And that’s in spite of having two stations!
Joanne – Birmingham has a population of 2.2 milion, you say 1/3rd dont want a new rail link to London. have you got a survey to say that 700,000 have voted against this proposal ? I myself have yet to see one, but if there has been one carried out on that scale, can you point me in the right direction? I
Fair point Gary. Birmingham City Council sent out a survey on HS2, and got back about 600 responses according to the BBC. So of the people who could be bothered to reply, over a third do not support the proposals for HS2.
Of course you could say ( and this is a trick commonly used ), that 2,199.800 citizens of Birmingham have not voted against HS2. But in this particular instance, its not public votes that are going to count. There is no planned referendum, its the result of a vote in the house that will decide this.
So in reality , whilst stopHS2 have been pitching tents opposite the consultation roadshows, its actually a waste of time, as there are no votes to influence. And by the same measure, the roadshows themselves have been a PR exercise aimed at delivering the facts of HS2.
And any feedback from the consultation will get chucked into the nearest skip anyway. What with people being coached into how they should respond, and all the sound systems being hidden in peoples gardens shenanigans, the HS2 staff know that any data gathered is going to be artificially skewed anyway, and thus untrustworthy and useless. It’ll all get lobbed straight into the bin.
Which of course Rich, will actually be exposed in an inquiry. Someone pointed out the other day that so far, some 20000 have signed a petition against this, which is actually the equivalent of the population of Amersham. So if only Amersham are signing thhis. where are all the other residents of the Chilterns?? Apathetic to the issue maybe ?
Hey Joanne …I ve just seen that survey, the link to it is at the top of this page.
Guess what….the surveys were only sent to properties WITHIN 1KM OF THE ROUTE. So of the 600 who did respond, 66% of them welcome it, DESPITE the fact that they will be living nearby.So what does that tell you??
The survey went to properties within 1km of the line, but in Birmingham, the HS2 route goes through industrial areas for much of the route there. So presumably some of those Birmingham residents who replied work close to the line but live somewhere else.
So even with two stations in the area, they only get about 6 out of 10 people who replied to the survey supporting it (the percentages who support at all add up to 61%).
Joanne….there are 44 million or so eligible to vote in the UK, the Conservatives have managed to form a government with just under 11 million votes at the last election……in other words, they have a mandate from just 25% of the voting population. Can you see the point I m making?
Gary, some 20000 have signed a petition against this, …
Over 43000 on line and many more paper petition signatures. These all need collecting and collating but the total number should surprise even you!
Lel …so what you are saying is that over 63000 have signed a petition in one form or another ?? Which isnt what John Williams was saying the other day , who appeared to go off on a rant at what in his view was poor leadership. So if you have got more than John stated, how come nobody told him that and save him from getting somewhat wound up ?
Just to clarify – on the right hand side of this site you will see “sign our petition”. Click on it and you will see the number of signees. Click again to access the petition and you can read the many comments. I don’t know where John W got his 20k from, but he’s way out. Add to this number the huge number of paper petitions signed at protests, meetings, village stores, stophs2 tents ajacent to the hs 2 roadshows (!) and a myriad of other places up and down the country and he’s miles out.
Well electrifying the mainline is a much better use of the money, and it would serve the regions transport much better.
The fact that is doesn’t serve Leicester is a testament to the inflexibility of HSR as a technology.
With it’s 7200m minimum curve radius, it is physically impossible for HS2 to turnaround and reach Leicester as well as Birmingham.
Maglev, of course, is only 320m, 100mph faster, uses less energy, and is a true green technology.
Luke – re MML, can i suggest you do some research ….I ll point you in the right direction.
Have a look at future plans for this, also , have a look at the Network Rail RUS. All this is being funded either by Network Rail or the Train Operators. Thameslink is actually the Midland Main line from Bedford. There are some heavy duty works going on right now, which will ultimately see Farringdon Station as the UKs busiest. it interchanges with Crossrail , and by default HS2.
It seems that stopHS2 supporters are beginning to contradict each other …..only the other day Joe Rukin posted about what he thought HS2 was for…..ie to ” join the airport dots “, which included East Midlands Airport.
Nobody knows what HS2 is for, it is complete waste
Luke …I ll brief you.
HS2 is a new rail line proposal running on the North/South axis of the UK. The idea has been around for some time, but has gathered speed recently due to the realisation that our current network ( in particular WCML ) is fast running out of capacity. We have seen some tremendous growth in rail usage on the back of some serious investment since the Hatfield accident. If we are to accomodate future growth, and at the same time encourage both car users out of their vehicles and HGVs off our motorways, then we need some new lines. HS2 is a major step towards that, along with Thameslink , Crossrail, Northern Hub, and other schemes such as the elctrification of the Great Western Main Line. To accomadate the latest technology, HS2 needs to be a lot straighter in design than our current UK backbone which was built in Victorian times. The Victorian engineers did not foresee 21st century needs. Additonal lines which are built need to be able to connect with exsiting network.
I think the capacity issue is exaggerated, commuting at peak times is an issue, it’s the same for every where, but most people commuting to London get on the train as in makes it’s stop between London and Birmingham.
And as HS2 does have any intermediary stops, it will do nothing to ease the overcrowding due to commuting.
I seriously doubt there are enough people living in Birmingham, who commute to London everyday, to justify the capacity argument.
It seems that here in the 21st century we do not have the vision the see into the future, HSR is more then 50 years old, it is 20th century technology, we shouldn’t be building something now that the French had in the 70s.
As I’m sure you’re tired of me saying, Maglev is new technology for the 21st century.
Even if all of HS2’s claims add up, it is a serious mistake, and it is unfair, to commit taxpayers money to a long term project, that uses outdated technology.
How long will it take for the HSR network to be completed all the way up to Glasgow, 20, 30, 40 years?
So you may say that HSR is the latest technology now (which I don’t believe), but by the time the full network is completed, it would be already outdated.
So Luke thinks the capacity issue is exaggerated…….in the next 30 minutes ( ie from 1 till 1.30 pm ) there are 21 arrivals and departures from Euston station. The throat of Euston station quickly becomes 4 track line, the headway is 3 minutes which is right at the edge of the safety case envelope. There is currently 1 spare path into Euston ( off peak ) which has been bid for by London Midland , Grand Central and Alliance Rail as part of the new 2012 franchise agreement. 2 bids were rejected, though the whole process is actually on hold at the moment anyway.
All operators were given the chance to comment on the WCML franchise for 2012 some time ago ( the details of which can be found on the ORR website ). Railfreight stated that in their opinion , the WCML should actually now be declared full, which is particularly poignant as an upgraded link for freight traffic from the Port of Southampton to Nuneaton is now operational, This is a link which can accomadate the biggest containers in the world, and has the potential to take 1000 HGVs off the road per week.
Mr Hammond has said there is only overcrowding for a couple of hours a day.
Train capacity at stations is not necassarily the same thing as passenger capacity.
Maglev has been around for decades. I beleive we Brits did the first tech. work on it and then sold itthe idea off.
And where do these 21 trains call at? Because they are not all non-stop London to Birmingham like HS2 is.
Most people commute from the towns to the cities, and as HS2 does not call at any of the towns, it will not make a blind bit of difference to those commuters.
Overcrowding may exist, be HS2 will not address it.
The one thing that really annoys me about HS2, is the damned pigheadedness of supporters in refusing to accept the limitations of HSR.
It is inflexible, it fails to serve the taxpayer at their own expense, it’s speed is achieved at the cost of high maintenance and untold environmental damage, and it will destroy peoples live along the route.
I am sorry, but HSR is not the latest technology, Maglev is 100mph faster, it uses less energy, and it is cheaper then the HS2 proposals.
Maglev has been in development for decades, Birmingham airport was the first Maglev line in the world, built in 85 by Prof. Laithwaite, since then Laithwaite and his team worked on a lunch system for NASA.
The German Transrapid is the perfection of a British invention.
If it’s good enough for NASA, then it’s good enough for transport in Britain.
So Luke thinks that HS2 supporters are pig headed because they dont accept the fact that a Maglev line running
through the Chilterns is a far better option that a rail line which connects with the classic network? Of course the stopHS2 supporters dont think any sort of line is a good idea, by default does that make them pig headed as well??
I ll put you in your place Luke…..maglev technology for this country was rejected by a Government White Paper a few year ago…….it is a non starter. But hey , if you want to campaign for it, by all means go banging on the door of number 10.
“… pigheadedness of supporters in refusing to accept the limitations of HSR.”
The stopHS2 supporters are right, and I hope they succeed .
The white paper mentioned Maglev only in a single sentence simply saying it was too costly, it was a whitewash, after publication, UK Ultraspeed successful appealed to authors that this was inaccurate.
It is not my job to campaign for Maglev (I have no job, hence the volume of my comments), but I do notice the hypocrisy of HS2 supporters.
Luke, Almost any train can negotiate a 320m curve. How fast would a Maglev be able to do this and how many g would the passengers be subjected to? The basic physics don’t change when you change the propulsion system – even when applied to a “a lunch system for NASA”!
350m sorry, not 320, speed is 125mph, a HSR (ICE 3) train travelling at the same speeds is limited to a 1,400m radius
Good for Leicestershire CC !
They know this will be a nightmare for thousands of their ratepayers ( although thanks to the half baked nature of this consultation they don’t know exactly which ones ) and will adversely effect their beautiful rural landscape .
They will also reckon on not getting a station whilst there probably will be one near East Mids airport . So they will be worried about businesses and jobs relocating from Leicester and Loughborough to the Derby / Nottingham corridor ( a classic example of how HS2 could move the deckchairs around ) . They might have some grounds for their worries .
Stoke on Trent is also desperate for a station . Don’t fancy their chances much , the BCR won’t allow it .
if you read between the lines they are opposed to it because it doesnt serve leicester and they want the money for electrifying the midland mainline. anyone who isnt served by hs2 is obviously going to be against it as it doesnt benefit them – or they want it for themselves instead.
the councils who are in favour see hs2 as benefitting them and their residents. and as they are major cities such as manchester birmingham and leeds their support will carry more weight as they represent far more of the population then do the councils who are against it. i believe they are very short sighted.
as far as electrification and worries that the rest of the network will be starved of funds we need only look at crossrail and thameslink and the massive ongoing electrification programme to put these concerns to bed.
Even in Birmingham, over a third of the people don’t want HS2. And that’s in spite of having two stations!
Joanne – Birmingham has a population of 2.2 milion, you say 1/3rd dont want a new rail link to London. have you got a survey to say that 700,000 have voted against this proposal ? I myself have yet to see one, but if there has been one carried out on that scale, can you point me in the right direction? I
Fair point Gary. Birmingham City Council sent out a survey on HS2, and got back about 600 responses according to the BBC. So of the people who could be bothered to reply, over a third do not support the proposals for HS2.
Of course you could say ( and this is a trick commonly used ), that 2,199.800 citizens of Birmingham have not voted against HS2. But in this particular instance, its not public votes that are going to count. There is no planned referendum, its the result of a vote in the house that will decide this.
So in reality , whilst stopHS2 have been pitching tents opposite the consultation roadshows, its actually a waste of time, as there are no votes to influence. And by the same measure, the roadshows themselves have been a PR exercise aimed at delivering the facts of HS2.
And any feedback from the consultation will get chucked into the nearest skip anyway. What with people being coached into how they should respond, and all the sound systems being hidden in peoples gardens shenanigans, the HS2 staff know that any data gathered is going to be artificially skewed anyway, and thus untrustworthy and useless. It’ll all get lobbed straight into the bin.
Which of course Rich, will actually be exposed in an inquiry. Someone pointed out the other day that so far, some 20000 have signed a petition against this, which is actually the equivalent of the population of Amersham. So if only Amersham are signing thhis. where are all the other residents of the Chilterns?? Apathetic to the issue maybe ?
Hey Joanne …I ve just seen that survey, the link to it is at the top of this page.
Guess what….the surveys were only sent to properties WITHIN 1KM OF THE ROUTE. So of the 600 who did respond, 66% of them welcome it, DESPITE the fact that they will be living nearby.So what does that tell you??
The survey went to properties within 1km of the line, but in Birmingham, the HS2 route goes through industrial areas for much of the route there. So presumably some of those Birmingham residents who replied work close to the line but live somewhere else.
So even with two stations in the area, they only get about 6 out of 10 people who replied to the survey supporting it (the percentages who support at all add up to 61%).
Joanne….there are 44 million or so eligible to vote in the UK, the Conservatives have managed to form a government with just under 11 million votes at the last election……in other words, they have a mandate from just 25% of the voting population. Can you see the point I m making?
Gary, some 20000 have signed a petition against this, …
Over 43000 on line and many more paper petition signatures. These all need collecting and collating but the total number should surprise even you!
Lel …so what you are saying is that over 63000 have signed a petition in one form or another ?? Which isnt what John Williams was saying the other day , who appeared to go off on a rant at what in his view was poor leadership. So if you have got more than John stated, how come nobody told him that and save him from getting somewhat wound up ?
Just to clarify – on the right hand side of this site you will see “sign our petition”. Click on it and you will see the number of signees. Click again to access the petition and you can read the many comments. I don’t know where John W got his 20k from, but he’s way out. Add to this number the huge number of paper petitions signed at protests, meetings, village stores, stophs2 tents ajacent to the hs 2 roadshows (!) and a myriad of other places up and down the country and he’s miles out.
Well electrifying the mainline is a much better use of the money, and it would serve the regions transport much better.
The fact that is doesn’t serve Leicester is a testament to the inflexibility of HSR as a technology.
With it’s 7200m minimum curve radius, it is physically impossible for HS2 to turnaround and reach Leicester as well as Birmingham.
Maglev, of course, is only 320m, 100mph faster, uses less energy, and is a true green technology.
Luke – re MML, can i suggest you do some research ….I ll point you in the right direction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midland_Main_Line
Have a look at future plans for this, also , have a look at the Network Rail RUS. All this is being funded either by Network Rail or the Train Operators. Thameslink is actually the Midland Main line from Bedford. There are some heavy duty works going on right now, which will ultimately see Farringdon Station as the UKs busiest. it interchanges with Crossrail , and by default HS2.
It seems that stopHS2 supporters are beginning to contradict each other …..only the other day Joe Rukin posted about what he thought HS2 was for…..ie to ” join the airport dots “, which included East Midlands Airport.
Nobody knows what HS2 is for, it is complete waste
Luke …I ll brief you.
HS2 is a new rail line proposal running on the North/South axis of the UK. The idea has been around for some time, but has gathered speed recently due to the realisation that our current network ( in particular WCML ) is fast running out of capacity. We have seen some tremendous growth in rail usage on the back of some serious investment since the Hatfield accident. If we are to accomodate future growth, and at the same time encourage both car users out of their vehicles and HGVs off our motorways, then we need some new lines. HS2 is a major step towards that, along with Thameslink , Crossrail, Northern Hub, and other schemes such as the elctrification of the Great Western Main Line. To accomadate the latest technology, HS2 needs to be a lot straighter in design than our current UK backbone which was built in Victorian times. The Victorian engineers did not foresee 21st century needs. Additonal lines which are built need to be able to connect with exsiting network.
I think the capacity issue is exaggerated, commuting at peak times is an issue, it’s the same for every where, but most people commuting to London get on the train as in makes it’s stop between London and Birmingham.
And as HS2 does have any intermediary stops, it will do nothing to ease the overcrowding due to commuting.
I seriously doubt there are enough people living in Birmingham, who commute to London everyday, to justify the capacity argument.
It seems that here in the 21st century we do not have the vision the see into the future, HSR is more then 50 years old, it is 20th century technology, we shouldn’t be building something now that the French had in the 70s.
As I’m sure you’re tired of me saying, Maglev is new technology for the 21st century.
Even if all of HS2’s claims add up, it is a serious mistake, and it is unfair, to commit taxpayers money to a long term project, that uses outdated technology.
How long will it take for the HSR network to be completed all the way up to Glasgow, 20, 30, 40 years?
So you may say that HSR is the latest technology now (which I don’t believe), but by the time the full network is completed, it would be already outdated.
So Luke thinks the capacity issue is exaggerated…….in the next 30 minutes ( ie from 1 till 1.30 pm ) there are 21 arrivals and departures from Euston station. The throat of Euston station quickly becomes 4 track line, the headway is 3 minutes which is right at the edge of the safety case envelope. There is currently 1 spare path into Euston ( off peak ) which has been bid for by London Midland , Grand Central and Alliance Rail as part of the new 2012 franchise agreement. 2 bids were rejected, though the whole process is actually on hold at the moment anyway.
All operators were given the chance to comment on the WCML franchise for 2012 some time ago ( the details of which can be found on the ORR website ). Railfreight stated that in their opinion , the WCML should actually now be declared full, which is particularly poignant as an upgraded link for freight traffic from the Port of Southampton to Nuneaton is now operational, This is a link which can accomadate the biggest containers in the world, and has the potential to take 1000 HGVs off the road per week.
Mr Hammond has said there is only overcrowding for a couple of hours a day.
Train capacity at stations is not necassarily the same thing as passenger capacity.
Maglev has been around for decades. I beleive we Brits did the first tech. work on it and then sold itthe idea off.
And where do these 21 trains call at? Because they are not all non-stop London to Birmingham like HS2 is.
Most people commute from the towns to the cities, and as HS2 does not call at any of the towns, it will not make a blind bit of difference to those commuters.
Overcrowding may exist, be HS2 will not address it.
The one thing that really annoys me about HS2, is the damned pigheadedness of supporters in refusing to accept the limitations of HSR.
It is inflexible, it fails to serve the taxpayer at their own expense, it’s speed is achieved at the cost of high maintenance and untold environmental damage, and it will destroy peoples live along the route.
I am sorry, but HSR is not the latest technology, Maglev is 100mph faster, it uses less energy, and it is cheaper then the HS2 proposals.
Maglev has been in development for decades, Birmingham airport was the first Maglev line in the world, built in 85 by Prof. Laithwaite, since then Laithwaite and his team worked on a lunch system for NASA.
The German Transrapid is the perfection of a British invention.
If it’s good enough for NASA, then it’s good enough for transport in Britain.
So Luke thinks that HS2 supporters are pig headed because they dont accept the fact that a Maglev line running
through the Chilterns is a far better option that a rail line which connects with the classic network? Of course the stopHS2 supporters dont think any sort of line is a good idea, by default does that make them pig headed as well??
I ll put you in your place Luke…..maglev technology for this country was rejected by a Government White Paper a few year ago…….it is a non starter. But hey , if you want to campaign for it, by all means go banging on the door of number 10.
“… pigheadedness of supporters in refusing to accept the limitations of HSR.”
The stopHS2 supporters are right, and I hope they succeed .
The white paper mentioned Maglev only in a single sentence simply saying it was too costly, it was a whitewash, after publication, UK Ultraspeed successful appealed to authors that this was inaccurate.
It is not my job to campaign for Maglev (I have no job, hence the volume of my comments), but I do notice the hypocrisy of HS2 supporters.
Luke, Almost any train can negotiate a 320m curve. How fast would a Maglev be able to do this and how many g would the passengers be subjected to? The basic physics don’t change when you change the propulsion system – even when applied to a “a lunch system for NASA”!
350m sorry, not 320, speed is 125mph, a HSR (ICE 3) train travelling at the same speeds is limited to a 1,400m radius
Good for Leicestershire CC !
They know this will be a nightmare for thousands of their ratepayers ( although thanks to the half baked nature of this consultation they don’t know exactly which ones ) and will adversely effect their beautiful rural landscape .
They will also reckon on not getting a station whilst there probably will be one near East Mids airport . So they will be worried about businesses and jobs relocating from Leicester and Loughborough to the Derby / Nottingham corridor ( a classic example of how HS2 could move the deckchairs around ) . They might have some grounds for their worries .
Stoke on Trent is also desperate for a station . Don’t fancy their chances much , the BCR won’t allow it .