Lobby Day – next Monday 28th November 2011

1. I am against the proposed link in principle, whatever route it takes. It is too expensive, too damaging and will provide little if any benefit. I care about the area I live in and that is a good thing but I also care about other areas too. If the only argument you have left is “they’re all nimbys”, that shows the weaknes of your case.

2. Jerry Marshall: “We will especially be putting the case that the Government should not make a decision until it has done what the TSC has asked – like re-calculate the business case with a lower value of time and adding environmental costs, and properly investigate at the alternatives.”

   In other words, effectively undermine the entire project according the artificial cost/benefit criteria already in place – this is a wrecking tactic by any other name but then that is the name of the game for STOPHS2 – wreck the currently proposed route at all costs (because it’s coming through our back yards) !!!

   • Apparently HS2 will be stopping at Sheffield eventually. The station however is to be 30 minutes out of town, anyone making a connecting train would therefore lose the entire time saving and frankly so will most business users who wont want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere.

     The whole thing is madness and internationally mocked.

     • @nameless: “Apparently HS2 will be stopping at Sheffield eventually. The station however is to be 30 minutes out of town, anyone making a connecting train would therefore lose the entire time saving and frankly so will most business users who wont want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere.”

       I’d be interested in understanding how you arrived at this conclusion – have you seen something we haven’t – thought not!

       Instead why don’t you come up with convincing piece of evidence to justify your claim?

       • By the word though you really mean just assumed.

         I have seen lots of things you have not and work within a planning body that is behind the detail so please dont expect me to leak that. I can only tell you the bottom line is that the time saving will be lost by location – under current proposals.

         • @nameless

           So what you are saying is that you have seen something currently restricted from the public domain

           Now your on-line moniker begins to make sense! – I’d be careful though; IP addresses can be traced?

           You wouldn’t care to indicate when (approximately) the closely guarded plans for phase 2 will be published – last person I spoke to with some inside info told me March/April 2012 and that the plans hadn’t yet been finalised, which I why I tend to doubt the validity of your remarks? (my conversation was a month or two back though)

   • Yes! Let it go through Alderley Edge…there’s a station there waiting…

     • @peter fry

       errrrrrr…………during the period between completion of phases 1 & 2, the Classic Compatible Trains operating on the route to/from Manchester, will run through Alderley Edge Station and along the WCML, approx 500m (West) from my house. Only with the completion of phase 2 will the full spec HSR trains transfer on to the new line, which will run (if my best guess is accurate) approx 3km East of my house (by then of course I probably won’t be living in Alderley Edge)

   • Perhaps I misunderstand you, Mr. Davidson, but your view implies let’s still go ahead regardless of whether the HS2 project has been planned properly, whether the current option is the best possible route, whether the promoted benefits can be proven, whether it genuinely is in the national interests, whether the nation can afford to spend billions on a provision for a small minority at a time when the world economy remains fragile and uncertain and the UK debt is rising, not diminishing.

     You favour a high risk plan which will cost taxpayers billions and may, or may not, have benefits. Far wiser to use this time of economic instability and fiscal challenge to do the planning job properly.

     The TSC report into high speed rail/HS2 shows the DfT has ignored this Committee, which is specifically set up to advise Ministers and Parliament on transport matters. Among recommendations in its earlier report on Transport and the Economy, the TSC asked the DfT many months ago to establish a properly thought out and planned national transport strategy incorporating all transport modes, which they haven’t yet done.

     Maybe you prefer the ‘back of the envelope’ approach, however.

     • @Sue – have you actually read my comments?

       I believe I’ve made my views perfectly clear – I don’t think the current proposals are ill-thought out, or not “planned properly” to quote you

       Yet again you resort the knee jerk response pervading anti-HS2 rhetoric “Far wiser to use this time of economic instability and fiscal challenge to do the planning job properly” by conflating the construction/spending commitments related to HS2, to the present day. HS2 is NOT NOW, it’s ten years hence!

       Have you read the letter from the Minister to STOPHS2 on this topic – she makes it abundantly clear that the govt is simply taking decisions now to plan for the future – due to the very long timescales involved here, in part to satisfy the demands of due process required by our society (would you rather the UK govt adopted the Chinese approach and served you with a notice to quit a few days from now so the bullsdozers can move in!).

       Please stop trying to distort perceptions of this complex and contentious topic. The Minister is trying to approach this matter on using facts and rational, objective deliberation.

   • The BCR figure is supposed to allow different projects to be compared to each other. If you don’t include everything in that calculation then you may well get the wrong selection as the best project (e.g. if you value everything from farmland to an AONB as worth ‘nothing’ then there is no reason to avoid them in the pursuit of ‘valuable’ time savings). It may well be true that if you include these extra factors into the calculation that the BCR for any HS2 scheme then drops even further down to the point where they are all seen as a bad idea, but at least you will have correctly spotted the least bad version. It may also be that if you bother to add in extra local transport infrastructure schemes and place HSR in a better context you can realise even more benefits and boost the BCR. No-one will know unless the government do as the TSC suggested and look at things from the perspective of being part of a national transport strategy.

   • There a a lot of people opposed to this project who will NOT be impacted by the route…….you make a very sweeping (and incorrect assumption) by implying those that object live along the route

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