In today’s Independent magazine, there is a lovely article on Keri Brennan, one of our most active campaign supporters.
You can read it online here.
And here is what Keri had to say about helping on the Stop HS2 stand at the Labour Party Conference.
I am all for an improved and modern rail links throughout the UK, but why use 17th century technology? Iron wheels on iron rails??
Lets go for MagLev! No problem with leaves on rails or snow or floods as I would advocate for an elevated MagLev system. Elevation means minimal loss of land and would fly over roads, rail and rivers.Look to Japan and China.
MAGLEV. could well be the answer, William, especially if you were starting from scratch, without needing to integrate and connect with the existing infrastructure… but sadly that isn’t where we are.
Maglev would, you suggest, be elevated
..and run just overhead at …how many hundred mph/kph?
Enormous efforts are being made by groups all along the proposed HS2 route, to LOWER the line, to bury it in tunnels and thus minimise its impact on its surroundings ( and the design has planned for this,even though it may result in an excess of spoil needing to be disposed of.)
But do you think that people living along the line would really accept and embrace an elevated, exposed viaduct running the length of the entire route?
( The Wuppertal suspended railway is a curiosity and a tourist attraction, but it isn’t fast and it wouldn’t do much for the urban landscape, were it to be duplicated in other cities.
The same objection applies with the experimental pre war Aerotrain as demonstrated in Glasgow, or the short lived overhead line in France) .