What is High Speed 2? It’s the Government’s proposed 250mph railway line from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds – tearing through some of the most cherished and unspoilt countryside in Britain.
This proposed new railway will cost the country £32 billion – equivalent to £51 million from every parliamentary constituency, so it will affect you!
That’s money that could be much better spent on things like health, education and regional development. Think how many schools, hospitals and care homes could be funded with just a fraction of that money.
Why are we so strong in our opposition?
Ÿ The benefits of High Speed 2 are greatly exaggerated
Ÿ The permanent environmental damage is ignored
Ÿ The technology is totally unproven
Ÿ There are much cheaper, better and more environmentally responsible ways, (it has an unknown impact in terms of the increase in carbon emisions) of both improving our transport infrastructure and closing the North-South divide
Just click this link: www.highspeedrail.org.uk and follow the instructions, to make it easy to tell your MP what you think..
When you have done that, please forward this message to your friends, relations, Christmas card list and business contacts, basically everyone you know, and ask them to do the same.
DFT can not BUILD Schools or hospital. They can only spend money of transport. The name says it all “Department of Transport”.
Ian – do you know what a Capital project is? The department will know what percentage of the budget for that year is for major projects and over how many government terms the major project is required.
To state that “the technology is totally unproven” is quite amazing.
• The recent TGV line from Paris to Strasbourg is designed to run at up to 350 km/h, perhaps 360 km/h. Services on the initial section are however at present a more sedate 320 km/h. 360 km/h is the proposed maximum speed at start up for HS2.
• TGV’s on test have exceeded 500 km/h many times and reached 574.8 km/h. In the Far-East (Korea?) 400 km/h trains are being developed.
• Variants of the TVM430 cab signalling technology used on French high speed lines is claimed to permit 3 minute headways with 360 km/h running. The proposed maximum at HS2 start up, fourteen (14) trains/hour, evenly spaced requires 4.3 minute headways (3 minute headways equate to a maximum of 20 trains/hour).
Your own research may produce slightly different results to quibble over but the conclusion is clear.
Totally unproven technology? – NO! Technical risk – almost zero. If there is no business case, no environmental case and no money to pay for it then questioning the technology is irrelevant.
Y – It is not a true network, just a line that splits in two that divides the East from West – No Manchester/Leeds or Manchester/Newcastle for eg.
Y – As the article on Conservative home said, “20th century technology for a 21st century problem”. France built it’s TGV in the 70’s, it is backwards thinking to say that we should now, in 2011, copy what they did. Once upon a time, Britain used to lead the world, now all we do is follow, what has happened to visionary politicians?
Y – Britain is too densely populated, and the distance between mayor cities too small for HSR to work.
StopHS2 and others are working in the public interest, unlike the government, HS2 is a terrible mistake, and it must be stopped.
Actually, Tokyo to Osaka is the same distance apart as London to Edinburgh, and there are stations between the two cities.
Also, it would be a network as a network is two or more lines which connect with each other.
Funds will come from DfT funds – and they spend billions each year.
Very interested to explore why you think DfT funds can be instead used for health, education, …?
They all come out of the same pot, our taxes. The treasury decide who gets what and they all have to fight and justify the NEED for their slice. Hammond is (as he has recently proven to be) obviously a devious smooth tongued scrapper.
Stophs2 propaganda again, each department within the Government has a budget each year and they determine what capital project they require. It not down to the person to determine the amount of cash that they require, so all the name calling for Hammond is pointless. Each department has to justify the amount they require and that budget is fixed. The Dft can “NOT “spend there budget on building School or hospitals. As they have nought to do with transport. So please will people on here please stop say the money could be better spent on thing that are NOT transport.
Thanks Morris, very helpful. There was me thinking that the DfT budget from 2017 (when construction will actually start) hasn’t been set yet and the next Government might even want a say in saying where the money goes!
So how do the Government plan and pay for major infrastructure projects that span over several terms of office?
Ian you know the answer to that one!
Anyway it doesn’t mean that one parliament can commit funding to a project and the next can’t cancel it. Thats how we have ended up with aircraft(less) carriers.
I want to see my taxes spent where most people will benefit (schools, hospitals, police, eldery care) not some riduclous project with unproven benefits for the few. Even if the Gov agree to build HS2 now, it still may never happen 2017 is a long way off and you only have to open your eyes to what is happeneing to Europe to see what a crazy idea spending billions on this is.