Voice your opinion on High Speed Rail 2
 

Hello,

I am a Television Production student at Buckinghamshires New University. For my dissertation I am producing a 10 - 15 minute doccumentary regarding the High Speed Rail 2 proposals.

I am calling on anybody who has a view on the proposals, whatever side of the fence, anybody who may be working on the project, live alongside the proposed route, or even faces demolition or compulsory purchase orders.

Dont hesitate to PM me, or email me on [email protected]


I joined this forum because it appears to be a keen community of rail enthusiasts!

Regards,

Harry Seager

Hello Harry and welcome to the Railway Forum. My view is that by the time work starts, if ever, it will already be too late and out of date. With the country in the financial state it is in, where is the money going to come from? Probably higher fares and tax. Just my view.

Welcome to the Forum Harry.

As ever in this country in recent times we have failed to invest at the right time. In the case of High Speed Rail: The 1980's. We are now having to play catch up. The process will be further slowed by the NIMBY's.

It is an investment we have to make if we are to enjoy High Speed Links with the rest of Europe which do not involve getting to an airport. We also need the links to Glasgow and Edinburgh to speed up communication North - South to encouraged development away from the South-East.

Best wishes,

John H-T.

Welcome to the forum.
 

Hi Harry, welcome to the forum.

In Buckinghamshire you'll find plenty of NIMBYs who are against it. ;)

As a suburban train driver I'm fairly against it too. Money's hard to come by at the moment and I believe that rather than cutting down journey times a little on just one route, the country would be better served by using the cash to update the existing infrastructure and remove the awful bottlenecks at specific locations....by such schemes as - creating more flying junctions, adding an extra pair of lines for freight, and adding passing loops.

IMO, railways are for mass transit, and we would be better off sorting out the hell that the majority of passengers (ie, commuters) have to endure.

Putting it metaphorically....when the whole house is tottering, we ought to be reinforcing the brickwork rather than installing brand new lounge curtains !

Hope this helps,

Flying Pig.

Harry, I assume that you have seen the current copy of "Rail" (December 29th 2010-January 11 2011).

The Editorial Comment by Nigel Harris is on HS2 and there are more details on HS2 elsewhere in the magazine.

Two links from the Editorial are worth studying:

http://www.greengauge21.net/publicat...tics-are-wrong

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/t...-together.html

Hope they are useful.

Best wishes,

John H-T.

For my money and that of the EU central bank we need HS2 as soon as possible.
Fast connections to other EU countries throughout UK are essential. Traffic taken away from existing Victorian routes will ease the strain and allow more slots for EU freight to transit day & night over the present system without being bottled up and shunted to one side. The more of those ghastly trucks from E.Europe which are poorly maintained and often driven recklessly are put on train wagons or simply loaded as rail freight the better.
The amount of quality time which can be spent on a laptop whilst travelling by train is so valuable to businessmen and if suitable compartments were made available for things like conferencing where some privacy is needed then a trip from Edinburgh to Frankfurt could get a lot of useful work out of the way. Sleepers will be very popular as well. Maybe even stick the car on the back of a high speed motor-rail for me holidays.
Bring it on.

Thanks for everyones input, are there any other opinions? If anybody knows anybody who wishes to be interviewed, please let me know.

Welcome to the forum :)

What's the cost of building a brand new route versus further upgrading of the existing West Coast and East Coast main lines? If all the fast trains were diverted onto HS2, that would free up the existing routes for freight and suburban traffic and many of the junctions and stations that are currently bottlenecks on the existing routes would no longer be so much of an issue.

Also, building a separate new route would not cause disruption to existing traffic as piecemeal improvements to the Victorian infrastructure would. Witness the £10 billion or so the last West Coast Main Line cost - it would have been almost and cheap to have built HS2 and far less disruptive to rail travellers.