Half an hour worth billions - to somebody
There is a lot of steam to puff under the bridge before Thomas the Supercharged Tank Engine has any hope of travelling from London to Birmingham in less time than it takes to boil a kettle or whatever the current claim is.
Transport Secretary Justine Greening invoked the spirit of George Stephenson and the Victorians claiming they would be proud of this new high speed line neatly missing out the fact that the people who actually invented rail travel would have been appalled at what Government had down to it in the past 30 years. We don't even make our own engines and rolling stock.
All the usual suspects are behind all this. There are the banks who, as usual, will make a fortune out of juggling the figures to raise the finance, the big four accountancy firms who will fill their boots with consultancy fees and then the consortia, with banks in that trough as well, carving up the lucrative, think of a figure and double it, contracts between them.
Other nations manage to have cheap, reasonably efficient rail travel with a mix of local, regional and national trains, stopping trains and expresses, even double decker trains to increase capacity. Italy, for example, might be broke as a nation but its railways work just fine and people can not only afford them, they use them but then again in Italy they are a public service, something we no longer bother with in this country.
Here we have a pricing and ticketing structure that needs a PhD in applied maths to work out, artificially reduced capacity putting profits before passengers and prices which are eye-wateringly expensive. It is cheaper to hire a car and pay London parking than travel by train. If there are four of you travelling first class return it is £1016!
But back to HS2. I have still to see any argument as to why it is going to make us the richest and most progressive nation on earth, creating 40,000 jobs, untold wealth and all the other spurious and unquantifiable figures belched out by the Government machine if it takes half an hour less to travel from Birmingham to London or in years to come 40 minutes less from Newcastle or an hour less from Edinburgh.
What are people going to do with the extra 30 minutes that is so important and cannot be done now? Am I not alone in thinking if all this money is available it would be better spent getting our existing rail network up to the level where it could once more be called a service.
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Roger Clarke - BirminghamâÂÂs very own Grumpy Old Man on what gets right up his nose.
Passengers will save 30 minutes on HS2 and then spend 15 minutes walking up to New Street Station which is so central for buisnesses in Birmingham.
Passengers travelling to the NEC and Airport will arrive at a station that is 3/4 mile further away than International.
Doesn't make sense to me!
Build longer platforms, add more British made coaches and cut the number of little used first class coaches. Then have a clear, easy, reasonable pricing structure.
That makes very good sense to me.
Shouldn't take 14 years. Shouldn't cost £32 billion. Should create plenty of jobs NOW.
Careful - you are in danger of being accused of being sensible. You could add to that taking over running the railways again as each franchise runs out so that we could have an integrated transport system again.
If British Rail had had the subsidies - and compensation - doled out to the rail companies in the dog's dinner of a transport system we now have we would all be travelling first class return with a personal steward and change out of a tenner.
HS2 looks like another way of pouring public money into private hands for a scheme that shows absolutely no justification or benefit in the real world which lies outside Planet Whitehall.