On the wrong track

This week, the Government cancelled the most important part of HS2, the part that would act as a diversion for both the east and west coast main lines.

It is so short sighted, I saw it coming years ago.

Here's the thing about HS2: its not about high speed. Its about capacity.

In the 1990s, the UK spent £10billion upgrading the WCML and by the time they finished, a decade of closures and repairs and rail replacement buses, there was almost no change.

HS2 offers, at a stroke, a huge increase in netword capacity, something no other plan will do.

Not that there is a plan.

The HS in HS2 stands for high speed, refers to the loading gauge, not that it is actually fast. THis means that the tracks are further apart to allow higher closing speeds on adjacesnt tracks, something that is restricted to about 250mph on traditional lines.

HS2 was to be a songle speed railway, meaning trains could travel on it with a few minutes gap, a high speed and high capacity railway. Traditional lines have mixed speed trains, with expresses mixing with local services and freight trains, this reduces capacity. HS2 would have removed the expresses and allowed more local services and freight.

What the Government now plans is laughable, the headline being faster speeds on traditional lines.

This would only be possible by removing intermediate stops, thus would make existing sevices even worse. There is no extra capacity to be squeezed out of traditional lines, there is no plan.

Just lies and spin.

And what this Government is doing is mismanaged decline, everything getting slightly more shit year on year.

No HS2 means more roads, means more pollution, more destruction of the countryside, far more than two high speed lines could ever do.

Well done Greens.