HS2

It does nothing at all for the proper North. Huge huge waste of money not to mention the environmental costs.

Buckinghamshire has been ravaged by HS2 . Woods torn up, beautiful agricultural land a sea of earth works and tunnels, beautiful houses having to be abandoned and years of traffic jams along the route where earth works cross road. All for nothing? Well all for billions of pounds.

It was never worth it to start with.

Time to scrap it now before more billions are thrown at it.

I live in Bucks.

Some old friends in north Bucks have HS2 yards from the perimeter of their home and grounds. They sold it in the end for much less than it was worth to HS2 and a week or so before the final documents were signed HS2 said there was something wrong with the drains and knocked another £20,000 of the selling price. 😳

My understanding is that the government has refused to commit to building the line to Manchester and to Euston, not scrapping it altogether. It's going to be a railway line from nowhere to nowhere.

Yes, tbh it is difficult to understand exactly what is going to happen, given that the dopey junior minister seems unable to answer a single question, but it seems reasonably certain that it won’t be going to Manchester, May go to Birmingham and won’t be starting/ending at Euston.

It also appears that thousands of poor souls are stuck with their properties under compulsory purchase which HS2 won’t release, even though the plan is caput.

The talk is scrapping north of Birmingham, in this area the amount of work and disruption is staggering, the waste is unbelievable. Whoever conceived the project should be flogged through the streets because the costs were grossly underestimated, it’s likely to cost double the estimate just to go half the distance.

Our rail network is archaic and needs upgrading. You can’t work on existing tracks without massive upheaval. We need to get freight off the roads and onto the railways. They’re just pushing the can down the road and it’s a popular move because people assume it’s just a vanity project. Train travel in this country is a joke compared to train travel in other parts of the world. The channel tunnel would never have been built if cost and public opinion had been a factor because nothing is ever going to get cheaper.

It was a piece pf window dressing that rapidly became an embarrassment to the government. What was really needed was a line across from NW to NE so people can get to work.

From the first time it was proposed I've always said it was a massive waste of money and came nowhere near the "North."
A better use of the money would have been to upgrade the existing rail infrastructure, and incest in new trains.

invest in new trains.

I don’t think it was ever clear who HS2 was supposed to serve. Business people when more and more people were already networking online? My son was working on networking projects around 15 years ago and said then this was not future thinking. Stations that were not centrally located, thereby negating any proposed savings in travel time before any work began? It was sold as high speed, then not about speed, who actually knew?

The whole thing seems to have been a huge waste of time and money, has caused prolonged misery to people along the route, heartbreak for some who have lost their beloved homes for no purpose, and the environmental cost has been irredeemable. My son lived in a house in ancient woodland which has gone - it can never be replaced.

I find the whole thing obscene.

We still benefit from railway projects such as London Underground that must have been immensely disruptive and costly for our ancestors . I’m in favour of rail travel so I was in favour of the original full plan for HS2. I still am . However , every car journey we have made here for a number of years has been impacted by closures and poor road maintenance . There has been appalling destruction of natural habitat and rural environment in every direction , and 24/7 tunnelling noise for those living near the tunnel . HS2 now need to finish the job asap , clear up the carnage they’ve made of our area and go. There will be ice cold fury from many here if they down tools and walk away from this . I plan to head into London one day and travel on HS2 so I can judge for myself the financial value of 20 minutes off the time taken to reach Birmingham ! . I just hope that one day those living in the North of the country have some benefit from this or get the infrastructure they really need .

In the summer I flew over the Midlands stretch of the HS2 earthworks, I was shocked at the enormity of the devastation to the environment. I hope there’s money for restoration as far as it’s possible.

I do hope it will be scrapped. Has affected members of my family who live in an area affected by it.

I always said that I hoped the Bucks opponents of HS2 never travelled by Eurostar without thinking of the ravaging of the Kent countryside required to achieve that.
It is true as someone said earlier that investment in the railways is what is needed. I believed in HS2, though I thought it should have been built from the North down and latterly thought the arrival at Gospel Oak rather than Euston a bit of a cop-out.

In the initial planning stages, it was planned to bring HS2 through to Meadowhall in Sheffield rather than the central station. This was going to cut twenty minutes off the journey to London. They didn’t factor in that it would then take an additional twenty five minutes to travel from Meadowhall into the city centre where most people needed to be. People in this area were set to see their properties demolished and properties already on the market - some newly built - became unsaleable. It would plough through the Transpennine Trail, two local farms, numerous businesses and a stately home. Then, they made changes to the route, and finally took the plans off the table altogether. Because it wasn’t going to be “feasible to bring it this far north.” We haven’t heard a dickie bird about it since. I don’t believe it will ever come ever further north than Birmingham.

It was a similar situation in Nottingham and Derby Greyduster. The station was going to be between the two cities - so no saving in time as people would need to board a tram or a bus to get to one or the other. None of this made any sense and none of it was well thought through. But a lot of people have made a lot of money out of contracts that might never come to fruition. Complete mismanagement and profligate waste.

J52

In the summer I flew over the Midlands stretch of the HS2 earthworks, I was shocked at the enormity of the devastation to the environment. I hope there’s money for restoration as far as it’s possible.

It’s even worse from the ground.

I listened to some of the debate and found that not only was the minister useless he was also very rude.

MayBee70

Our rail network is archaic and needs upgrading. You can’t work on existing tracks without massive upheaval. We need to get freight off the roads and onto the railways. They’re just pushing the can down the road and it’s a popular move because people assume it’s just a vanity project. Train travel in this country is a joke compared to train travel in other parts of the world. The channel tunnel would never have been built if cost and public opinion had been a factor because nothing is ever going to get cheaper.

A vanity project for rich businessmen to get to London 20 minutes earlier. lt will never benefit my part of the country, better to rip up existing lines and replace them. Gov to ensure everyone has a decent rail service, and not just city dwellers. So many people uprooted, lives and habitats destroyed forever, all for vanity.

I always thought it was a vanity project and not worth the enormous amounts of money that have been thrown at it, not to mention the destruction of habitat and homes in Bucks, all for what to cut a tiny amount of time off the journey. Reading the testaments of rail users in the north of England, where the rail service seems pretty poor, surely the money would have been better spent in providing better railway infrastructure in such areas where that is needed.

TerriBull

I always thought it was a vanity project and not worth the enormous amounts of money that have been thrown at it, not to mention the destruction of habitat and homes in Bucks, all for what to cut a tiny amount of time off the journey. Reading the testaments of rail users in the north of England, where the rail service seems pretty poor, surely the money would have been better spent in providing better railway infrastructure in such areas where that is needed.

But to change existing infrastructure is very disruptive. Currently no trains run north of Newcastle at weekends and that’s just to do maintenance on the lines so buses are used. Just remember also that line work is done by people and it’s extremely dangerous. My son used to work on train tracks at night and I used to sneak back from work to check that his car was on the drive and he was safe.

I am reminded of the Brenda from Bristol moment when an elderly lady was interviewed in Birmingham when work on HS2 was underway.

If they wanted a 20 minute shorter journey to Birmingham, couldn't they just get an earlier train?

www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2017/apr/18/does-brenda-from-bristol-have-the-best-reaction-to-the-election-news-video