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HS2 may be a mess, but it’s still essential for the future of UK rail travel

   Cancelling the £80bn rail project would prove a vote-winner
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   serious risk is that the extreme short-termism of power-hungry
   politicians will cause lasting damage to the UK. And a prime example is
   the threat to High Speed 2.

Created with Sketch. World's best train journeys
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   Belmond

   As you may know, HS2 is the scheme to build a new Y-shaped railway
   connecting London with Birmingham (phase one), with a western arm
   extending to Manchester and an eastern branch to Leeds (phase 2). Some
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   You may be strongly against the project – especially in a week when the
   chairman of HS2, Allan Cook, published what he called a “Stocktake” of
   the project. He warns of “an upward revision of the funding envelope”,
   which in English means that phase one will cost 40 per cent more than
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     * HS2 is the only option for Britain’s railways

   Cook also called the plan to open phase 1 as planned in 2026 “not
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   Twelve years from now, there could be two ceremonies involving
   high-speed rail in adjacent countries. The French will be marking half
   a century since the first Train à Grande Vitesse ran on the line from
   Paris to Lyon, in 1981. The British, meanwhile, may be celebrating the
   completion of the first domestic-only high-speed link.

   Hopelessly optimistic budgets and schedules for big rail projects are
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   London’s much-delayed Crossrail project were both seriously botched.

   Yet HS2, or something like it, will be desperately needed in
   generations to come. It is not about accelerating the journey from
   Birmingham to London by 20 minutes, though that will have some
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   however much of it remains when the line finally opens.

   Each inter-city train transferred from existing lines to High Speed 2
   will release, it is claimed, “capacity for 11 new fast commuter or
   freight trains” by taking out the fastest services.
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   bulldozers are poised. It would also play well in regions such as
   southwest England, South Wales and East Anglia which will see no direct
   benefit from HS2.

   But most of the tens of millions of people in the 2040s, 50s and beyond
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   dispensable as distinguished parliamentarians.

   HS2 has thus far been poorly specified, planned and managed. Like our
   politics, it is a mess. But it is still essential.
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   High Speed 2 |  Brexit |  HS2 |
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