Why are people opposed to HS2? (And other HS2 discussion)

[matacaster]

What's wrong with Branches?
With modern rolling stock the time penalty from reversing is minor and why would they need to go to more than two of these cities anyway?

This saves money as each city only needs one route into the centre.

For people in the north, connectivity to London is presently, I suggest, little to no problem at all - (circa 2 hours, 200 miles Leeds to London). The journey times are very reasonable, the stock is decent with plenty of facilities. Any minor overcrowding is essentially just early morning and to a lesser extent evening return.

Contrast that with
Leeds- Sheffield (1 hour, 40 miles)
Leeds to Birmingham (1hr 46mins, 100 miles)
Leeds to Bristol (3hrs 45 mins, approx 160miles)
Leeds to Liverpool (1hr 35mins, 76 Miles)
Leeds to Glasgow (4hrs 11 mins, 179 miles)

all above figures from internet searches and note that times given are from Leeds a major hub, people who do not live near Leeds will have a harder time.

Cross Country trains are about half the length they need to be and TPE will be very near the capacity of the new trains by the time they eventually get fully introduced. There is more need for extra capacity on cross country than on trains to London.

 

[HSTEd]

For people in the north, connectivity to London is presently, I suggest, little to no problem at all - (circa 2 hours, 200 miles Leeds to London). The journey times are very reasonable, the stock is decent with plenty of facilities. Any minor overcrowding is essentially just early morning and to a lesser extent evening return.

And this is relevant how?

Contrast that with
Leeds- Sheffield (1 hour, 40 miles)
Leeds to Birmingham (1hr 46mins, 100 miles)
Leeds to Bristol (3hrs 45 mins, approx 160miles)
Leeds to Liverpool (1hr 35mins, 76 Miles)
Leeds to Glasgow (4hrs 11 mins, 179 miles)

all above figures from internet searches and note that times given are from Leeds a major hub, people who do not live near Leeds will have a harder time.

HS2 will allow trains to do the Leeds to Birmingham journey, and the journey time advantage will be so huge that a transfer to an XC train south would be easily worth while.


Leeds-Birmingham will be ~49 minutes apparently.
The Leeds-Sheffield journey time might not improve much, largely due to the hubris of the City Council, that demanded a dead end terminus rather than a through station at a massive transport hub, but there we go.

Cross Country trains are about half the length they need to be and TPE will be very near the capacity of the new trains by the time they eventually get fully introduced. There is more need for extra capacity on cross country than on trains to London.

Good job that HS2 will bleed off almost all the XC traffic on the core section with Birmingham-North East via HS2 trains then isn't it?
And via London will eat most of the North to South East XC traffic.

 

[TrafficEng]

3) the reason that HS1-esque follow motorways but smooth out corners approach wasn't taken with HS2 was due to the big environmental problems created by narrow islands of land trapped between railway on one side and motorway on the other, making it difficult for animals to escape and all that.

This is interesting. In principle it shouldn't be difficult to build some badger tunnels or deer bridges to enable wildlife to enter and exit these areas at will. Or alternatively, if the areas are fenced off in a way that stops wildlife escaping, then how did it get in in the first place?

Not that I want to take sides in the HS2 route vs some other route debate. I just want to point out in the context of the thread title that some of the reasons given for HS2 being as it is designed sometimes come over as not being especially strong arguments (especially if you think how a layperson might see them) which exacerbates the feeling the public are being sold 'a bit of a lemon'.

In the scheme of things, having some pockets of land sterilised between a motorway and a railway shouldn't be a 'big environmental problem', if anything the land should be seen as an environmental opportunity.

 

[si404]

Leeds- Sheffield (1 hour, 40 miles)
Leeds to Birmingham (1hr 46mins, 100 miles)
Leeds to Bristol (3hrs 45 mins, approx 160miles)

These could be drastically improved by building a High Speed Line between Leeds and Birmingham (you will, at least initially, have to change at Birmingham for Bristol).

And from that line, you can fairly cheaply build a chord connecting it to the WCML-reliving High Speed Line and run London trains creating a similar effect on the ECML to that on the WCML. :P

Your other journeys (Liverpool, Glasgow, etc) can be improved by expanding the 21st century rail network - NPR, further HS2 phases and what not. But for them to happen, HS2 needs to happen.

 

[Grimsby town]

For people in the north, connectivity to London is presently, I suggest, little to no problem at all - (circa 2 hours, 200 miles Leeds to London). The journey times are very reasonable, the stock is decent with plenty of facilities. Any minor overcrowding is essentially just early morning and to a lesser extent evening return.

Contrast that with
Leeds- Sheffield (1 hour, 40 miles)
Leeds to Birmingham (1hr 46mins, 100 miles)
Leeds to Bristol (3hrs 45 mins, approx 160miles)
Leeds to Liverpool (1hr 35mins, 76 Miles)
Leeds to Glasgow (4hrs 11 mins, 179 miles)

all above figures from internet searches and note that times given are from Leeds a major hub, people who do not live near Leeds will have a harder time.

Cross Country trains are about half the length they need to be and TPE will be very near the capacity of the new trains by the time they eventually get fully introduced. There is more need for extra capacity on cross country than on trains to London.

As mentioned above HS2 significantly decreases journey time on the Leeds to Birmingham Corridor. It also significantly decreases journey times between Leeds to Sheffield and Leeds to Liverpool when coupled with NPR improvements. Leeds to Bristol would also be significantly quicker either by changing at Old Oak Common or Birmingham. Providing a through service between Leeds and Bristol on HS2 would be welcome and that is one of HS2s shortfalls

Journey times are also reduced between the following:
Manchester and Birmingham
Scotland and Birmingham
Newcastle / Teeside (with a change at Darlington) / York and Birmingham

It also needs to be considered how an improvement of an hour on London services improves a number of other journeys and releases capacity on other lines. For example crosscountry capacity will be released as it will be quicker to go from Manchester / Leeds to Reading/ Southampton via London. North Wales will get quicker journeys to London and Birmingham via changing at Crewe. Yes not everywhere will have direct services but the number of journeys influenced by HS2 is huge and is beyond just a couple of cities. It is impossible to list every journey that sees improved time precisely because there are so many.

 

[TrafficEng]

That will only work if you're willing to pay to build another new railway line connecting OOC with the bits of London further East (in addition to Crossrail, which by itself will have nowhere near the capacity to accept 18 train-loads of people an hour a large proportion of whom will want to head for central London). I think you'll find that would end up a lot more expensive (and more inconvenient to a lot of people) than just tunnelling HS2 to Euston.

But we are going to have to pay to build another new railway line connecting Euston to places people want to get to, and that project is neither confirmed nor funded from the existing HS2 budget.

However, if you had been proposing HS2 should itself connect OOC with the most obvious place further East (i.e. Stratford) then at least some of the opposition to HS2 might be assauged.

 

[si404]

Or alternatively, if the areas are fenced off in a way that stops wildlife escaping, then how did it get in in the first place?

The animals were there before.

I'm giving a remembered summary of what HS2 learnt from HS1 that they made in one or two paragraphs of one article from August 2012 in response to the HS1 designer suggesting the route should follow the M40. I know I didn't have the full argument (I too thought - surely badger tunnels/deer bridges/etc would sort this when I wrote my post earlier), but it wasn't the main one on this point (though it did come up in the rebuttal of the guy who felt he should have designed it that was mostly attacking his errors with HS1) - which was human isolation: looking at documents from route selection, there's talk of "significantly more communities would be at risk of isolation through being surrounded by transport infrastructure, including large clusters of residential dwellings, compared to the consultation route" with a motorway-following route.

The M40 route was £19.5bn and 56 minutes Euston-Curzon Street, the M1 route was £18.7bn and 55 minutes Euston-Curzon Street, the consultation route was £16.5bn and 49 minutes Euston-Curzon Street. The consultation route is the worst performer on nature grounds, but the M40 is very nearly as bad, just with different problems (including the cut offs), and the M1 corridor isn't much better ("relatively small environmental gain") - while there's less impact on ancient woodland and AONB, it's passing under 18 times the amount of buildings (6400 vs 350).

 

[matacaster]

And this is relevant how?


HS2 will allow trains to do the Leeds to Birmingham journey, and the journey time advantage will be so huge that a transfer to an XC train south would be easily worth while.


Leeds-Birmingham will be ~49 minutes apparently.
The Leeds-Sheffield journey time might not improve much, largely due to the hubris of the City Council, that demanded a dead end terminus rather than a through station at a massive transport hub, but there we go.



Good job that HS2 will bleed off almost all the XC traffic on the core section with Birmingham-North East via HS2 trains then isn't it?
And via London will eat most of the North to South East XC traffic.

Most of your improvements rely on phase 2b which is most likely to get canned.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I don't expect HS2 to solve every capacity problem in the country. However, you suggested that it will solve all the most important capacity problems. I pointed out, with the single magic world 'Castlefield', that this is not correct.

Castlefield needs doing, but I'm not convinced it is as important as the south WCML because it can be solved by reducing frequencies and lengthening trains.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Cross Country trains are about half the length they need to be and TPE will be very near the capacity of the new trains by the time they eventually get fully introduced. There is more need for extra capacity on cross country than on trains to London.

But that capacity is very cheap - rolling stock, SDO and the odd extended platform. For instance, XC could have a nice new fleet of 7 or 8-car Class 80x for a fraction of the cost of HS2.

Similarly, for Northern, get those 2-car 195s extended to 3 and the 3s to 4.

They should of course do both.

 

[matacaster]

And this is relevant how?


HS2 will allow trains to do the Leeds to Birmingham journey, and the journey time advantage will be so huge that a transfer to an XC train south would be easily worth while.


Leeds-Birmingham will be ~49 minutes apparently.
The Leeds-Sheffield journey time might not improve much, largely due to the hubris of the City Council, that demanded a dead end terminus rather than a through station at a massive transport hub, but there we go.



Good job that HS2 will bleed off almost all the XC traffic on the core section with Birmingham-North East via HS2 trains then isn't it?
And via London will eat most of the North to South East XC traffic.

The times I gave are relevant because increasing speed and capacity between Leeds and Sheffield is relatively easy, cheap, little scenic stuff and big time gains.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

However, if you had been proposing HS2 should itself connect OOC with the most obvious place further East (i.e. Stratford) then at least some of the opposition to HS2 might be assauged.

Funnily enough, I was arguing for that on railforums a couple of years ago. But as I recall those arguments got badly squashed in a long discussion with @Bald Rick in which he pointed out that there is no room underground for HS2 to extend Eastwards beyond Euston: The entire underground 'land' to the East of Euston is taken up with tube lines and some very deep and very expensively equipped basements of the British Library and Francis Crick Institute, and the little that is left is reserved for Crossrail2. And apparently trying to go further South is also useless - too many tube lines in the way. So extending HS2 to Stratford appears to be in the 'would be lovely but it's all but impossible' category.

 

[TrafficEng]

The animals were there before.

Of course they are. Which is the point. No modern construction project would be allowed to encircle wildlife so it is unable to escape. Before the main construction starts the site would be fenced off and any wildlife which hasn't already moved on would be trapped and released elsewhere.

So any animals in small parcels of land would be relocated and unable to get back in, and for lager areas of land the argument to have permanent wildlife access/egress points is much greater anyway.

- which was human isolation: looking at documents from route selection, there's talk of "significantly more communities would be at risk of isolation through being surrounded by transport infrastructure, including large clusters of residential dwellings, compared to the consultation route" with a motorway-following route.

This is an important point for the posters who don't understand why the high design speed is an issue. The straighter you draw the line the less ability you have to avoid adverse impacts on communities (and the environment). If you can't avoid severance or obliteration because the design speed won't allow it, you have to be prepared to justify the need for speed.

When people were told route 'X' was better than route 'Y' because it would save 6 minutes between Euston and Curzon Street their confusion is understandable now they are being told it isn't really about speed but is all about a capacity problem (remote from where they have chosen to live).

HS2's problem is in the understanding of objectives and conveying those clearly and precisely to a sceptical public.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Will this additional east-west line cost more than Crossrail 2, which will presumably have to be devoted to taking HS2 pasengers away from Euston at the expense of London commuters if we apply your logic about Crossrail 1 to it ?

Crossrail2 is not being proposed ONLY to absorb HS2 passengers at Euston. As I understand it, it's being proposed mainly in order to relieve capacity and provide some more badly needed paths on the SouthWest main line from Waterloo and to similarly relieve capacity on the vastly overcrowded Northern and Victoria lines. In the process, it will also provide much faster and more convenient access from large parts of SouthWest and NorthEast London right into the centre of London, provide a new direct connection from those parts of London to long distance trains at both Kings Cross and Euston, and relieve capacity at Euston itself. And that last point obviously has huge relevance to HS2. But claiming that CR2 is devoted to HS2 (and inferring that its cost should be viewed in that light) isn't at all correct.

 

[TrafficEng]

Funnily enough, I was arguing for that on railforums a couple of years ago. But as I recall those arguments got badly squashed in a long discussion with @Bald Rick in which he pointed out that there is no room underground for HS2 to extend Eastwards beyond Euston: The entire underground 'land' to the East of Euston is taken up with tube lines and some very deep and very expensively equipped basements of the British Library and Francis Crick Institute, and the little that is left is reserved for Crossrail2.

@Bald Rick is correct. But only after you have limited the options by deciding that Euston is the only option.

And apparently trying to go further South is also useless - too many tube lines in the way. So extending HS2 to Stratford appears to be in the 'would be lovely but it's all but impossible' category.

Likewise, if you decide the only option is to try going further south.

But further discussion on that is probably too speculative to be on this thread and pointless because the die has been cast. HS2 will either arrive at a near-surface Euston dead-end, or never happen at all.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I'm afraid I can't share your confidence in the people who run the railway system. From new trains in Liverpool which foul the signals, to the Castlefield debacle, to the late and far over budget Crossrail, how.many projects have we seen where we were assured that the experts knew what they were doing, and it turned out that they didn't ?

I wasn't claiming that confidence in the people who run the rail system (although as a side-note I would think they do know what they are doing a bit better then they are sometimes given credit for: It's very easy to criticise people doing work in field different from your own when you don't understand all the constraints those people are under). I was specifically claiming confidence in the people who have worked on designing the HS2 route and figured out where the best place to put it. Citing Crossrail isn't relevant to that because the failures at Crossrail are clearly failures of management in building it: I've not heard anyone seriously claiming that the people who decided On Crossrail's route fouled up and that it should've taken a different route. And thinking the very large number of recent rail infrastructure projects, off the top of my head I can't think of many that appear to have failed because the planners made an inappropriate choice of route/location given the financial etc. constraints. The only one that immediately comes to my mind as a strong possibility is East Midlands Parkway.

In the case of HS2, I'm not calling for a system which is perfect, or which solves every particular problem. I'm suggesting improvements which, to me, seem quite obvious, and relatively easily attainable. Does it take an expert in rail planning, for example, to question why we have terminal stations at Brum and Leeds when there is somewhere obvious for trains to go from them after leaving HS2 ?

You can question it, but in the case of Birmingham, the answer is pretty obvious: A through station would add billions - maybe tens of billions - to the cost because of the need to tunnel and build an underground station roughly under New Street. By keeping to a terminal station, it was possible to use a surface level site a few minutes away from the existing stations that just happened to be free and suitable. I'm not sure about the situation at Leeds.

 

[HSTEd]

Funnily enough, I was arguing for that on railforums a couple of years ago. But as I recall those arguments got badly squashed in a long discussion with @Bald Rick in which he pointed out that there is no room underground for HS2 to extend Eastwards beyond Euston: The entire underground 'land' to the East of Euston is taken up with tube lines and some very deep and very expensively equipped basements of the British Library and Francis Crick Institute, and the little that is left is reserved for Crossrail2. And apparently trying to go further South is also useless - too many tube lines in the way. So extending HS2 to Stratford appears to be in the 'would be lovely but it's all but impossible' category.

If you are going to Stratford would you really go to Euston though?
If you can connect to Crossrail at Stratford then there is no pressing need to go to Old Oak Common, and you end up with a completely different London approach alignment.

If you use a traditional London terminal at all it probably ends up being Liverpool Street.

 

[miami]

Contrast that with
Leeds- Sheffield (1 hour, 40 miles)
Leeds to Birmingham (1hr 46mins, 100 miles)
Leeds to Bristol (3hrs 45 mins, approx 160miles)
Leeds to Liverpool (1hr 35mins, 76 Miles)
Leeds to Glasgow (4hrs 11 mins, 179 miles)

HS2b times will mean
Leeds-Sheffield 27m
Leeds-Birmingham 49m
Leeds-Bristol: 3h

I do think phase 3 should include BM interchange via Worcestershie Parkway to Bristol Parkway and connect to GWML (or even a branch to Newport down the west of the Severn)

Fortunatly even just phase 2b will take add at least 5 paths an hour on the ECML

 

[jfowkes]

The only one that immediately comes to my mind as a strong possibility is East Midlands Parkway.

Off-topic, but even EMD isn't really that badly sited, it's just that the parking charges are extortionate, given that you then also need to pay for a train ticket to wherever you're going. For Nottingham especially the tram P&Rs are all free so people have no real incentive to use EMD apart from a small time saving.

 

[B&I]

I wasn't claiming that confidence in the people who run the rail system (although as a side-note I would think they do know what they are doing a bit better then they are sometimes given credit for: It's very easy to criticise people doing work in field different from your own when you don't understand all the constraints those people are under). I was specifically claiming confidence in the people who have worked on designing the HS2 route and figured out where the best place to put it. Citing Crossrail isn't relevant to that because the failures at Crossrail are clearly failures of management in building it: I've not heard anyone seriously claiming that the people who decided On Crossrail's route fouled up and that it should've taken a different route. And thinking the very large number of recent rail infrastructure projects, off the top of my head I can't think of many that appear to have failed because the planners made an inappropriate choice of route/location given the financial etc. constraints. The only one that immediately comes to my mind as a strong possibility is East Midlands Parkway.

I'll name you another: Ordsall Chord.

You can question it, but in the case of Birmingham, the answer is pretty obvious: A through station would add billions - maybe tens of billions - to the cost because of the need to tunnel and build an underground station roughly under New Street. By keeping to a terminal station, it was possible to use a surface level site a few minutes away from the existing stations that just happened to be free and suitable. I'm not sure about the situation at Leeds.

So, to save some money, no doubt spent on permitting 400 km/h running somewhere else, we end up with a dramatically less useful layout at Brum

 

[HSTEd]

So, to save some money, no doubt spent on permitting 400 km/h running somewhere else, we end up with a dramatically less useful layout at Brum

How is it less useful?
A terminus station is no less useful than a through station in the modern era.

How many trains would realistically be running through Birmingham?

NOrth of Birmingham we are not short of paths so we can run short point to point trains if desired.

A through layout is certianly not worth the many many many billions it would cost.

 

[B&I]

Actually 40 minutes. I've corrected my previous post, and that's without clawing back any of the 10 minutes non tilt penalty north of Wigan with better performance and a targeted review of speeds. 50 minutes saving, as for Preston, should be feasible for Scotland IMHO. TPE services between Scotland and NW will also be able to benefit from increased non tilt speeds.

What has HS2 got to do with higher non-tilt speeds on TPE services, which won't use any HS2 trackage?

 

[B&I]

How is it less useful?
A terminus station is no less useful than a through station in the modern era.

Because it doesn't facilitate through running of cross-country services from the south and south-west to the East Midlands, Yorkshire and north east. As these services will presumably still have to run, the capacity uplift on the lines the eastern leg of HS2 will run parallel to will be reduced. Or is HS2 going to make life better for.XC users by requiring them, not only to change at Birmingham, but also to hoof it between stations ?

 

[B&I]

Who could disagree with your first paragraph? There have certainly been some great achievements—I'd cite Reading for one—but your list of débacles could indeed be hugely extended.

I do disagree, however, even if slightly, with your last paragraph. If you look at the planned junction-speeds and the layout of the lines as they approach Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds, the main line from London heads direct to a junction into the WCML around Golborne on the west side and to a junction into the ECML around Church Fenton on the east side, and Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds are all served by branches. This is a "London and ..." railway, not a railway to connect four cities. It replicates the present main lines, with an eventual target (many years away!) of Scotland.

If you look at where the captive services will be running, it is clear what the main geographical targets of HS2 (beyond facilitating more commuter services into Euston) are

 

[B&I]

I haven't seen a lot of dishonesty about the reasons for HS2? For the last 141 pages people have been screaming that it's primarily about capacity on the southern WCML. There are lots of other benefits too, but the biggest single impact will be there. Doesn't mean the benefits north of Birmingham aren't just as important, but the "headline" benefit in terms of sheer capacity uplift is the Birmingham-London section.

So why does its PR continually claim that it is for the benefit of the north of England, rather than being a way of keeping services to the north of England running whilst billions are spent to give more seats for commuters to Herts / Bucks / Northants ?

Even if in theory it would have been less expensive when planning it, it's surely more expensive now to throw away the current HS2 plans and completely realign the route through a new corridor? Not to mention the extra delay to the project.

So, even if the solution we've arrived at is wrong, we've already spent billions on it so let's plough ahead anyway.

 

[RLBH]

So why does its PR continually claim that it is for the benefit of the north of England, rather than being a way of keeping services to the north of England running whilst billions are spent to give more seats for commuters to Herts / Bucks / Northants ?

Because in the London bubble mindset that most of those in positions of power have, the extra seats for the Home Counties commuters need to happen one way or the other. The question is how little they can get away with providing to placate the Provinces.

 

[HSTEd]

Because it doesn't facilitate through running of cross-country services from the south and south-west to the East Midlands, Yorkshire and north east. As these services will presumably still have to run, the capacity uplift on the lines the eastern leg of HS2 will run parallel to will be reduced. Or is HS2 going to make life better for.XC users by requiring them, not only to change at Birmingham, but also to hoof it between stations ?

Well to start with the journey time saving will still be so enormous for destinations to Leeds and beyond that it would still be worth going from Curzon Street to New Street.
It's something like an hour saving for a few minutes walk or on the tram.

This can be further reduced, if it is desired, by providing a chord between the Moor STreet line and the route to King's Norton, although that would probably require at least one demolition.
A connection could also be achievd to allow connection between the classic rail network and HS2 near the Airport station, but given the absence of electrification or practical 320km/h bi modes, there is little point.

 

[B&I]

I didn't though. HS2 solves some important capacity problems. Others need other schemes.

In post #4173, you quoted my previous comment 'We should be working out what the most urgent problems on the network are, and addressing those'.

And added your own comment: 'That's what HS2 is'.

I, and anyone else who has to put up with travelling round the north regularly, would disagree very strongly with your suggestion that HS2 addresses the most urgent capacity problems in the country.

I illustrated my understanding above, based on what people who work on it have said*. You'll note my qualification of the words 'not possible'. Saying that certain things have been done in other countries is slightly misleading, because there is a lot of local variability. Further, we don't tend to hear about the stuff that hasn't happened elsewhere, only the stuff that has.

I agree Sheffield running north is a capacity problem.

*Of course, my memory is fallable. Somebody like @Bald Rick or similar may be able to provide a definitive answer on the Sheffield question.


As I understand (as stated before), the choice is either a dedicated HS2 through station at Meadowhall, or a stub terminus in the middle.


Again, as I understand, plans for a link northbound from Sheffield Centre back to HS2 are not that far advanced*. However, HS2's website does state that:

https://www.hs2.org.uk/stations/sheffield-midland/
....which means there is grounds to argue that there will be a northbound link.

Also, just because HS2 won't physically go north from Sheffield centre doesn't mean that the trains won't.

You'd better have a word with the other posters on here who say that a northward link from Sheffield falls into the far away province of Northern Prevarication Railway. I have to say your rather woolly explanation for how HS2 is meant to be dealing with this issue doesn't fill me with confidence that this is even part of HS2's brief.

Here's a thread on the matter: https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...c-but-liverpool-brum-regional-express.197629/

There's also been a much more detailed comment (#4202) with an explanation.

Re. Phase 1, the problem will come down to capacity between Crewe and Weaver Junction (my guess). After HS2 progresses up to near Wigan, I don't see why a Birmingham to Liverpool express shouldn't be on the cards. There is still plenty of time to lobby Network Rail when they start to draw up more concrete timetables.

Nothing in that thread explained the odd and arbitrary distinction either. Unsurprisngly, as it devolved into the usual mixture of '10 Reasons Why Liverpool Should Be Grateful With A Thrice Weekly Horse And Cart Service' and thunderingly unsubtle attempts to get the thread closed.

As the only link from Liverpool to HS2, even after phase 2, will remain via the Winsford bottleneck, which other posters have said prevents a Liverpool-Brum HS2 service, how do you plan for Brum-bound trains to reach HS2 from Liverpool ? A really long run-up and an Eddie Kidd ramp somewhere near Acton Bridge ?

 

[B&I]

Well to start with the journey time saving will still be so enormous for destinations to Leeds and beyond that it would still be worth going from Curzon Street to New Street.
It's something like an hour saving for a few minutes walk or on the tram.

This can be further reduced, if it is desired, by providing a chord between the Moor STreet line and the route to King's Norton, although that would require demolitions.
A connection could also be achievd to allow connection between the classic rail network and HS2 near the Airport station, but given the absence of electrification or practical 320km/h bi modes, there is little point.

Imagine the time savings if people didn't have to change at Brum, or walk between stations

 

[HSTEd]

Imagine the time savings if people didn't have to change at Brum, or walk between stations

Yes, but such a thing is not within the capability of existing technology since no high speed bi-mode exists in the world. Best available is a Spanish trainset that can only manage 250km/h which is far too slow.

And an upgrade to Bristol/Penzance would cost billions which would inevitably be added onto HS2's budget to attack the core scheme.