How do you work that out? If I assume journey times to Marylebone and Paddington via Old Oak Common are the same then the time to the Regent street Apple Store is 8 minutes on the Elizabeth line and 11 on the Bakerloo from Marylebone.
Would be 8mins sooner arriving in ooc than Marylebone. 9mins to bond street from ooc. 6mins to Oxford Circus via MYB. From Aylesbury via PR you might save a few mins more.
Also none of this will benefit the via Amersham trains from Aylesbury as the Northolt-Old Oak Common line splits off before then. Additionally I am also assuming that that line will get a speed upgrade to match the line into Marylebone - I.e that you can do Northolt-Old Oak Common in 10 minutes vs 15 for Northolt-Marylebone.
The suggested service pattern, as shown in the document I shared, would be 3 tph into MYB and 2 tph into ooc, so more seats available via Amersham.
Heathrow would be quicker yes - although for High Wycombe you could get the bus and taxis are cheap and would be even faster for Haddenham and other places further south. For the other places in the South West yes journeys would be quicker but only if they aren’t quicker via Oxford.
Via Oxford involves multiple changes, so even via Oxford it's going to be quicker. Aylesbury-Exeter works out at about 50mins+ quicker. Would be around 3hrs rather than 4.
Unless you're travelling from High Wycombe, staying on to ooc and changing there would likely be the better option. For Aylesbury, the Heathrow connection would be much better than now.
Agricultural land costs in Britain aren’t that high to make a meaningful difference for a rail project on cost so there is no excuse there.
Land prices are still a factor, but not the only one. The point is construction costs are higher in the UK for a variety of reasons and the cost of hs2 would not be significantly cheaper if slower due to that. In the first hs2 whitepaper from 2010, it suggests construction costs in general can be double what they are in France for the equivalent. It's something the government should have been looking into especially given what they were intending to build.
You wouldn’t remove all opposition to HS2 in Buckinghamshire by adding a station. However you would lower the opposition from the current ~95% level to something more manageable.
This supposes that the opposition to the line near Aylesbury is responsible for both costs and getting it cancelled, but this is not correct. There have been some pretty rich Camden nimbys funding some of the campaign, see WTM_HS2 at the moment and Michael Byng was originally employed by a Camden resident.
There aren't really any avoidable structures in the Aylesbury area that have added to costs due to local opposition. The sections north of Aylesbury are some of the cheapest miles.
Building a station in Aylesbury would have not prevented the multitude of misinformation about this project, would not have changed the rhetoric of think tanks such as the TPA, nor would it have prevented the Uxbridge by-election result and Rishi's concentration on roads instead. It would have increased costs, reduced value.
Aylesbury has no rail connectivity to the north at the moment.
No, but the line north of Aylesbury Vale is being replaced at higher standards for passenger operation and, north of Calvert, the earth works and structures are being built to accommodate the EWR line to Winslow. That would give excellent local connectivity and connections north and east. Meanwhile, a direct ooc service from Aylesbury would knock 90mins off the current travel time to Manchester and other northern destinations.
How many people in the area would be aware that that would be the case? Is the local mp and council pushing for these benefits of hs2 or just moaning? Perhaps they could have got a guarantee it would be built as at the moment, its not certain.
The sky truly wouldn’t have fallen to add a station for Leamington Spa, Aylesbury, the Trent Valley and Stoke on Trent.
Leamington Spa benefits from the increased capacity into Birmingham and was proposed that the line through Kenilworth would be doubled, since Coventry could handle more. That's all in the west Midlands long term plan.
Trent valley would substantially benefit from hs2, likely up from 1 off peak train an hour to 4, increasing local connectivity as well as connectivity to London and Crewe. Now unlikely to happen without phase 2a.
Stoke and Stafford would have been directly served by hs2 and that may still be the case post phase2a cancellation. The previous Stoke MP who was on the TSC seemed unaware of this.
transitcosts.com
