That's particularly true when you look on Twitter. There are still quite a number of people on there that are opposed to HS2 & seem hell bent on trying to get it stopped. Also, lots of emotive talk & hyperbole regarding the "destruction" of certain areas where preliminary work is being undertaken.
I've largely given up arguing with most of them - they refuse point blank to listen to any reasoned argument & often become hostile when challenged on some of their assumptions.
I do appreciate that people will have different views, but for me, it's a testament to how poorly HS2 itself has supported & publicised it's own project that such people continue to oppose a project that will enable a real modal shift from road to rail.
Indeed, of you point out that HS2 will have 300,000 passengers a day (which they admit, but question how that could be) then that's 90 million to 110 million passengers a year (depending on if that's 300 days a year (so as to allow for quite a few quiet days) or 365 days (assuming that the figure is a simple take the annual and spread over the year).
As such if we take the mid point of 100 million (333 days a year, but mostly as it makes the maths easy) and then compare it against the complaint that there's only 1% shift from air. Well it shouldn't take you long to realise that this will be 1 million fewer air passenger movements a year.
Given that most regional aircraft have capacity of around 200 seats that's the potential for 5,000 fewer flights a year.
However that's an over simplification, as very few regional flights are full and even if they are you don't need to move all 200 to rail before the airlines then have services which aren't viable and look to reduce provision.
If that's the case is not unreasonable to expect that there could be a reduction of between 5,000 and 10,000 regional flights a year.
Likewise 1% of HS2 passengers doesn't sound a lot, however when you compare that 1 million to the risk number of domestic passengers, which is 22.8 million then HS2 will be taking 4.4% of all domestic passengers. That starts to sound quite a lot better.
Likewise whilst the 4 million journeys switching from road doesn't sound a lot compared to the 5.6 billion car trips, it should be remembered that the average car trip length is 8.2 miles whilst the average train journey (and HS2 trips would be much longer still) is 30.9 miles.
As such if each person removes 2 car trips of 31 miles and switches to HS2 for that trip out would reduce the average total traveled by car by 1% however it would increase total rail distance by double. That's before you consider that there's potential for extra growth on the existing network.
