I don't watch threads like this much, and the reason is it's often full of "Re-open the Great Central instead" and "Re-open the Woodhead" among other things.
Why am I opposed to HS2?
- I don't approve of the idea of the Birmingham and Leeds termini, for example, not being linked to the existing main line such as to enable realistic through services.
- I don't think we are appropriately considering to what extent HS2 should be built for. When you actually look at the route alignment, and the sort of cities that will not be added to the network (thinking explicitly of Nottingham and Liverpool but also places like Milton Keynes and Coventry) it would be totally in order to build a 4-track alignment north of the tunnels at Ruislip so that a combination of 'stopping' and 'express' services can run. Think of building stations for 'stopping' services (akin to 395s) at Calvert (EWR), Brackley, Kenilworth (LEM-COV) and Castle Bromwich all with big car parks and all for the the purpose of building housing outside of London.
- I don't care much for the fact that Sheffield is basically on a limb.
- I don't think we have bothered to factor into cost all the work we need to make existing main lines at least mildly ready for freight. No fourth track from Rugby to Nuneaton, can't see much evidence of Colwich being done ready for Phase One, or the two track section from Colwich to Milford and such.
- I don't think it's appropriate to spend so much money to then have so many 'NR-compatible sets' which are going to be smaller and have less capacity when realistically we need to bite the bullet and 'build out' the routes they are operating on to attempt to get some bigger, higher-capacity sets to places like Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
- We are seemingly happy to thrust trains onto existing parts of the route known for unreliability and where more freight is likely to be encouraged such as York, Wigan / Preston / Lancaster, Crewe, the route through Dronfield and Masborough and such.
- We aren't being anywhere near ambitious enough. If you're going to spend loads of money, might as well build a much bigger network that is all open from Day 1 (no stupid phased building) and encompass more cities, more accompanying infrastructure and more integrated transport planning. No point building some stupid Toton station where people in Nottingham then have to get on a tram for ~35 minutes which won't handle train loads appearing on the Tram network as well as satisfying locals.
All in all, I want a High Speed network built in Britain but one that's full of interchange opportunities, more cities on the routes and therefore more likely to bring about vast modal shift rather than just movement of current flows onto expensive trains that then keeps demand on existing Intercity services and therefore doesn't free up capacity at places like Milton Keynes, Leicester, Stoke, Peterborough and the like into London.
Whilst I agree that in some regards HS2 isn't ambitious enough, the problem with that is that it would be easy to cut (why are we spending £0.25 trillion on rail) and runs the risk of being unusable until it's all built (if you don't allow it to be built in phases).
Although having a masterplan for a wider HS network with the timetable for when it would happen being decided as time progresses.
We've got a bit of a start of that with HS2 & NPR, however if each region could see that they were on the list for something down the line out would take a some of the resentment or of the argument.