*There is no guarantee of those passenger numbers.
*There is no guarantee that 100m passengers are extra, they could be existing passengers moving from classic to HS, which means that every single penny of £55bn+ has been wasted
How would that be a waste of money? We've alread established that the prime reason for building HS2 is for capacity, with the main targets of the benefits commuters around London, Birmingham, Manchester, etc.
*There is no guarantee that 100m passengers want to go from London to Birmingham at high speed. They might want to go somewhere in between, but HS2 does not allow them to stop at intermediate stations, as there are no intermediate stations
As before, they can use the increased number of services on the 'classic' WCML.
Or, they can continue beyond Birmingham on the same train to places like.....Liverpool.
*There is no guarantee that the budget will stay at £55bn. Anything beyond £100bn would be, by any measure, a white elephant
Perhaps you'd like to explain where you're getting these assertions from.
*There is no guarantee that ticket prices are going to be affordable for 100m passengers. If passengers are unable to afford tickets, then it is a white elephant
You'll need to define 'affordable'. Basic economic theory is that, when supply increases more than demand, prices reduce.
*Not connecting London to Liverpool (where connections are required) but connecting London to Birmingham (where there are already countless per hour) is the very definition of a white elephant.
There will literally be 2 HS2 trains per hour from London to Liverpool when HS2 is built. How is that not a rail connection?
We're not talking about Blackpool or Middlesbrough, though. We're talking about a city of 860,000 people. So yes, it does matter.
If it doesn't go to Liverpool, Liverpool doesn't have HS2. An afterthought on slow lines from a small market town 50 miles away (or, in phase one, a small [market] town 150 miles away) is not high speed rail.
It's just yet another example of HS2 tubthumpers trying desperately to claim "benefits" that simply do not exist.
Indeed.
Some major projects have a clear and obvious necessity. Crossrail is staggeringly expensive, but there is a clear need which isn't based on nebulous "benefits". Anyone who's ever used the Central Line in the peak knows what the clear need is.
There really isn't that for HS2.
"It'll clear space on the southern WCML". The outer-urban stations get 5tph already, how many more do they need?
Cram onto a Tuesday evening service to Northampton, then come back. To use your own quote back at you: 'Anyone who's ever used LNWR in the peak hours knows what the clear need is'.
"It'll speed journeys". To Birmingham, yes. But not many other places. I live in Newcastle, I've no desire to go via Birmingham to get to London. The ECML is plenty fast enough. Saying HS2 will benefit me is insulting my intelligence.
HS2 is about capacity. The speed is purely an additional benefit to some places.
"It'll help freight". Freight doesn't go on HS2. The intermodal freight is to Scotland, and the extra freight paths can't be there because- north of Lichfield- HS2 trains will be running in the existing Pendolino paths. And as they won't tilt, they won't be as fast as the existing trains, so you get fewer paths.
Freight goes on the WCML, which HS2 relieves.
Also, you're wrong about basic timetable theory. If the differences between and stopping pattern are less (as you have asserted: "they won't be as fast as the existing trains", the number of paths increases. That's basic timetable theory.
As for cost, if there's change from £100bn I'll eat my other hat (grey twill). That's an awful lot of money for a project whose business case is already based on very weak financial arguments. The same Tory politicians gushing over HS2 will, naturally, say we can't afford free broadband.
Tory politicians aren't that gushing over HS2. Andrea Leadsome, Esther McVey, David Lidington, etc.
The whole thing screams white elephant vanity project. The second they decided that OOC wasn't sexy enough to be a terminus, and spent all that money bulldozing half of Camden, it proved it to me.
Old Oak Common is not Central London. It's not that it wasn't 'sexy' (Euston certainly doesn't get me aroused in any way), it's that most people would want to use the Central London terminus. One would have to provide additional transport from OOC to Central London, which would cost a lot.
And isn't that another significant problem with HS2? It can't go into OOC, soon to be a purpose built modern interchange between different forms of London based travel, so has to go into Euston, a cramped and out of place not-quite-this-not-quite-that compromise with worse transfer options?
Euston is a Central London terminus.
Choosing Euston over OOC just because more Northerners have heard of the latter (which essentially is all the justification HS2 has for calling there) is not enough reason to build the thing.
That's utter rubbish.