18
The facts have changed, says Rishi Sunak, as he scraps HS2 leg
(www.bbc.co.uk)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
18 points (100.0% liked)
UK Politics
3023 readers
136 users here now
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both !uk_politics@feddit.uk and !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
!ukpolitics@lemm.ee appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Everywhere that isn't London is desperate for adequate local train services. Starting in the North would have made it impossible to do exactly what they have just done.
Sure, but it also would've meant you couldn't properly take the intercity trains off the existing lines, since they'd just go back onto the capacity constrained WCML south of Birmingham, and thus you couldn't really do a whole lot about the capacity until that section was built.
HS2 is about freeing up capacity for local trains, by taking fast trains off the tracks the local trains need but can't use because they have to squeeze into the gaps between fast trains. No, you won't get the full benefit until the entire line is built but that is always going to be true. The idea was never just about shuttling more people to London, quicker. It was about making Northern cities functional.
Except most people on those intercity trains are trying to get to or from London, so it doesn't make sense to just run Birmingham to Manchester. You have to run to London to get that capacity benefit.
Once more, it is about capacity for local trains, not intercity trains.
But to get that capacity, you're moving the intercity trains off of the existing lines.
Yes.
And you basically can't do that unless those trains are going to London
Easy change at Birmingham.