Quote: "Curzon Street is extremely close to the existing New Street Station, far closer than any of the existing mainline rail stations in London are to each other."
Even if Curzon Street is as close as a 5 minute walk, would pax (possibly carrying baggage) connecting from other places in the conurbation via New Street be bothered to do it, and have to pay the HS2 supplement for the priveledge)? With a 5 minute walk, the 15 minute time saving becomes 10 minutes, is it really worth it? People want convenience and lack of hassle.
Quote: "But HS2 is not about shaving time of train journeys, it is about adding additional capacity that will be required on the WCML before the end of the 2020s."
Yes it is! that's exactly what it's about.
Quote: "Other than the Tories were the first of the three main parties to sort HSR and not the lib dems and had it in their manifesto."
Whether it's a Conservative or a Libdem vanity project is a moot point. It's also got the fingerprints of Labour's Andrew Adonis all over it. They're all too keen to waste public money while cutting vital services and attacking public servants.
There are many rival schemes from railway professionals for improving capacity: more bypasses, more graded junctions, removal of bottlenecks, duplication of 2-track sections to better segregate fast and slow trains, electrification of branches to eliminate slower diesels (e.g. North wales line, Blackpool, Preston to Liverpool/Manchester), improvement of the New Street bottleneck (as is being done at Reading at present), etc..
These can be done incrementally and for a lot less than £32bn.
Last edited by Fairdealfrank; 3rd June 2012 at 12:19.