Kurt,
"To those who suggest extra commuter services should be ran into large cities instead, could you please explain on what tracks?"
"The tracks are full into London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, you cannot add more services into those cities on existing tracks."
"Hence HS2, take away the hight speed services from those tracks to free up capacity to run extra services into those cities, hence why HS3 is dependent on HS2 freeing up capacity on the railway to allow those HS3 services to happen."
How are you going to produce the electricity required to power the trains on these new railway lines? Surely a better long-term strategic plan would be to reduce the requirment for all this unnecessary travel?
All this 'commuter service' stuff is nonsense. The jobs many people do after they have 'commuted', wasting both energy and vast chunks of their day could be carried out 'online', using modern technology, and possibly from home. This would reduce the total energy requirement, which may have long-term environmental benefits?
Why is there a need for great whacks of the population to be constantly in motion? The railways can't cope, the U.K. ATC system is struggling and the road transport network is totally f*cked. Just have a listen to a days-worth of Radio 2 traffic bulletins if you don't believe me.