• @mondoman712@lemmy.ml
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    111 months ago

    HS2 is the investment in local transport up and down the country that we need. The point isn’t to get people to and from London faster and the fact that you think that is a failure of their marketing.

    The point of HS2 is to move all of the longer distance services between the larger cities on to their own line, reducing the effect of mixed traffic and allowing for many more local and freight services on the existing lines. This then lets local councils massively improve their own local systems, such as the plan for a huge increase in transport in the East Midlands that can’t happen since the eastern leg of HS2 was cut back.

    • @Syldon@feddit.uk
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      111 months ago

      I live in the NE there is zero benefit for our area. No benefit for Scotland, Wales or Ireland come to think of it. I am all for spending on transport. I just think London has had enough in that area. HS2 is not about links to Manchester btw. It is about more links to London so people can commute from further afield.

      • @mondoman712@lemmy.ml
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        111 months ago

        Did you read my comment? It isn’t about links to London. It’s about capacity across the network, it just happens that the best way to create that capacity is to build new links to London, because then you can remove all of those fast moving intercity trains off of the existing network and just have the local and freight services that can then bunch up more closely together and run way more frequently. It does have benefits beyond where it runs, for example by releasing capacity in Birmingham New Street, we can run more frequent trains out to Aberystwyth. I’d argue that most of GB does benefit, by getting faster journey times and released capacity when they travel into areas that are affected, but even then, does every project need to benefit everyone? I’m all for more investment beyond the areas that directly benefit on top of this.