Vandalism on the railway can result in a life sentence and an unlimited fine for the perpetrator. But the act of national vandalism that is the decision to disconnect the North completely from HS2 will mean a life sentence of inadequate rail services for tens of millions of travellers across England, Wales and Scotland.
No serious figure in the rail industry can believe what the government is contemplating: ripping up the primary function of HS2. The line as conceived (and as recently as two weeks ago, guaranteed by a future Labour government) is designed to connect Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Nottingham with Birmingham at 21st-century speeds.
The onward link to London is intended to provide vital extra capacity on all north-south services, with the valuable side effects of slashing journey times and tempting travellers from road to rail.
The proposal to leave just a link between Birmingham and a patch of wasteground in west London is mind-bogglingly crazy. An “Old Oak Common to Birmingham shuttle” trashes the tangible benefits, and will endure for the rest of the century as a bizarre monument to incompetence and short-termism.
The best way to demonstrate the damage that ministers appear to be about to commit is to look at the prospects for individual passengers.
Take the traveller from Manchester heading south. The journey to the West Midlands will remain as slow and congested as it is now. The western leg had the prospect of all the intercity passengers transferring to high-speed expresses to Birmingham and on to London.
If the embarrassing route of London to Birmingham is all that survives the death by 1,000 cuts, it will deliver zero benefit to Mancunians. The current Trent Valley route, cutting across the north Midlands and avoiding Birmingham, will be the only rational path – otherwise high-speed trains would need to crawl through the West Midlands from Wolverhampton to the HS2 terminus.
Travellers from Stafford, Crewe, Liverpool, north Wales, Lancashire and Cumbria will also be no further ahead.
From the east of the Pennines, the picture looks even worse. The Leeds-Sheffield-Birmingham leg of HS2 was the limb set to deliver the greatest economic and social benefits. Leeds to Birmingham plus Sheffield, Nottingham and Derby to London are intercity journeys that, in any rational nation, would be high-speed electrified…
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