The north needs HS2

[lisajane1966]

There is poor employment in the North with little opportunities for jobs or career development. We need big business up here and and quick travel down to the Capital. I understand the enviromental issues and the reason for the forthcoming march from Birmingham. What do we do in the backwater whilst Cental England flourishes. Bring on HS2 I am all for it.

I'm definitely English!
I'm living in England, about a 90 min drive from the Scottish border. Incidentally, it wouldn't be much quicker to drive to York, where HS2 stops.

Wait, what. Bradford an hour north of Leeds???? More like 30 mins west of Leeds.

there is a vague business case for freight, but if we learn anything from Covid-19 is that we need to do less travelling. Thunberg has popped up again reminding us of this - what she doesn't dare mention is that to combat climate change it is have less, travel less, do less. And that includes long commutes.

HS2 will never get past Birmingham anyway.

I do feel very sad for it destroying your homes, but the an hour from Leeds further north is Bradford, which has very low emloyment a large ethnic community, and has been very deprived for the past 30 years, we do need to let people comute from up her as well for jobs too.

A fraction of the cost of HS2 invested in Bradford would go much further and won't destroy some of the ancient irreplaceable forests that will get the chop now.

It's a folly.

Why are we encouraging people to commute? Why not invest locally?

@lisajane1966 Wales doesnt have free university education and haven't for at least twenty years... or if we have I need to work out what this "student loan" I've been paying off is really for....

There was a brief few years around the mid 00s when we got part of our tuition fees subsidised but this came with caveats such as having to stay in Wales to study etc. Even that ended in 2016.

HS2 is the wrong solution to the problem.

1. It just makes it quicker to get in and out of London, so property prices will fly up in places like Birmingham and Crewe which became more London commuter towns.

2. Remote working can significantly decrease commuting. We've seen that in action the last 3 months

3. We can't afford over 100 billion on this right now given Covid

It's all about more centralisation when we need to decentralise. Link up east-west. On a straight train it takes over 5 hours to get from Liverpool to Norwich. It's quicker to change at London, yet Norwich is north of Birmingham! Already far too many people are traveling through London that don't need to go to London but because all the quick routes are through London.

I live in a village with a direct train line into Kings Cross, it would take 1 hr 15 mins for me to get into London. A yearly season ticket, without any other onward travel in London, is £5,628. I’m too far out of London to get a London weighting on a salary. When I’ve looked at jobs in London, even with a slightly higher wage, I’d still be out of pocket due the cost of train fares.

What we need is better investment in the existing rail network. That would enable east to west travel, as well as north to south travel. You can get from Leeds to London in about 3 hours, Manchester to London in about 2 hours. Those lines are already there, they just need investment. By upgrading the existing infrastructure, we can also connect Wales and Scotland more easily to rail services in England. We also need the government to stop being so London centric and encourage businesses to establish in other areas of the UK.

Working from home may seem like the ideal solution, my daughter lives away, is on her own and has been forced to work and be on her own as an I.T person for the past 3 months it is not an ideal solution not to have social activity.

These aren’t exactly normal times though are they? Your daughter isn’t socialising to the same extent she would be normally because of restrictions, so it isn’t solely working from home that is restricting her social interaction.

@Jaxhog

Wouldn't the money be better spent on increasing the employment situation by supporting businesses in the North instead? People and goods don't have to be transported between the North and South to do that. It's just a massive vanity project.

That hasn't been happening, the area has deteriorated over the years, it needs new investment. Bradford used to be thriving as it is a city, it is not being invested in. It needs to attract business that is paying too much rent in other central areas, therefore giving job opportunities to increase the fortunes of nearby people.

I agree OP and our trains are an embarrassment. We are way behind every other country in terms of infrastructure.

You can get from Leeds to London in about 3 hours, Manchester to London in about 2 hours.

You can get to London from every region in England within 3 hours. London is perfectly well served. It's the rest of the network that needs to be linked up better.

You can get from Liverpool to London in 2 hours on the train already. I don’t see the need to spend a fortune and leave a path of destruction to save a few minutes.

If we take COVID-19 out of the equation for a moment...

What has become evident is that it is possible for most office based workers to be able to work from home. The impact this has had on my organisation is that we are now considering whether we need the level of office space we currently have (we don't)

MS Teams has become a more costly effective method of getting large numbers of staff together.

We are likely to work from home for quite some time, and will contine to work from home at least three days a week.

If this is the case in my organisation then I'm sure others will also be considering their options.

Lockdown and having no social contact has been difficult, and the govt are easing the restrictions, we've had 12 weeks of disruption. HS2 will cause disruption for years, if not decades. By the time it is operational, how and where people work will be vastly different.

We have had a unique opportunity to experience a different way of life. The impact of coronavirus has been tragic and life changes, but coping with it has changed the world forever.

This part of the north needs connections between its own towns and cities that don't take longer than cycling does with trains that actually run. Shaving 15 minutes off a sub 3 hour journey to London is neither here nor there if the connecting trains are slow and unreliable.

@PickAChew

This part of the north needs connections between its own towns and cities that don't take longer than cycling does with trains that actually run. Shaving 15 minutes off a sub 3 hour journey to London is neither here nor there if the connecting trains are slow and unreliable.

Not just that but won't local unreliable and overcrowded services be even more stretched by people using them to get into central Manchester/Birmingham to get the extra, faster services to London?

I'm down south and I'd be more than happy for the money being spend on HS2 to be used to improve the rail infrastructure up north where it would benefit more people.

Why would being shot to travel to London quicker help? Just look at Peterborough, you can get to London in under and hour but it’s still a shithole. Giving businesses tax exemptions for setting up in deprived areas would be far more effective and probably cheaper.

@TrustTheGeneGenie

I do feel very sad for it destroying your homes, but the an hour from Leeds further north is Bradford, which has very low emloyment a large ethnic community, and has been very deprived for the past 30 years, we do need to let people comute from up her as well for jobs too

No offence but I think you're very naive. The deprived people you speak of won't be able to afford to set foot on this train.

Naive, have you tried getting a job up here, leading to a career which will sustain a future family and mortgage, if business invest and grow, of course people and their future families will be able to commute and travel on this train. We need to start the opportunity to be able to do this. Houses may be cheap up here but that is why, nobody would move up here from central England as all the well paid jobs are in the South,, the great north south divide does exist.

Naive, have you tried getting a job up here, leading to a career which will sustain a future family and mortgage

Erm, yes. I like in w. Yorks. Me and dp both have jobs. Enough to pay the mortgage and bring up our kids. I'm not saying it's easy but it's possible. Houses are cheap here.

The North South divide does exist but even with HS2 it will continue to exist.

Investing the money in towns and cities actually IN the north would be far more worthwhile.

How many people are realistically going to pay a small fortune to travel down south every day for work? Not many, I'd wager.

So no one in the north has a mortgage then?

Leeds is practically in the Midlands 😂😂😂😂🤨

@annabel85

You can get from Leeds to London in about 3 hours, Manchester to London in about 2 hours.

You can get to London from every region in England within 3 hours. London is perfectly well served. It's the rest of the network that needs to be linked up better.

Erm. No, you can't.

It's at least four hours from my nearest big station, with multiple changes and that's not accounting for the time it would take to reach said station.

I agree with your point though.

I have a mortgage and pretty much everyone I know of my age has a mortgage. I know quite a few people in their 20s who have one too - don't forget that there are many places in the north where it's relatively easy to get on the property ladder because houses are cheap

*Erm. No, you can't.

It's at least four hours from my nearest big station, with multiple changes and that's not accounting for the time it would take to reach said station.*

I did say region, not every station or city. You can get from Newcastle to London in under 3 hours (or around 3 hours on other services).

@RedCatBlueCat

Wait, what. Bradford an hour north of Leeds???? More like 30 mins west of Leeds.

Ha ha traffic or a traffic accident I haven't said i am from Bradford only mention Bradford and Leeds