Will HS2 still go ahead?

[SunflowerBlues]

Either way millions of taxpayers money has been spent.

Should it still go ahead or would it be better to cancel it and spend the money elsewhere?

Well neither end will be where it was supposed to be. Is that what passes for a success these days ?

I hope it gets cancelled - total waste of money

And the destruction 😭😭😭

It makes me want to cry, the waste of huge amounts of money, the destruction of people's homes, the animals displaced, the ancient woodlands felled, it goes very near to us and I can honestly say I fucking hate it with every bone in my body. Driving past what they've done is just soul destroying and for what??

It already is.
the levels of destruction is abhorrent.
wildlife destroyed, lives destroyed, businesses destroyed. Farmers still waiting for payment on land hs2 have used for years.

the two good points of it, the training centre and the Manchester to Leeds section have been scrapped.

Never really saw the point of it and think they should scrap it. Yeah it means money wasted but that money's gone anyway.

It’s been an absolutely ridiculous waste of money, nobody I’ve spoken to about it in Manchester wants to get to London 30mins quicker anyway.

I’d rather the regional East/West rail services in the north were invested in, that would be much more beneficial.

Nope it'll be postponed and fucked about with until it's completely irrelevant because society will have gone down the pan and nobody will travel anywhere any more.
As someone else pointed out it's an environmental disaster anyway, but postponing it won't mitigate that so it's lose/lose.
I really wish I was joking.

@SunflowerBlues

of course it should go ahead

but this Brexit backward shit show of a government will probably cancel it.

we need something to be proud of in this country

we just look pathetic if we cancel it

wenget hS2 to Scotland and we can ban internal flights and private jets

good for the future

so we should expland it and fire the managers who have let the costs explode

It's still being built I walked past it today working on a weekend

Unfortunately I think as so much has already been built it's gone past the point of no return.
What they could do is forget it being high speed non stop and put a few stations along the route so people who don't live in London or Birmingham could actually use it.

It is very close to us, the destruction is unreal and so sad to see

It's such a completely regressive scheme. Saving half an hour or so on an occasional trip between London and Birmingham isn't of much consequence, really.

And if you're regularly travelling that distance - several days a week - surely you would be better to move nearer to work or get a job nearer to home?

How eco-friendly is all that travelling? We should be encouraging more people to work/meet for business online, where possible.

And as for the key jobs that have to be done in person, I highly doubt that most people who do them are paid enough to live 100 miles away and afford to commute that distance each day, however fast the journey may be.

And would that it were only millions; no, it's tens of billions. They're going to have to hammer an awful lot of disabled people's essential benefits to get that kind of money in to pay for their new train set.

Exactly, the thirty minutes gained would be lost by the longer journey to the station that it calls at. Rather than my local station.

They were talking about this on Radio 4 on Any Questions, and some politician (didn't catch his name) said that the world would be watching us and, basically, we would be a laughing stock if we failed and abandoned it now.

After Boris and Truss, NOW we worry about looking stupid on the world stage!

Who doesn't love to see destroyed trees, wildlife and habitat? I expect they'll just erect loads of hideous new build boxes on it instead.

My relative works on it, he says most days they haven’t got anything to do and are busy looking busy.

I mean woo hoo, live in Manchester and commute to London, yeah great idea. Who wouldn’t want to commute every day.

I really hope not. The Manchester tunnel is going to go right through our neighbourhood. They are planning to destroy the river bank near us by building a vent shaft on it. It’s a beautiful spot that’s really valuable to local people, and it will be devastating, not just to the river bank, but for the whole local area because of the construction traffic, the noise, the dust… plus a big part of the area is flood plain. Digging out tons of soil and displacing dozens of trees can only increase the flood risk.

So sorry for all the other people whose homes have been affected, it’s a horrible thing.

This

It is the biggest travesty . Compulsory purchase should be banned .

It should be stopped. The desecration of the countryside to save a few people 20 minutes has been absolutely inexcusable. Everyone’s got Teams now, we can work from anywhere.

I believe there is some confusion on this thread. The HS2 first phase from London to Birmingham will not be cancelled. The route is pretty much cut, levelled and tunnelled. Contracts have been awarded and the likely cost will be about £110bn. There is talk of making the London terminal Old Oak Common rather than Euston to save another £12bn of costs. That would make phase one pointless so I think a way will be found to overcome the problems at Euston, though that is not a given.

It is the northern routes from Birmingham that will be cancelled though I suspect we are really talking about mothballing. Many learned commentators have said northern circuits should be invested in first so that there is actually a greater interconnectedness. I suspect that is what will happen.

For those from the NEC route down to west London, there will be much disruption on roads because it will take another 8-9 years before the line is complete. However by 2034 you should be able to lean over fences near to the line and wave at the two-thirds empty carriages shooting up to Birmingham in the knowledge that your taxes will be needed for two more decades to subsidise the phenomenon.

The point of HS2 is not to cut the journey time between London and Birmingham or Manchester, it's to take long distance trains off the existing infrastructure thereby increasing capacity on local lines. The government were more interested in the "saving time" soundbite, thinking that the public were too stupid to understand the actual reason - to be fair, most of the politicians who use this soundbite are too stupid (or can't be bothered) to understand. More ancient woodlands have been destroyed by the A27 works than by the whole of the HS2 works but you don't hear the protests about that.

If they can’t even devise a simple comms strategy no wonder the running of the entire project is a shit show.

It is the northern routes from Birmingham that will be cancelled though I suspect we are really talking about mothballing. Many learned commentators have said northern circuits should be invested in first so that there is actually a greater interconnectedness. I suspect that is what will happen.

What the North needs is an East/West connection.