To be pleased that the Garden Bridge in London is being cancelled

[ForalltheSaints]

A vanity project which would have sucked yet more money from other real transport improvements. In a place not needing a new river crossing.

There should be a requirement to publish full financial details of the money wasted so far.

It was a wonderful idea, just completely impractical and should have been canned years ago

You do know the UK train network is one of the worst in the western world only a few places have worse?

Improvements like HS2 are actually needed to actully improve the network and to try and spread the economy out of London.

Look at japan they have a modern railway network which is quick and efficient where as the Uks is buckling on a ancient mostly pre war network and you have tons of people say what a waste of money to actually modernise the network.. that is long overdue

I am not convinced that HS2 does do what it says it will do. How about spending the money on improving the current infrastructure or routing HS2 along the M1 corridor so you don't have to spend a fortune tunnelling out of London and under the Chilterns.

HS2 or at least some sort of upgrading is needed if only to increase the capacity on the East and West coast mainlines

However, it shouldn't be at the expense of all the desperately needed infrastructure upgrades in the rest of the country.

Personally I'm more pissed off about the cancellation of the much cheaper electrification of the transpennine route in favour of Crossrail 2, which wasn't even in the Conservative party manifesto and will have zero benefit to anyone outside Greater London, than I am about HS2.

I expect the main benefit of HS2 will be to allow highly paid people who work in London to live even further away than they do now. It will be used to get people to London, not people, jobs and opportunities to northern England.

They are currently spending billions on Crossrail. How about something similar from Liverpool to Hull via Leeds, Manchester and possibly Sheffield and York?

That would be HS3 Barbara. It is ridiculous that it takes an hour on the train to get from Leeds to Manchester, which is only about 40 miles away. If they were serious about trying to make the country less London-centric then it would be a priority, and certainly ahead of HS2. As it is we'll be lucky to get it in the next 20 years.

Passenger numbers through Leeds station have doubled in the last 10 years with no significant plans to increase capacity, even though there is a massive bottleneck going east out of the station.

Yes to major rail upgrades. I've yet to be convinced that HS2 will deliver the benefits that are trumpeted, or that they will outweigh the cost and impact involved (once the countryside is gone, it's gone)

Just to say on Crossrail 1 over 60% of the funding will come from London businesses and Londoners. I haven't heard many objections to this because everyone can see the need. There has been significant transport disruption (roads closed for 2 years, tube stations shut etc) but because the project makes sense to people everyone has just worked around it.

I don't get the same feeling about HS2.

Davros thank you for the information about the Camden Highline.

YABU......Khan is a lightweight politician. The sort that should only ever be in opposition. If the wind blows one way, he goes with it, if it blows the other, he'll change direction, as he did with The Garden Bridge. He will achieve nothing, good or bad.

mprovements like HS2 are actually needed to actully improve the network and to try and spread the economy out of London.

If you read my previous post, it won't benefit you unless you live within half an hour of a hub. It will actually increase my total journey time- less time on the train, but quadruple my driving time to get to the station.

Same as pp said- everyone in the east mids will have to drive to Toton to catch their train. Toton will become milton keynes, with added massive car parks.

Local train services will be decommissioned, rail stations taken out of service in favour of hs2. Car journeys will increase as you won't be able to catch a train to a local destination.

So what hs2 will do is create a series of commuter towns, so the wives and children of rich bankers and so on can live rural lives in naice houses and naice schools while hubby commutes.

Leaving those of us who actually live and work here with less transport infrastructure, increasing house prices, and a crappy view of hs2 from our windows.

I live in an old mining town. The rail lines are still there- theyd be better opening them back up so people can commute to work or to a larger rail station. Much like manchester has digging up all the old tram lines.

forallthrsaints my pleasure. When the Camden Highline opens we should have a MN walk along it, then back to mine

I did not realise that that was how HS2 is designed to function. That's ridiculous. I thought it was supposed to make it easier for businesses to travel to Birmingham and the Midlands, not for Midlanders to commute to London. The hub thing sounds awful!

Micah, where does scrapping services come from? Whilst no great fan of HS2 I was under the impression it was in addition to existing, not replacing current lines. So ECML and MML will still carry on. I'm not sure why local services would be removed either.

I hope HS2 gets scrapped next.

We don't need it, it's just greed. All it's doing is ruining lovely countryside.

What staggers me about the garden bridge was that it was set up by a charitable trust. Charities are supposed to be regulated, but the charity commission found nothing wrong despite extremely questionable procurement practices.

Very odd.

As for hs2 - the journey time argument is clear nonsense. Apparently it is about capacity increase but I'm not convinced it is the best way to do that.

I so wish they'd cancel(led) HS2. Putting aside the obscene cost, which will clearly escalate, it'll ruin the landscape and totally doesn't serve its supposed purpose. It doesn't connect properly at either end. Anyway, now we are all online all the time, what does a few minutes of a journey actually matter? Much better to invest in connectivity east-west in the north, and I say this as a southerner on a miserable commuter line.