...........and we still have detractors for HS2! 
If we listen to the negatives and whatever from the NIMBY brigade, environmentalists, and general railway disbelievers,
But its a massive, huge, unsustainable amount of money, not just to build, but to run.
NIMBY? Not really. Although it skirts around Brackley, it shouldn't affect me much - I'm sure the bridge over the A43 will be up in a couple of days, so no real disruption. I am more annoyed about the Chilterns being destroyed purely for this waste of time... ...and I'm 35-40 miles away from the Chilterns.
The business case was built by Network Rail, and like all Civil Service, have to come up with wild brain ideas to justify their existence. If you ever went to any of the consultations, you would be able to see this...
I actually walked into the local consultation, telling the tree hugging hippies at the entrance to get a real job, with a slightly "HS2 is the way forward" bias. Walked out thinking that the tree huggers were basically right, although not for the same reasons. Never have I come across such a load of guff, clearly contradictory with itself, and outright lies. When I asked one of the senior NR bods there to clarify some of the figures, and why they were using different figures depending on what message they were trying to get over, his response was along the lines of "of course were are going to twst and distort the business case, as this is our livelihood, and we want it to go ahead". In fact, he said the consultations were a waste of time as this was going to happen anyway (this was long before the government gave the official go-ahead).
Even the NR bod said it would be under utilised outside of peak hours, and that the (already seriously flawed) business case worked on the assumption that by 2026 (estimated opening), home working would not have increased.
Phase 2 wasn't supposed to even be considered until something like 2020, but I notice NR are trying to push Phase 2 through now, as they realise that the current government are stupid enough to sign it off, and the current government are needing this as a Labour style borrow-for-infrastructure-to-create-short-term-employment.
Like Labour's mad, wasteful spending spree on education and the NHS, we will be paying for this white elephant for generations and generations.
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Topic: The world's fastest train (Read 2580 times)