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Paul Bigland's blog page.

D6130

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Yes, it was absolutely right to relieve capacity on WCML, but a route closer to the M1 corridor with a spur via Birmingham would have achieved that, whilst providing far more sensible links to Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Leeds, before we even start on less environmental damage. The studies that decided the route were all about finding problems with the M1 route, and misguidedly serving Heathrow, rather than finding ways to best serve the country. Crossrail and Heathrow should have been a spur, not a route choice. So both wrong route AND wrong Government!
I fully agree.
 
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Shrop

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The Ham

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A one sided tirade against Iolo is too easy. We need investment in railways and HS2 has many flaws. In that respect at least, Iolo has a point, and if he was engaged in a dialogue there may be a lot less "anti rail advancement" to his thinking than his tweet suggests.

The thing is, there's been rail investment.

In the 10 years between 2009 and 2019 there was £30bn spent in Network Rail enhancement projects (so excludes TfW, TfL, TOC, etc. investment), yet whatever's been done still hasn't been enough.

The problem is, that HS2 phase 1 is currently being built. As such regardless of what other route should have been picked, chances are (that even with the best will in the world) it's unlikely to change significantly (that's not too say that things shouldn't be improved during the process).

However there's nothing stopping government spending money on rail enhancements as well as on HS2. Indeed there was £2bn spent in the 2020/21 financial year according to the NE accounts.

Whilst this is quite a bit smaller than the £3.4 billion spent on HS2 for the same year, it does show that the fear that HS2 would take all the rail budget (at least currently) is yet to be shown to be the case in reality.
 

Snapper

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I spent all of last week touring the UK network as part of my bi-annual trip for RAIL magazine. The series of three articles will be published in the magazine from October.

However I also wrote a daily blog which gives a taste of my travels in words and pictures. You can find a link to day 1 here and pick up the whole trip from there.

 

Snapper

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Here's the start of my #InnoTrans2022 gallery, featuring some of the new Stadler trains for the UK...https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/p127408814
 

Snapper

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New blog. A look at the latest recycled tosh from Andrew Gilligan and the opaque political lobbyists of 'Policy Exchange' about #hs2

 

Snapper

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Yesterday's blog from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where I'm exploring railways old and new...
 

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