From a grand project encompassing most of England’s major cities, improving connections up to Scotland and most importantly, reducing congestion on the West Coast Mainline.
To a line from Old Oak Common, to Birmingham. Total. We need to be working on HS3 and HS4 right now, not cutting HS2 back to the bare minimum. Makes me so angry.
I mean, that sums up my feelings about British infrastructure projects in general.
Take the GWML upgrades. Two decades ago, there was talk of a) electrifying it all the way from Paddington to Swansea and b) signal upgrades to allow the speed limit to be increased to modern high-speed status. What we ended up with is half the electification programme canned, resignalling work that never seems to be any closer to being done, and rolling stock that can’t excede 140mph anyway. Basically a whole rolling stock generation wasted without moving to a higher standard; I guess we’ll be lucky if they make any progress over the next few decades in time for the next rolling stock replacement…
People grumble about London getting all the love, but I’m just glad that somewhere is able to build some actual infrastructure. The Lizzy Line is great, and I genuinely hope that they manage to get Crossrail 2 off the ground. But it’d be nice if we could build something- anything- outside of London too.