Caroline Lucas, Guardian, UK - The government has finally launched its long awaited consultation on the high speed rail link between London and Birmingham known as HS2. This is a brand new railway line that is designed to run at 250mph …
The whole project is characterized by rhetoric about economic growth, reducing the north-south divide and making the nation more prosperous. This does not at all reflect the reality. In fact, it is an expensive, environmentally damaging, and badly thought through transport project.
The project relies on the notion that the time savings for high income passengers would translate into huge economic gains and, in some mysterious way, propagate prosperity and happiness along the viaducts, through the tunnels and along the swathe of concrete, overhead wires, access roads and electrical gear that would race though Buckinghamshire and Warwickshire…
HS2 sits alongside an assumption that long distance car travel will increase by 44% by 2033 and air travel by 178% by the same year. The new line will produce an 8% shift away from air and the same away from roads….
We want excellent rural public transport so that there is a real choice between the car and its alternatives. We want a transport system driven by social justice and fairness, providing high quality choices to all income groups and all localities. HS2 is a rich person's railway with an assumption that 30% of its passengers will earn more than £70,000 a year and, as such, seems to me to be a socially regressive project.
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