Despite the rumour-machine making a big deal out of the HS2 Hybrid Bill not appearing in today’s Queen’s Speech, sadly the White Elephant is still lumbering on. The Bill remains scheduled for 2013, as it has been for some time. While we can look forward to the Environmental Impact Study and to a number of Judicial Reviews we must continue our work to oppose HS2 with increased vigour.
In the meantime you can read the full VoxOpp press release here, and look at this link to some very telling points made by the Public Accounts Committee in their recent questioning of the Department for Transport on HS2, which was spotted by STOPHS2.
Professor Andrew McNaughton, the chief engineer of High Speed 2, is promoting his dream, preaching that sophisticated signalling and dedicated ‘acceleration lanes’ could allow up to to 30 trains an hour to run on HS2, 12 more than the current maximum envisaged of 18.
In an evangelical styled speech which he titles ‘Designing High Speed Rail for Britain’ he declares that he sees the future as being based on the use of dedicated Very High Speed Trains rather than compromise rolling stock like Eurostar. He explains that Alstom AGV with a maximum design speed of 350km/h, on which HS2 operations are modelled, could accelerate to 200km/h in 8km, and to 300km/h in another 5km and that Britain could build 14 kilometre acceleration lanes in order to merge trains which stopped at, say, Birmingham to accelerate up to maximum speed before rejoining the other ‘traffic’ on the high speed lines.
Relishing his ambitions to enter into a ‘train race’ with other countries, Andrew McNaughton adds that Bombardier has been commissioned by the Italian State Railway to develop a 400km/h Very High Speed Train, while the Russians are looking at 500km/h. Referring to the plans for HS2 he adds that London is the “only true metropolis in Europe”.
Birmingham – you have been warned. Read it all here.