Quote Originally Posted by Canton Kev View Post
That's entirely dependent on if the leg beyond Birmingham gets built. The East Midlands/Leeds line of HS2 has already been scrapped and the Birmingham/East Midlands line is also seemingly being considered to be axed.

It's already been said that Manchester's HS2 station won't be buried underground due to the paltry (in the context of the entire project) cost of £5Bn being too high. Plenty of stink has been, and will continue to be, kicked up over that decision.

With the costs constantly rising and work on the Manchester branch not expected to begin for another decade, it wouldn't surprise me if HS2 stops at Birmingham and the rest of the project is binned off for something cheaper and half arsed.
I agree with you, although even in that scenario it would still be quicker getting to London.

I would have scrapped the whole thing long ago but we are probably too far down the line (no pun intended) now.

Investment in railway is very important but I'm not sure it needs to be HS2. London to Edinburgh for example is just over four hours (and not on high speed lines). Those two major cities are very far apart but within the same country. Is it really necessary to be able to get between the two much faster than that? I'm not convinced.

Better to spend this money on speeding up links between cities in a more affordable manner, and invest in local networks