Burnham proposes revival of HS2 Birmingham-Manchester funded by land value capture

Not quite as far north, but after being mothballed seems HS2 north of Delta junction might be quietly coming back to construction activity.

HS2 has a notice about works on A51 north of Great Haywood Road, Staffordshire regarding paving a works for a compound entrance, the location is just short of where the line would cross the Stoke line south of Hixon

Disappointing that HS2 and other transport investment (other than buses!) weren't mentioned in his conference speech yesterday

Snow1964 said:

Not quite as far north, but after being mothballed seems HS2 north of Delta junction might be quietly coming back to construction activity.

HS2 has a notice about works on A51 north of Great Haywood Road, Staffordshire regarding paving a works for a compound entrance, the location is just short of where the line would cross the Stoke line south of Hixon

Notice of temporary 3-way traffic lights, A51, Great Haywood Road, Staffordshire

To facilitate the paving works at the Balfour Beatty compound (TX28) we need to implement temporary 3-way traffic lights to enable the work to be completed. The paving work is required to enable safe access and egress for construction vehicles into the compound on the A51, Great Haywood Road...

www.hs2.org.uk

Click to expand...

They've got the What3words location wrong. It should be reading.blacken.trimmer (not blaken as per their release).
Perhaps as part of the Great Reset, HS2 have cut all W3W locations by one letter to save bytes.

For those of us that use Google, here is an alternative link to the location. https://maps.app.goo.gl/6zGfY2bEiMsFrFky7

Google StreetView suggests this compound was first established between Oct 2021 and Jul 2022 that had secure fencing and a properly constructed access road, but it looks like nothing was paved in the site, which presumably this work fixes.

Anyway, as you say, this is interesting because it's well north of Handsacre junction. I cannot imagine why it would be needed unless you were going to build Phase 2 (or something like it).

However, many of us are old enough to remember - for example - 2024 when MMLE was standing up site compounds and marking piling locations all for it to be abruptly cancelled! A small spend on laying a few buckets of tarmac does not mean there has been a final investment decision. The abortive costs are chicken-feed in the grand scheme of things, but it presumably would pay for itself many times over if this work enables people and plant to move seamlessly from Ph1 as the civils works on that finish.

If anyone can't access the above map link, this is just north of the Shugborough estate, which would be very helpful to bypass.

I had a brief scan of one.network and there's a couple of other HS2 traffic management order applications along the Ph2 route.

One is further south than this around Pipe Ridware. A brief Google search found an HS2 document talking about diversion of the gas transmission network at this location for HS2, so it might be connected to that. In general, utility diversions will have the network owner, not HS2 as the promoter.

Secondly, on Newcastle Road near Hough, where it appears that HS2 had previously partially built a compound. This is just south of Crewe so unless the work is to remove it and restore the ground, then it would be odd to be working here, if the plan had changed in favour of a more limited Colwich Bypass to Hixon or Stafford Bypass to Baldwins Gate.