Hardly 200 metres from Moor Street: The entrance to HS2 Curzon Street will be virtually adjacent to Moor Street station (Just across the Queensway bridge over the Moor Street to Snow Hill line, where a car park currently sits), and as for it being 400m "in the rain" from New Street, then that is hardly accurate as there is to be a covered walkway across to the north side of the Queensway coupled with a refurbishment and smarten up of the pedestrian tunnel under the Bull Ring between Moor Street and New Street, so the only section that will be in the rain is the existing approach to New Street station, just as it is now from Moor Street station.
Walkit.com gives the distance from Moor Street to New Street at 400 meters having looked it up. I would agree that this looks a bit far, but my point stands even with your argument, as you state there is a stretch of outdoor walking, there is a distance for people to travel from local and classic line trains with heavy luggage, pushchairs, children, wheelchairs, not to mention the elderly, it is crazy to believe that this would not have an impact on the usage of the line. To a passenger this will simply be too much, and loose the entire time and speed benefit of any new line. To justify my point I would love to know what percentage of people when booking online avoid changes of train, then factor in a change of station. The fact that its an outdoor walk outside New Street "as now" is irrelevant as the major interchange is New Street itself.
HS2 will increase the frequency of services to a greater range of destinations: HS2 will provide faster, and in many cases more frequent, services to London, Leeds and Manchester, while the existing WCML Intercity services will see a reduction in frequency and an addition of more stops into the remaining trains coupled with an increase in the number of semi-fast services to better serve the intermediate destinations on the route.
Completely missed the point I was making, I was talking about local urban journeys which you have completely missed for example by Greengauge 21 report this suggests that Coventry - Birmingham journeys will drop by more than 25% and by 33% from some intermediate stations, as such any movement in the economics of employment will have less capacity to play with and the journey length of 25 miles or less along the line would be one that people will drive, there are more people in this country who live outside the big 5 or 6 cities than those who live inside them. If just 1 in 20 jobs from the belt out towns in North Warwickshire and along the Trent valley moves into there cars, assuming a journey of 25 miles each way into Birmingham that is around 195 million extra miles on our roads every year.
They are building London to Scotland first. However, such a venture takes a lot of expenditure, time and planning, so it has to be done in stages: Even the WCML electrification only reached Weaver Junction originally, with a loco change from diesel to electric at Crewe. The mileage is just too great to do in one go. In the interim, accelerated journey times to Scotland from London will be created by running HS2 trains onto the existing WCML at Lichfield.
The debate has not even started on a line to Scotland yet, and that would be a whole new debate in itself because of the structure of the consultations, with new areas of countryside to pass through, a totally new business case along with new local campaigns. the reason for not going to Scotland now is one we simply do not have the money and the environmental lobby across all the areas would just be too much opposition in the current economic climate, despite the fact that it actually would solve some of the many problems that HS2 is designed to resolve at a much greater level such as our increasing dependance on air travel, where the markets in Scotland, Manchester, and Newcastle would have much bigger impacts. HS2 in its current guise is not going to make a huge dent on carbon emissions from aircraft use or car usage from Scotland, or the North of England.
The argument for the next phase should not be "we have spent £17 billion plus £700 million a year in interest on a white elephant that is not delivering the promised benefits, we may as well finish the job now rather than have flushed this money we didn't have away." this is an egregious argument, and treats the taxpayer with complete contempt who are being asked to pay £600 for each and every family whether they live in Barnsley, Birmingham or Bracknell.
As for the WCML finishing at Weaver Jn originally cost was the factor, not the argument to go the whole way in a single go. The LGV Est was always planned to go all the way to Strasbourg even though it has and always was planned to be built in stages, but all the political, planning, and business case work along with telling the public where this was going was done before the first piece of earthwork was started, currently there is nothing more than an aspirational line on a map to get there and the political debate has still to be had, and I believe no detailed business case either. Surely is Scotland is the aim we state that should be the intention, and the full consultation process is done with that as the end game, rather than a consultation done
ONLY on the proposed section.
The government giving out detailed proposals for discussion on reaching Birmingham and Lichfield as well as vigor of the campaigns has created an either you are for it or you are against it argument rather than a what do we the British people want for a 21st century rail network. Whilst HS2 staff call people who challenge the proposals "cretins" the argument is lost
(Unless HS2 will be in addition to the WCML with services maintained at its current level.)
