I wonder what would have happened if HS2 had been called something like the 'WCML Capacity Upgrade' or 'North-Western Capacity Upgrade'. It sounds like something sensible and practical and immediately focuses on the point it's about capacity not speed - somewhat harder for its critics to argue it's frivolous and unnecessary than a name like 'High Speed Two'. Still, too late now.
I agree in theory - I can't remember when the CRTL became rebranded as HS1 though - was this only when HS2 became a commitment? Or was it that, once we had a route called HS1, any subsequent high speed routes were bound to follow with a similar name? Genuinely can't remember.
And then there is the argument that there is a need to rebalance the nation's divide in eyswealth between the north and south by investing heavily in the northern routes. The result could be a thriving north, much less dependent on links with London leading to a drop in demand for journeys between the north and south.
I hear this kind of SimCity stuff a bit - it's nice in theory but I don't know how much of a difference rail lines are going to make (to rebalance the UK economy).
But then there's the argument that a lot of this "thriving north" stuff tends to just mean "turn the gap between Manchester and the rest of northern England into an even bigger divide".
While I agree with the principles discussed in the rest of your post (that we need extra capacity and that a new alignment should be much easier than putting the two additional tracks on the existing WCML alignment) I don't agree with that last sentence (or certain details of the HS2 route). Regarding electrification, even with the delays I believe it will have taken less than 10 years to electrify from Airport Junction to Cardiff Central and Newbury. The two elements postponed (Bristol and Oxford) rather than cancelled are of substantially less mileage; if Network Rail are able to move onto those immediately once they finish the wires to Cardiff then they would be in with a chance of finishing by 2025. That would allow a start to be made on the Midland Main Line north of Market Harborough before 2030. Even if I'm being too optimistic with the timetable for physical works, they should be able to "start planning wiring up every other long distance main line" by the end of 2020. Even if said planning is only counting the number of trains on each route and working out how much CO2 would be saved by electrifying each stretch in order to establish the ideal order to electrify each line, why couldn't this be done now? I would argue that that is exactly what the government / Network Rail should be doing, so that whenever the engineering bods become available we know where to send them next
Bristol and Oxford are lower in mileage (than the bits from the Airport Junction to Cardiff), agreed, but they are going to be difficult/slow to do, with a lot of disruption - given all of the points etc - they may still take a long time to finalise.
And then there's Swansea, which will be expecting the wires that were once promised. And the MML to Sheffield and the various "transpennine" gaps between York and Manchester need to be tackled before we can start to get shovels in the ground and tackle the other English lines in dire need of electrification. There's just so much to tackle, and it'll mean a lot of disruption (turning lines into weekday/ daytime only, as far as passengers are concerned).
I'm not confident that the GWML shows a bright future for other bits of electrification - we can't even do a short simple single track branch like Windermere so what chance is there that we tackle all of the Cross Country route from Yorkshire to the West Country any time soon?
