When I saw that MPs were calling for the trains on HS2 to be slower, I thought there'd been an outbreak of common sense and that someone had spotted that it would make the project much cheaper to have a lower maximum speed, but I was doomed to be disappointed. No, the lower speed is all about being green, so of course the officials in charge of building the railway came rattling back with "cutting the top speed from 360km an hour to 300km would slash the cost-benefit ratio of the £42.6bn project by 25 per cent". This may well be true, but only if the projected figures for patronage hold up in reality, which is far from certain.
I note also that, although only the first stage of the railway, to Birmingham, has been given the go-ahead, it is now spoken of as the "London to Manchester and Leeds railway".
Debate Magazine
