Comment by ben_w
5 hours ago
Great, but it's also a goods corridor; the only way around both of those at the same time (absent massive depopulation) is to move the people, would mean building loads more houses.
5 hours ago
Great, but it's also a goods corridor; the only way around both of those at the same time (absent massive depopulation) is to move the people, would mean building loads more houses.
The WCML is perfectly adequate for that. HS2 is a vanity project for business and general passenger travel, none of which is certain or impossible on the WCML already.
But the WCML is at capacity, so it is not in fact adequate.
"There is no available capacity without significantly impacting performance and causing a reduction in timetable resilience due to the resulting requirement for successive services to run on minimum headway"
https://www.orr.gov.uk/sites/default/files/om/wcml-capacity-...