Comment by 9935c101ab17a66
11 hours ago
They picked the route. HS2 wanted the train to travel at 400km which seems not to be motivated by practicality. The whole project has been managed abysmally in so many dimensions. Most of the route is covered tunnels.
As one of your citations points out, they could have just slowed down briefly.
Are 8500 environment consents a lot for a 140 mile incredibly fast rail system? How much work does each consent require? Could the planning process have started earlier and mitigated the need to get so many environmental consents? Have environmental requirements caused as much delay and consternation as residents along the route have?
> Are 8500 environment consents a lot for a 140 mile incredibly fast rail system?
That’s about one consent every 26.5 metres. A modern intercity train carriage is about 25 metres long.
It seems like a crazy number of consents for the distance.
And the end result of this attitude is that people who want to get between places will continue to fly in airplanes.