CHRISTIAN WOLMAR, the butt of Ian Walmsley’s criticism in last month’s issue, wonders at what point the supporters of HS2 would consider the project not worth pursuing
Pan Up Reply
The thrust of the article by Ian Walmsley in Modern Railways last month was that no one should challenge the validity of the HS2 project because it is so patently obvious that it is the best thing to happen to the railways since the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. I will, therefore, in this article that your editor has kindly invited me to write as a response, first address this overall contention and then look at more specific issues relating to the scheme as currently presented. I will confine my response to Mr Walmsley’s juvenile insults to a brief paragraph at the end.
The notion that HS2 is so self-evidently a top priority to be built that we cannot even discuss doubts about it is clearly patent nonsense. This is a project whose cost is uncertain but will almost certainly exceed the £55 billion currently earmarked, given that Phase 2 has only been vaguely sketched out and £8 billion of the £24 billion cost of Phase 1 has been earmarked for the first six miles out of Euston, making it highly unlikely …
