HS2 the Wrong Route from London to Birmingham

"I appreciate that the principles in this topic are mainly economic"

You must also appreciate that the principal participants in this forum are not affected in the least by this problem.

I didn't like it when they paved the Mill Creek Road and made it a more desirable route to Little Rock from Hot Springs. Damn cars race through there at 45 MPH now.

I feel your pain.

Try LA to Fresno, as a start for High Speed Rail to San Francisco…They are laying this portion of easy track so that they can say " it is too big to fail", and continue to throw ungodly amounts of money into a failed system, only to benefit certain Political Parties and their Unions ….Meanwhile our highways are disintegrating...

If the geology of the Lea valley was suitable for a major road or rail link, there would already be one there. The route was studied by several railway companies in the 19th century during the UK's railway building boom and found to be unsuitable.

HS2 is not a commuter train. Traveling past Luton and Milton Keynes at 170mph is not going to increase the passenger numbers from those towns. To use it a potential passenger from Milton Keynes would have to travel 71 miles north to Birmingham in order to take the train 140 south to London. The promoters of HS2 do not want to consider alternative routes that might increase passenger numbers as this would highlight that all routes, including the one chosen, are uneconomic in terms of passenger numbers. The total number of passengers required to make HS2 viable is 267% of the number who currently travel this route by rail. The existing line will remain in operation and I assume will be cheaper, so HS2 has to attract 2½ times the existing number of rail passengers from road, air and rail. HS1 is still only serving 9.7m passengers (2011 figure) which is only 50% of the 19m passengers using the Channel Tunnel and there are still 12.8m passengers using the sea ferry. HS1 has picked up 33% of the available traffic running 18000 trains per year at about 70% capacity This is way below the 25m passengers prediction used to justify the building costs and only just above break even.

The LA to San Fransisco route is using equally unrealistic predictions for it's passenger numbers. African elephants are fast becoming an endangered species. White Elephants on the other hand appear to be thriving.

Well spoken---Flow of commuters / travelers must follow the same principles of pressure--There must be a enough demand (increased pressure), in order to flow to a vacuum (reduced pressure), to keep the flow equalized. Then the same rules are reversed. The only mass transit lines that are self sufficient have equal amounts of commuters at both ends, going and coming, or else the cars will either "deadhead" coming back (engine and no passengers), or sit at idle , until the afternoon crowd comes back. As an aside…The only metro areas that make mass transit work are the areas that had all their easements, and roads in before the advent of the automobile, with the city densities that enjoined them…Once the suburbs started filling, thing changed dramatically...