21.07.17
Was the HS2 route decision for Sheffield correct?
This week has been a busy one for HS2. A number of important announcements were made by Chris Grayling, who will surely be glad to head off on holiday for some rest and relaxation as Parliament heads into its summer recess.
Major details of £6.6bn worth of construction contracts were announced, as well as a pair of shortlists for HS2 station design and master development contracts.
And that’s without mentioning the quiet release of HS2’s accounts, which showed that the company had been spending a fair amount on (some would say) overly generous redundancy pay-outs over the past year.
But the announcement that had everyone in the industry and the national press talking was the clarified information about the high-speed rail line’s route for Phase 2 beyond Birmingham.
It confirmed that Phase 2a would connect Birmingham Curzon to Crewe, before going on to Manchester Piccadilly and Warrington separately.
However, despite the government suggesting earlier this year that a connection to Sheffield Meadowhall, the interchange outside the city centre, was still on the cards, the plans showed that HS2 would serve the centre of the South Yorkshire city.
A survey of RTM readers showed that this was a decision that most agreed with, as almost half (48%) said that this made economic sense for the area.
However, a number of people responded with some concern to the route plans. Nearly a quarter (23%) of readers partially agreed, saying that HS2 serving the city centre was the right move, but that the line should go to the disused Sheffield Victoria instead of Sheffield Midland.
And around one in five (21%) readers disagreed with the decision entirely, saying that the route should head out of Sheffield to Meadowhall as this option had been better researched.
Finally, 8% said there was not enough data or evidence for any decision to be made yet, and that the announcement of the route had been premature.
One RTM reader, Gabriel Oaks, said that the decision to go into the centre was essential, as with some of the other HS2 terminals which are still to be built, passengers will have to make onward connections anyway.
“Many passengers will have an onward rail connection off HS2, others onto buses etc.,” he argued. “Unfortunately, in this respect Birmingham Curzon Street and London Euston are slightly flawed.”
This was a point that Graham Nulty said he agreed with, adding that the company did not have the convenience of passengers high up in their priorities.
“The best solution would be to build the Leeds leg of HS2 through the centre of Sheffield so that Leeds and Sheffield share the same HS2 trains – which would give far better load factors,” he commented.
“The leg of the route for York could be routed via Doncaster adding value, though one has to question if it is really worth serving York and Newcastle with HS2 as the journey time savings will be very small compared to the current East Coast Main Line. It does seem that HS2 are not interested in improving the economies of the northern cities, only getting the fastest journey time to London – which will benefit London more than the north.”
Finally, Stuart Burton argued that the best solution would be to tunnel the main HS2 line into Sheffield Midland, and that Sheffield Meadowhall was never acceptable.
“Now we have a ridiculous situation where more trains need to be bought, trains using the slow old tracks into Sheffield and South Yorkshire gets loads of pain and no station – so no gain," said Burton. “Yes it would have cost a lot to tunnel into Midland, but there is plenty of tunnelling going off elsewhere – e.g. Crewe. Such an expensive project that will be done half baked. Very frustrating.”
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