High Speed Rail 2 is a massive white elephant, a £50bn boondoggle of a project as out of time as it is over priced. Yet, despite this I am a little sore that the bid Stoke-on-Trent put forward for a station got dismissed out of hand. Were it on the basis of a competition in which its projections got weighed up against those of a rival’s and found wanting, then fair enough. That didn’t happen, and what we have been left with – the ‘Crewe hub’ – is the worst of all possible worlds.
I’ve never been sold on the economic benefits HS2 will bring. Sure, construction, engineering, and railway jobs will get created – though for the former as the line’s first phase begins works from London towards Birmingham, this particular project won’t be helping regional rebalancing in the build phase. Then there are the claims made for it. For instance, Cheshire East leader Michael Jones says: Continue reading