High Speed 2 consultation response
29 Jul 2011
The NFU has published its response to the High Speed 2 rail consultation run by the Department for Transport.
Read it here.
- Belinda Naylor - 15/07/2011
Spending £30bn on HS2 is the wrong priority at a time of massive spending cuts. We cant afford to build it, and we wont be able to afford to use it either!
Once built it will have to be subsidised. Drivers contribute a net 4p per mile to the Treasury, rail passengers subsidised a net 16p per mile by the taxpayer. HS2 is not the right way for the Government to spend our taxes.
- Philip Martino - 14/07/2011
As an ex practising Civil Engineer, I have a slightly different 'take' on HS2. While I agree totally with those objecting to the line , cost etc there is another aspect which seems not to be mentioned. That is that of all the money to be spent, only a very small part will be spent with firms in this country. I expect that through EU rules, the main civils work (earth moving, bridge and tunnel building etc) will go to, say, a Polish or Romanian firm; we know the rolling stock will not be built here as Bombardier will by then be shut down, the rails chairs gantries and cables will come from Belgium or Germany or China. Maybe we will supply signalling or maybe not...
In a time of recession, to spend this money abroad seems doubly foolish.
- S D Parker - 13/07/2011
This is a colossal waste of money for a single infrastructure project to benefit a small minority of the UK population, there must be hundreds, if not thousands of smaller local projects that would directly benefit not just the local, but also the wider community.A railway is NOT planning for the future, plannin for the future is looking towards beeter ways of working and providing more goods and services locally,not encouraging long distance travel simply for the sake of it.This is a Londoncentric project that will do little for the UK as a whole. The problems with bottlenecks in UK rail network are well known and the money is better spent there, now.