http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24159571

I quite like the suggestion that Phase 2 of HS2 (HS3?) is built first – i.e the Birmingham-Manchester/ and /or Birmingham-Leeds link. This would also eliminate the concerns about London ‘sucking in’ all the goodies.

I do wonder whether the very long time-scales of the project, along with the inherent signal-noise of futures work on complex projects like this begs the question can large-scale, expensive projects ever gain traction in a data rich, consultant-thick, but courage poor world? By courage, I mean genuine belief (even when wrong-headed). When one hears the mendacious response of Ye Olde New Labour at their conference to HS2 –which seems to boil down to: “we were pro, but probably best to go with the ‘no’ crowd now, but we’ll hedge our bets and see which way the wind is blowing down the (High-Speed?) line” — you can’t help wonder why any UK engineer wouldn’t take the Clapham Omnibus to Germany, Spain, Japan, China, Korea or any of those other countries which have been able to get their high-speed skates on, to varying degrees. But then we haven’t even decided if we’d even engineer any such project in km or Imperially measured miles! QED?