LETTERS
Email your views to
opinion@railtechnologymagazine.com From: Chris Tolmie CEng
From: Martin Young MSc (Eng) I Eng CMILT MIET
During my career in railway engi- neering I have been fortunate to have worked on both the Channel Tunnel and Channel Tunnel Rail Link (HS1) projects in my home county of Kent.
OK, during construction of both the countryside suffered scar- ring, but the environmental issues were addressed correctly and now both projects blend in with the beautiful countryside of the Garden of England, despite all the ‘nimby’ attitudes to the projects when first mooted.
I now live in Bedfordshire, and frequently walk the Chilterns by Tring and Wendover, and I can quite understand the outcry of the residents to the HS2 project, and so I propose a different so- lution to the planned overground route of the new line. My reason- ing is thus: if the Chilterns were a mountain range, a wide estuary
Birmingham’s
Eastside, location of proposed Birmingham terminus for HS2
or a strait of the sea, then either a tunnel or bridge would be the only option. Therefore, why not tunnel under the Chilterns and emerge at a lower alignment near Wendover so that the line could then run in a cutting past Aylesbury, whose residents are furious about the proposed long viaduct next to their town.
I will not go into cost analysis, but I do have a very good idea of comparative construction methods, and now that the Government have sanctioned HS2, I am sure that a tunnel through the Chilterns would score in the long term on both environ- mental and economic benefit. Building a 20-mile long tunnel with today’s modern tunnelling technology is cost effective, as has been successfully demon- strated abroad and in the UK on the Jubilee Line Extension, HS1 and Crossrail projects. I there- fore propose keep the existing alignment but dig deep! It can be done!
The one thing HS2 will bring to the West Midlands is the ability to commute to work in London with a shorter journey time than today. It is unclear as to how businesses local to the West Midlands would benefit from the line. Readers need to consider what dynamic the new line will create that says to a business plan how a compa- ny would behave once the line is complete. Will it increase invest- ment in the area or will it simply enable London-based busi- nesses to sell their services into Birmingham?
The story that HS2 will create jobs in the Midlands and in the North needs a lot more critical in- vestigation.
From: Les Fawcett
It says it all that the members of Go-HS2 are all based in Bir- mingham or Solihull. They are cock-a-hoop at cornering HS2 for themselves and Londoners - and sod everybody else. Not long
before the paucity of the official plan dawns on the public and a more useful plan for HS2 takes its place.
From: Alan Robinson
Isn’t it time to inject a bit of en- gineering sense into this debate?
A high-speed line over Beattock and Shap and through the Lune Gorge would be very expensive to engineer compared to an east- coast route, and would miss out the whole of North-East England. Why does everybody (Scottish Government included) seem to ‘know’ that going west of the Pennines is the thing to do, when it’s obviously a more expensive way to serve a smaller population?
I have never seen a proper case made for it. Relief of the WCML is clearly going to be needed, but an- other line in exactly the same corri- dor isn’t the one-and-only option. Particularly critical stretches are London-Rugby on the WCML and London-Leicester on the MML.
So think on this instead: London- (Rugby)-Leicester-Nottingham- Sheffield-Darlington-Edinburgh- Glasgow. Birmingham has to be on a spur anyway, so diverge at Rugby. Serve Manchester via a re-opened high-speed Woodhead and the existing east- ern approach, rather than knock- ing down umpteen buildings to the south-west. Leeds would have to be on a short spur too.
South of Yorkshire, that route would largely follow the existing M1/MML corridor where plan- ning consent would be easier, and the sensitive bits of the Chilterns would be spared too.
Even though it looks like better value for money, as far as I know nobody has ever included it as an option in any ‘heavyweight’ study. Nor have I seen its exclusion
16 | rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 11
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