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View from the new 250mph rail route

Idyllic countryside chosen for first leg of Britain's high-speed train revolution.

By Michael Savage

Campaigners fear the natural beauty of the Chilterns, pictured, will be ruined by the high-speed rail network

Campaigners fear the natural beauty of the Chilterns, pictured, will be ruined by the high-speed rail network

Environmentalists have vowed to oppose the construction of a new £30bn high-speed rail network after the Government revealed the route would pass through one of Britain's most idyllic stretches of unspoilt countryside.

Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, said that the 250mph services could be running on the first phase of the track, between London and Birmingham, by 2026, slashing more than half an hour off journey times. Building work has been pencilled in to begin in 2017.

But the announcement also prompted the first round in what promises to be a bitter seven-year battle with local residents and environmental groups after Lord Adonis revealed he had opted for a route that passed through a large area of the picturesque Chiltern hills, in Buckinghamshire.

Building the 128 miles of new track between London and Birmingham will cost around £17.4bn. Lord Adonis said that he backed blueprints for extending the network beyond Birmingham, which would see some services head east to Manchester, and others head to Sheffield and Leeds. Formal plans for the extended route will be drawn up by next summer. Completing the line for the entire 335-mile route between London and Scotland would see costs rise to £30bn.

Trains on the new line will take 49 minutes to reach London from Birmingham, down from the current time of 84 minutes. The services will terminate at Euston, north London. However, an interchange will be built at Old Oak Common, west London, where passengers will be able to take services to Heathrow airport and east London. Another intermediate stop will also be built near Birmingham airport, and a brand new station in Birmingham city centre.

Several routes were drawn up by HS2, the company appointed by the Government to study the feasibility of a high-speed network. The option selected by Lord Adonis will cut through one of the South-east's most idyllic valleys, Misbourne, with an official status as an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB). Planning laws state that major building projects cannot take place in the areas unless they are clearly in the national interest and cannot be located elsewhere.

Trains will head past Chalfont St Giles, Amersham and Wendover. They will also pass close by to Ellesborough, meaning that the new track may well be in eye-shot of guests staying at the Prime Minster's official country residence, Chequers.

Campaigners are already preparing to battle the plans, which have now been put to a public consultation. They will argue that the areas are too historically and environmentally significant to disturb. The cottage of the poet, John Milton, has been preserved at Chalfont St Giles. The Misbourne Valley is home to the Misbourne chalk stream and historic parkland. Thousands of acres of farmland and woodland would be lost if the project went ahead as planned.

Several other possible routes that avoided the region were dismissed for having too great an impact on built-up areas such as Luton. However, the Government has said that around a third of the route through the Chilterns will be tunnelled in an attempt to mitigate its environmental impact.

The Chilterns Conservation Board said the line would not be in the national interest and called on Lord Adonis to reconsider. It added that the net benefits of the line had not been proved and could not "justify causing irreversible damage" to the Chilterns AONB.

"I have told Lord Adonis that we oppose the routing of the new high speed rail line through the Chilterns. I expect we will get strong support from local people," said Sir John Johnson, the board's chairman. "Lord Adonis has promised there will be lengthy consultation with local communities before taking a final decision. He has agreed to visit the Chilterns."

Sir John was joined by other environmentalist in raising concerns about the new line. "By using existing and disused transport corridors as well as tunnelling, the impact on the Chilterns is less than feared," said Ralph Smyth, senior transport campaigner for the Campaign to Protect Rural England. "But the impact on Warwickshire, where the line is proposed to run through open countryside, is a major concern."

Lord Adonis said he had not ruled out the possibility of building a hub station at Heathrow airport for the high-speed services, favoured by the Tories, and has appointed Lord Mawhinney, the former Tory Transport Secretary, to examine the issue.

Theresa Villiers, shadow Transport Secretary, said: "In leaving out Heathrow and setting out plans that give no firm guarantees north of the Midlands, Labour's plans are flawed both by lack of ambition and undermined by their inability to grasp the basic truth that high speed rail should be an alternative to a third runway (at Heathrow) not an addition to it."

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Geography
[info]mitigo wrote:
Friday, 12 March 2010 at 04:20 am (UTC)
"Lord Adonis said that he backed blueprints for extending the network beyond Birmingham, which would see some services head east to Manchester, and others head to Sheffield and Leeds"

Was Birmingham moved ninety something miles to the north recently? You'd think there would be some sort of public consultation.

But seriously, it's good to see that the Treasury is so flush with cash. When do they expect to see a profit on their original investment, this side of 2050?
High speed rail 2 or lipstick on the pig...
[info]bob_irving99 wrote:
Friday, 12 March 2010 at 07:26 am (UTC)
And how about the electrification of the rest of the system? When is that going to happen?
High Speed Trains
[info]drg40 wrote:
Friday, 12 March 2010 at 09:56 am (UTC)
And so the propaganda starts - but with a name like Adonis what else should I expect?

Opposition is from Environmental and local pressure groups?

How about opposition from those who think it's a waste of money (bearing in mind the crying need of the whole network for proper investment), a waste of money (bearing in mind the crying need to get traffic off the roads and onto an efficient transport system), a waste of money (Bearing in mind the short distances involved in a small country), a waste of money (bearing in mind the crying need for a 21st century transportation solution that requires research and development now). I could go on, but any reader who has penetrated this far will get the drift.

And, considering that like the London to Bristol line, most of the seats will be occupied by civil servants of some kind or another it is really nice to know that our taxes will be paying the fares.

But I like the propaganda idea that anyone who is opposed is either a NIMBY or should be living in a bendy out the back of the airfield hugging trees.

Good on yer Adonis, rare that even a buffoon makes such a mess of high office. Maybe he hopes to join Beeching in that great pigsty in the sky reserved for idiots.

Oh, and while we're thinking about pigsties how about the idiot Adonis changing offices for a day with some of our railway workers? Bet his snappy suit would get messed up if he had to work in the conditions they are required to.

250mph rail route
[info]uksnapper wrote:
Friday, 12 March 2010 at 11:13 am (UTC)
What is the obsession with high-speed trains by people in positions of power who clearly have no vision for a real future.What we actually need is a new rail network with higher capacity.
Double width, double height, the jumbo jets of the rail network capable of carrying containers side by side and stacked two up the length and breadth of the country along with perhaps thousands of passengers at a time.

This needs to be an all-party effort so that no matter which party governs the country the project carries on by agreement from all. The long-term benefits are clear, reduced congestion on the roads, reduced pollution, reduced maintenance needed for the roads.
The current Royal system is still based on the size of two horses side-by-side pulling a cart which was of course what everyone was using when railways were invented so it seemed a logical design based on the needs of the time.
We have moved on,the rail system hasn't and only speeding it up is about as good as putting a Jaguar engine in a Morris Minor,quicker but cant carry more so useful to only a few people.
FOr GOd's sake
[info]tominlondon wrote:
Friday, 12 March 2010 at 11:40 am (UTC)
For GOd's sake just get on with it. All the other major European countries have had a nationwide high speed network for 20 years and here's the UK dithering about ONE LINE and taking more than 15 years to build it.

By which time the other major European countries will have moved on to something else.
Hurry
[info]geo32 wrote:
Friday, 12 March 2010 at 01:55 pm (UTC)
Now is the time to pay off your house mortgage over the next few years.

Why? you may ask.

Simple really, then you can remortgage your property to purchas a train ticket on the new line!!

I reacall the building of a new electrified line from Wath Upon Dearne to Manchester to transport coal to the city.

After several years and countless millions the scheme was scrapped before one piece of coal was moved

Once again the department that creates exercises in wasting/spending public cash swings into operation
[info]jwilliams2008 wrote:
Friday, 12 March 2010 at 06:51 pm (UTC)
Environ-mentalists, the clues in the name.

Its called progress and will reduce people using their cars thus saving the environment.
Last Train To Scotland?
[info]greenhumanist wrote:
Sunday, 14 March 2010 at 11:59 pm (UTC)
I guessed that environmentalist would object to this. But, they hate roads, and cars. But communist Britain will get stuck forever.

I suggest they get the current railway moving. They can do this by having one united railway; then run it as a 'non-profit service'. But to do that, we need to get rid of the 'business managers' that know nothing about railways. I believe it's all about buying up land for profit. Just look at Thameslink2000. A complete waste but, once Borough Market and Borough High Street, and London Bridge station have been destroyed, they can build TO LET and make loads of cash, while it will take 10 mins off the journey. So the rural areas will be hacked to death by the SRA who are really Network Rail, who were once Railtrack. It will never benefit us, only them. So we have the Greens who hate roads, but love trains, but love the environment. You couldn't invent this if you tried.

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