November 15th - On The Trail of HS2
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 15 November 2021
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The government is set to scrap the eastern leg of HS2 between the Midlands and Leeds with the Transport Department instead set to announce a new rail plan on Thursday. Simon Calder takes a look at the state of the railways in Britain, looking at how the government's new plan for HS2 affects "levelling up" the country and what it means for places like Leeds, which have long felt the effects of being left out of Britain's rail plans.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Simon Calder and I'm welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling, whether you're dreaming of a great escape or actively making plans for one. |
| 0:14.4 | Today, as you may hear, I'm on the train and on the trail of high speed too, as I trace the future of rail across Great Britain. |
| 0:26.9 | Of course, this podcast is completely free, as is my weekly travel email. You can sign up for that |
| 0:33.8 | at independent.com.com.com.com forward slash newsletters. If you like me are very interested |
| 0:42.1 | in travelling by rail around the UK, then you might have seen some encouraging headlines in |
| 0:48.1 | the weekend press talking about a great Red War rail revival, £ billion pounds being put into projects to improve the railways. |
| 0:58.6 | What a great wonder that prospect is. |
| 1:03.5 | I was really interested in it too, but once I started reading about it, |
| 1:08.2 | and here we are at beautiful Barnsley, by the way, once I started reading about it, this we are at beautiful Barnsley by the way. Once I started reading |
| 1:12.3 | about it, um, my appetite was somewhat dulled by the fact that actually this isn't quite |
| 1:24.0 | what it seems. Let me talk you through what has been happening and what it means for your travel plans. |
| 1:30.3 | I'm going to take you back to 2009. That was when the last Labour government, yes, remember them, decided that they were going to commit to a high-speed rail network that would transport |
| 1:48.0 | us into the 21st century, just what the UK needs. At the moment, we haven't really got any high-speed |
| 1:55.0 | lines apart from HS1, High-speed 1, which will take you anywhere you want to go so long as it is Kent or Paris |
| 2:02.8 | or Brussels or Amsterdam. It's the one that leads to the channel tunnel. And with so much demand |
| 2:09.8 | for the railway building up, passenger numbers basically doubled in 20 years up to the start |
| 2:14.9 | of the coronavirus pandemic. It was seen as essential for us to increase capacity. |
| 2:21.3 | And that's what it's about. It's not really about speed. |
| 2:23.3 | So when you hear about high speed two and high speed three, |
| 2:26.3 | yes, it's convenient that they can run up to 225 miles an hour. |
| 2:31.3 | But actually the main point is to take the intercity passenger expresses |
| 2:37.2 | away from the existing network to free up capacity for freight trains, for local and regional |
... |
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