Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

It's Tuesday the 3rd of October and I'm back at my usual place outside Houston Station in central London.

Normally I'm here because I'm reporting on strikes, which of course will be happening tomorrow, closing almost all the main rail lines across England.

Some services running from here to Watford Junction.

A few others will be going from down the road at London, Kings Cross to Yorkshire and Newcastle,

and then also the Great Western Line will be travelling between London and Bristol.

But many services cancelled.

That's not why I have been drawn to Houston Station, though.

It is to survey the wreckage of what was supposed to be the absolutely essential transport infrastructure project for the 21st century.

And I've realised I've been covering this for the last 14 years. Yes, I was very young when I started. Thank you.

The whole point of HS2 is absolutely nothing to do with getting from here to Birmingham 20 minutes quicker than the current journey time, which is about 75 minutes.

If you get the fastest trains from here

to Birmingham New Street. And yeah, that will be reduced to maybe 40 minutes. Well, that's great.

But the whole point is all about capacity. It's about getting those high-speed intercity passenger trains off the current

Victorian network. If you built a dedicated high-speed network, and many other countries

have discovered this, that takes the pressure off the existing network,

then you have effectively two complementary systems.

You've got the new one, which is basically just saying,

okay, where are you coming from?

Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham.

Okay, everybody pilot board the trains

which are coming to London, Houston.

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