Thread by @nickreeves9876

1/ The absurdity is that we are even having this debate. A normal Western European country would have completed HS2 at least a decade ago. But there are issues with the eastern branch around capacity on the London leg.

https://twitter.com/Andrew_Adonis/status/1445636811682951168

2/ The current plan seems be to run 11 trains an hour from London to the NW and 6 to the NE with some of those dividing en route (slowing them down and introducing delay risks). That puts 17 trains an hour on the London section, which looks over-optimistic.

3/ 17 trains on hour on a 200mph railway may work on a closed system, but HS2 will take trains from the existing network which may well be running late. That means leaving space in the timetable to fit in delayed trains. So 14-15 trains an hour is more realistic.

4/ But 14-15 trains an hour on the London section leaves only 3-4 paths for NE trains - and that simply isn't enough, unless there's a lot of dividing and joining of trains, which really isn't a great idea.

5/ So added to services from B'ham to the NE that's about 7 trains an hour, which is rather poor use of a very expensive bit of railway. The cheapest way of making better use of it is to link in more destinations to the northern arms of HS2.

6/ It would be fairly simple to route trains from the SW and South Wales onto the northern arms of HS2. The junction would be be just north of Birmingham. So now we get HS2 being more like an X, with big time savings from the SW to the NW and NE.

7/ The current HS2 doesn't reach Nottingham city centre, stopping at a parkway station in Totton on the city outskirts. That's stupid. HS2 should link to the centre of Nottingham, allowing a 25 minute B'ham to Nottingham shuttle, properly linking those two cities.

8/ It would also be simple to build a link allowing trains coming up the East Midlands main line through Luton, Bedford and Leicester to use the NE arm of HS2 to reach Leeds and maybe futher north with big journey time savings.

9/ What I am proposing is turning HS2 from a London feeder network into the core part of a national high speed system, and in the process making better use of the northern arms of HS2.

10/ There are further possibilities. A short stretch of line would enable HS2 trains to approach Leeds from the east allowing services such as Birmingham/Leeds/Bradford, Leicester/Totton/Leeds/Bradford and Sheffield/Leeds/Bradford.