Campaigners in Lichfield will join other HS2 protest by lighting a beacon to raise awareness of the fight against a new high speed rail route.

A Stop HS2 placard in the shape of a white elephant
A Stop HS2 placard in the shape of a white elephant

Communities along the length of the proposed route from Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire will take part in the co-ordinated protest to coincide with the launch of the Government’s public consultation.

Lichfield campaigners will light their beacon at Packington Moor February 28 at 6pm.

At least 30 beacons are expected to be lit, including others in Staffordshire at Drayton Basset, Middleton and Polesworth.

Lichfield Action Group (LAG) and Whittington Parish Community Stop HS2 Action Group are combining their efforts to help organise the beacon along with the Barnes family from Packington Moor who together run the farm, farm shop, cafe and wedding venue business, all of which will be demolished if the current HS2 route gets the go-ahead.

A LAG spokesman said:

“We are totally opposed to the construction of HS2. The business and environmental cases have been proved to be a sham, and at a time of unprecedented cuts in public services, spending £1,250 for every household in Britain on a vanity project is the wrong priority for the country.

“The human cost is incalculable, with long-standing and thriving businesses like Packington Moor destroyed, as well as invaluable resources like Whittington Heath Golf Club. We hope this protest will draw the attention of the whole country, not just those directly affected by the first phase from London to Lichfield, to this white elephant.”

For more information about the beacon visit www.lichfieldagainsthighspeedtrains.org.uk.

Founder of Lichfield Live and editor of the site.

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Chris
13 years ago

Wow, lighting fires – what an illustrative and constructive thing to do…. If they dont want HS2, then come up with a well thought out argument against it and fully costed alternatives – and no, i dont mean that stupid report by the HS2AA which has more wholes in it than swiss cheese. This is just so laughable im afraid.

Ian
13 years ago

The whole country should be up in arms over this proposal. At a time when the government are still borrowing money to balance the books, why spend £32 billion on a scheme we cant afford, just to keep up with our European partners. If shaving minutes off a journey time to London, by destroying yet more of Britain, is so important, why can’t people set out earlier using the transport system we already have? Daft beyond belief!!

Chris
13 years ago

Where to strt? The first phase (Brum-Euston) WONT cost £30bn – it will be nearer 15bn, most of that money wont be spent till after 2017, governments ALWAYS borrow money to balance the books – its just increasing in size too quickly, the yearly spend will be roughly similar to current expenditure on Crossrail and will follow that lines completion using much of the same skillset, there’s damn good reason why Europe and much of the developed and developing world is keen on HSL’s – its in the national interest and delivers wide, transformational benefits, if a railway destroys the countryside then much of Britain must be unliveable including kent – cant say i noticed… and people should set out earlier?? is that a joke? so we shouldnt bother sorting out roads? or the underground? or any congestion relief at all? good luck convincing people of that.

Andrew Gibbs
13 years ago

If rail builders need a continuous fix then they could come up with local transport schemes such as light rail and trams that might be used by real people and genuinely be environmental. Personally I don’t see why taxpayers should pay billions so that some folk (including me!) can stay in bed an extra 20 minutes.

Yes, lets look at the european experience of HSR – the dutch scheme is going bankrupt, the french are estimated to subsidise the TGV network by 1% of their entire GDP. But we want to follow – tell me where the joke is again?

Chris
13 years ago

Andrew, as well you know, its not about needing a fix – its called investing in infrastructure, planning for the future and keeping skilled workers here in the UK; what politicians are normally so bad at. Its already been explained countless times that Birmingham-London is primarily about increasing CAPACITY, not giving people 20mins in bed – Its the extensions to Manchester, Leeds and beyond that will deliver real ‘transformational’ journey time improvements but this has to come first. I cant say i think much of your examples – a heavily delayed, yet to be fully completed farce of a HSL still with no high speed trains and a network that delivers such huge benefits to the areas it serves and the economy as a whole that such a subsidy is justified. Doesnt sound like a joke to me…

Andrew Gibbs
13 years ago

Investing is where you pay money up front on the basis that you will get a return in the future. Sensible investing is where you put your money into projects that give the biggest return, in the shortest time, and with the minimum risk – none of which criteria are met by HS2, and in fact when you look at the figures I don’t even think it counts as investing.

If HS2 was about capacity, sustainable transport, linking communities and all the other sound bites that are trotted out then the scheme would look totally different to what we are being offered. It would also have the support of the various green organisations and all business groups rather just those based where the few stations will be. As for transformational benefits I’m afraid that if all the existing rail links, motorways and airports cannot solve the north south divide then shaving a bit more off a link from one city to another is not going to change anything for the better.

I agree that the government seems good at walking away from job losses but rail people are not a special case – except in that it would seem that creating a job with HS2 requires in the order of £1million per job! However you should not be worried because when HS2 is finally seen as the poor value project it is we can get on and build the rail projects that the country really needs.

Two comments on your last point: I’m sure the Dutch were told what a great project their high speed rail was and how it was going to bring huge benefits – which tells me that their politicians are as subject to lobbying and optimistic forecasting as ours are. And while you might consider the ongoing French subsidies OK I’m sure that many others would rightly think of better things that the money could be spent on.

Chris
13 years ago

So governments should only invest on short term and low risk projects? Nonsense. Big infrastructure projects, whether HS2 or upgrading existing mainlines are *always* long term and risky, but they also provide the biggest benefits and keep countries and regions competitive. Without government support they just wont happen, and that has a ‘cost’ as well. In this case that cost is a WCML that cant cope with the passenger growth at a time when road transport will likely have become expensive and congested – making the north-south divide, potentially increasing domestic air travel and hurting northern economies.

You say that HS2 would look different if it was about capacity, linking communities, sustainable etc – in what way? Its always a compromise but the current plan is a high speed line seperate from the southern WCML, running directly between two urban centres – no capacity-sapping, politically influenced intermediate stations or elsewhere. This is a route, decided on independently based on sensible critteria and despite two different parties, much controversey and plenty of politcally influenced criticism has emerged virtually unscathed – why? Because its the best route. Not perfect, but on balance the best available.

Of course your correct that it doesnt have the support of everyone… but i doubt any major infrastructure project ever has. They cant benefit everyone, and unfortunately a lot of people struggle with the idea of the ‘greater good’ when it hurts their house price, but thats life unfortunately – at least it looks like the DfT are making every effort to mitigate the effects.

Unfortunately Andrew i dont see what your getting at with regard to the North-South regard – yes, there are roads and railways between the two – HS2 though is substantially quicker, indeed closer to central london than the outside zones of the London Underground. That, along with the ultra-modern, high frequency service cant fail to have an impact on how people view travelling to the west midlands and beyond.

With regard to skilled workers employed on Crossrail, Thameslink etc im not talking about job losses, but people being trained at vast expense only to go abroad because the regular work isnt available – a classic case was electrification, the money and projects dried up so the teams involved went elsewhere and that was that. Better for the economy, british business and the bottom line to keep people who know how to build these projects in the UK here and working.

Lastly, the Dutch project is *on paper* a very good idea – but if you screw up construction, signalling, rolling stock and offer a low-speed unreliable service using old rolling stock for the forseeable future its hard to attract the neccesary numbers. As HS1 proved, unlike the Dutch we are quite capable of building HSL on time and on budget.

With regards to France, while some might disagree there’s a reason its a source of national pride it has indeed been ‘transformational’, not just nationally but how the country is perceived around the world. The TGV’s whole reason for being was just like HS2’s – to rebalance the Northern France/Paris-centric country for which its been a roaring success and is why they continue to invest in new lines. Indeed, several are under construction and more in planning right now…

Andrew Gibbs
13 years ago

Hi Chris,

It’s perfectly right and proper that government takes long term views and it is fine for them to look at wider impacts, as benefits such as job creation might not directly appear on the balance sheet of the project but will help justify the expenditure. However I disagree that they are somehow immune to choosing between projects on the basis of risk – like any other gambling there is a balance between risk, reward, and consequence. For example, to fund a few million for a blue sky project that has a low chance of success might be justified because of a huge potential reward and the cash is not so much in the scheme of things. For large infrastructure projects costing billions it is fine to tot up the payback over decades but it is still the point that you should end up with a net positive benefit, and that the longer you are gazing in a crystal ball the more certain you should be of that eventual reward, not less.

Also it’s not about a choice between HS2 and nothing, it’s a choice between one transport improvement scheme and many possible others. The WCML capacity can be improved, enough to meet forecast usage, for relatively little money (£2bn, compared to the £1bn that will be spent just preparing for HS2), for a higher benefit ratio, and with less risk. At this point he capacity problem is solved, and we are left asking where are the benefits of HS2 that justify spending the extra £15bn that get high speed track to Birmingham? It’s certainly not the environment (organisations such as the Green Party and CPRE are against HS2), and it’s not jobs (high speed rail is a very expensive way to make a few jobs, and move other jobs to the station locations from other places).

In fact the stated key ‘benefit’ of HS2 is saving time of business people. Plenty of others have already pointed out that this argument is somewhat bogus – saving 20 minutes while sitting on a train is not important to someone with basic business tools. And this comes back to the point I was alluding to in my last post which is that the future of rail should look very different to HS2: The real benefits that rail can bring is when you get people out of cars, and plans should revolve entirely about the best ways to drive this change – it would be both genuinely environmental and give the very time saving benefits that make little sense for HS2 (once someone is on a train doing work they don’t gain a lot by saving a little time, get someone from a car where they can do no work and they gain a lot even if the time is the same). A rail system that supports this concept is the very system that you are dismissing – rail tracks that actually go to more than one place, that can be used by short and medium distance commuters in a wide range of towns and cities, a scheme that is not simply about getting yet more people into London (one of the great cities of the world, and that does not exactly need more subsidising from the rest of us!).

Remember transport is not an end in itself, it is a necessary evil that is required for people to go to work, for goods to move about, and of course for leisure and enjoyment. We should remember this and start first with local schemes and freight schemes – these will bring the biggest benefits, to the most people, and will always be needed.

Chris
13 years ago

Andrew your arguing for things that HS2 will achieve – unlike simply trying to squeeze more capacity out of the WCML, HS2 will attract people new passengers, *create* growth and increase market share, instead of simply trying to manage it using the existing network.

May i ask when i dismissed tracks that ‘go to more than one place’? thats *exactly* what HS2 will do, especially when extended to Manc/Leeds – by routing trains via the high speed line you improve services to towns and cities across the midlands and the NW/NE by speeding some some services up via HS2 and giving others a higher frequency or a direct service on the freed-up existing lines.

Another upgrade of the WCML will only result in more of the same, with streamlined stopping patterns either giving some places a worse service or lengthening journey times, few if any wider benefits away from the core WCML…. and only after another period of lengthy disruption. Yay.

If your opinions on the alternatives are based on that HS2AA report, please read it and reconsider – its an amateurish attempt to achieve maximum capacity at any costs whilst not understanding the extra cost of ever longer trains, using 125mph trains as commuter stock, the fundamental restrictions on train lengths, the massive disruption it would cause, the effect on other serivces including freight… you get my drift.

Its already been established that simply lengthening trains even further and eliminating a few bottlenecks isnt going to get the job done – the WCML is still a mixed-use railway with too many fundamental capacity restrictions. If they struggle with why just adding another coach or two is so expesive, then they dont understand the basics of railway infrastructure and shouldnt be coming up with laughable figures like £2bn. When you add the cost of many more years of closures and blockades to the midlands economy, HS2 would probably look like a bargain.

Andrew Gibbs
13 years ago

But the point is that growth in travel is not a good thing in itself – travel is a cost not a benefit. The market share that HS2 gains from road and air is pitiful. On its own then we come back to the question of what really is the benefit to the country of building a fast link that connects two already well connected cities? Only answer in the plan is time saving, but we know that is bogus. Then we come to the released capacity, but that only has a value if it gets used: the greengauge21 plan looks wonderful, but needs to be costed and explicitly included into the proposals if you want to claim the ‘benefits’ as I think we are a long way off any government coughing up for the massive ongoing subsidies that would be entailed there.

There is a lot of talk about the upgrade option and how it will be a disaster. But this option and costing was created by Atkins not a bunch of amateurs – why should the same engineers be wrong about RP2 but right about HS2? From my own admittedly naive viewpoint I don’t see why it should be any more risky or disruptive than building HS2 – you do realise that Euston will be completely rebuilt in that project, which to me sounds like it might well cause some disruption, and indeed more disruption than messing about with rolling stock.

Going back to your earlier question about the north south thing: it is possible right now for pretty much anyone in the country to get to London and back in a day. Given this situation providing another means for them to do that or making the trip a little quicker is not transformational. Any implication that firms will relocate from London to anywhere else because of HS2, or that this will solve the north-south divide is utter nonsense.