CONTROVERSY over the proposed High Speed Two project is about to move up a gear — with a ‘national convention’ of objectors being staged shortly before the launch of the Government’s public consultation on plans for a new 400 km/h (250mph) railway line between London and the West Midlands.
It is also proposed that this route will be stage one of a High Speed network which would then be extended via two spurs to Manchester and Leeds.
The official consultation is expected to be launched in Birmingham on 28 February by Transport Secretary Philip Hammond, and accompanied by publication of a new central report and other documents on the business case, route engineering and alternatives.
Seminars for people involved in the consultation will be held in several cities during March and public exhibitions will start in London a month later and then move on to the West Midlands.
These exhibitions are expected to be held all along stage one of the proposed HS2 route — from London Euston to Lichfield, Staffs, with a spur into Birmingham city centre. There will also be smaller mobile exhibitions at other locations. All these are expected to be attended by officials from the Department for Transport and HS2 Ltd, the Government-owned company that is undertaking detailed planning for the new route.
Before this, the Stop HS2 campaign has planned a National Convention on 19 February at the National Agricultural Centre, Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire, the home of the former Royal Show — a symbolic choice of venue, as the latest plans for HS2 would see it slice through the middle of the site, the result of HS2 Ltd moving the new line further away from the nearby village of Stoneleigh in response to objections.
What many objectors may be less aware of, however, is that one of the ‘Rail Packages’ put forward to the Department for Transport by the consultants W S Atkins as an alternative to HS2 would see a new 125mph railway line — half the maximum speed planned for HS2 — also pass close to Stoneleigh, as well as several other Warwickshire towns and villages where strong objections have already arisen to the high speed line.
The proposal is for what Atkins describes as a new “chord line” linking the Chiltern Line at Harbury, Warwickshire, to the West Coast Main Line at Berkswell, between Coventry and Birmingham.
The Atkins’ proposal also suggests a new South Coventry Parkway station on the “chord line” could be provided in the narrow strip of Green Belt — hardly half a mile wide — between Coventry and Kenilworth where HS2 Ltd has recently proposed placing the High Speed line in cuttings to reduce noise and visual impact.
Stop HS2 Ltd says the Stoneleigh convention on 19 February “will be a unique opportunity to network with other organisations and campaigners” and “almost everybody from the anti-HS2 community will be there.”
But anyone attending will have to pay £12 in advance, to convention@stophs2.org.