Short Thought - HS2 - What's the point and is it worth it?

HS2 is a project to build a system of so called high speed railway lines connecting London with Birmingham and then onto Sheffield and Leeds.  It is vastly expensive and will take a very long time to complete.

I question whether the value to be derived from HS2 is sufficient to justify the cost particulary given its very limited scope and excessive time scale.

It is without doubt that this country needs a more effective and higher value-add transport system.  However, the scope of HS2 is so limited that it is hard to see how it benefits more than a very small number of people even if it is ever completed.

Part of the problem can be seen in what I said at the top of this post:  HS2 is designed to link London to Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds.  What the country needs is the opposite of anything that further strengthens the imbalance of economic value flows in favour of London.  This country needs policies and investment to even out that imbalance.  The money and time being spent on HS2 would better be spent improving transport and information infrastructure within the regions around Birmingham, Leeds and Sheffield together with regions encompassing the rest of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.  This is what I mean by the scope of HS2 being very limited.

Another point that supports the argument against HS2 is indicated by my reference to "information infrastructure".  The UK missed the boat forty or fifty years ago with regard high-speed railways.  It was then that other developed countries largely got on that band wagon before the age of information and communications technologies.  HS2 belongs in the past, the future should emphasise digital information and telecommunications infrastructure and associated ways of working.  These offer far more equitable economic advantages and opportunities across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland than extending a 19th century technological paradigm into the 21st Century.

To sum up, HS2 is based on obsolete thinking, will only entrench the economic and social imbalance in the UK in favour of London and thereby further impoverish the majority of the populations of the UK and Republic of Ireland.