HS2

(Update of 2011 post at Free to Choose): Apart from the likelihood that the £32bn estimate for HS2 will increase to at least twice that sum, the trade-off, whichever way you cut it, is negative. HS2 would shave minutes off a journey between cities already well-served, while doing nothing to connect outlying regions currently starved of viable links, at a time when web interconnectivity is rendering face-to-face business meetings increasingly pointless. Traffic policy presides over casualties, congestion and environmental damage on a colossal scale. Instead of making roads fit for people and improving local rail connectivity, the government wants to sacrifice some of England’s most green and pleasant land on the altar of the high-cost HS2 vanity project.