First Class HS2 for the Big Four; and second class high speed for the rest!

 

B L Tim Weller sorry, I think my point was badly illustrated. London was by far the largest urban agglomeration in the United Kingdom in 2020, with an estimated population of 9.3 million people, more than three times as large as Manchester, the UK’s second biggest urban agglomeration. The English cities of Birmingham and Leeds had the third and fourth largest populations respectively, while the biggest city in Scotland, Glasgow was the fifth largest. Therefore it stands to reason that most of the passengers on the current West Coast mainline will have no interest in stopping at Stoke or Wigan or wherever.... The current express services on the West Coast mainline sacrifice many of the stops in favour of speed. If you simply remove all of those London to Manchester passengers from the west Coast Mainline to their own dedicated route you can then just substitute all those express services to local stoppers, meaning more regular services to all those in-between stations. Like I said, it is about capacity, not speed. Doesn't it make logical sense to connect the 4 metropolis cities together? Thank you so much for this explanation that is clearer than what was offered up by Gareth Dennis or David Frankal. What you are saying is that the four biggest cities deserve to have a super-duper high-speed line because they have the largest populations and, therefore, must have the most passengers on the existing high-speed line.  The smaller 'in between' town and cities served by the present high-speed line will still have the existing trains and may even get more services. However, it will have to be a second-class high-speed service for them because the best, fastest and newest trains will be on HS2 services and be First Class High Speed. The problem is that the fewer passengers wanting to stop at the smaller towns and cities will feel they have been downgraded and may end up with fewer services each day because the majority of passengers from the Big Cities on the intercity trains will all be on First Class HS2.  That minority of second-class high speeders may feel left out and having been given second best.  And, their trains will still end up in Brum, Manchester, Leeds and London, anyway!  It reinforces the UK's class-ridden society that is not egalitarian by any stretch of the imagination. It is all about competing with the plane companies that already connect the four Big Cities.  It is all about attracting business away from planes onto rail.  Therefore, it does have to be about speed, every step of the way. And, the Big Four Metropolitan Cities are already very well connected and have been for over 150 years.  It is just that they want preferential treatment by not having irritating stops to delay them to their much more important destinations than the Wigans and Stokes of this world.  In other words, it is about speed and reinforcing our unfortunate, class-ridden mentality, and making for unnecessary duplication at a most colossal cost from even more greenhouse gases, to speed us all on our way to climate catastrophe and THE END.