The Green Party has responded to today’s release of the HS2 Plus report by the project chairman, Sir David Higgins, saying that the plan to see the initial stage of the project run to Crewe by 2027, instead of only reaching Birmingham by 2026, by saying it only “made a very bad project slightly less bad”.
Green Party leader Natalie Bennett said: "The new HS2 boss has correctly identified one of the major problems with the project, its impact in even further focusing development and people on London, but his plan to build immediately to Crewe only makes a very bad project slightly less bad in terms of regional impact. And it is not at all clear how this could be achieved without a new hybrid bill in parliament."
"But the basic problem, which the latest relaunch of this struggling project of course can't address, is that we need to be investing first in local, active transport, walking and cycling, and in our cash-starved local bus services.
"Then we need to be looking at resilience of intra- and inter-regional train services, for far too long neglected in our privatised system, as the disaster at Dawlish demonstrated. We need to ensure people can rely on affordable, reliable public transport that runs when and where they want to get them between work, study, home and leisure in their own areas and regions, not whisk a few business people to London a little faster."
Rupert Read, lead MEP candidate in Eastern Region and national Transport Spokesperson, added: “Building HS2 faster doesn’t make it any more sensible use of money. It just means that other, far better and less carbon-intensive projects are likelier to be starved of money faster.”