Hey...no need to worry about damage.

All those branch lines closed by that Mr.Beeching are nice and green now!

In but a few years time people will laugh like drains over the obsession with carbon dioxide shown in articles of this sort.

It is not often appreciated that the ' 200 yard wide' area of the line is not the only impact. (?why yards in this day and age??).

The line runs through unspoilt countryside, with little road structure: a large number of small roads and lanes will be widened and diverted and there will be large construction camps and spoil heaps. Narrow roads - including ironically the one past Chequers - will be designated as routes for construction traffic.

Hundreds of lorries full of excavated spoil will for years run over an already overcrowded road network. Half the main roads out of Aylesbury and a busy road to Chesham will need to be cut to allow cuttings or bridge work to be constructed. Two commuter rail lines are crossed near Aylesbury - I expect services will need to be suspended during some of the construction adding replacement rail buses to the mix.

There will be an additional increase in traffic from hundreds of workers.

So take a part of the south East you are familiar with: add hundreds of lorries and extra cars to its already nose to tail commuter traffic, then introduce months of single line traffic lights across its major routes, block the side routes then suspend the rail service. Welcome to the Chilterns!

"viable alternative to flying for millions of people"

Remind me how many millions currently fly from London to Birmingham, more sloppy churnalist copy and pasting of claptrap.

Saying that it will only benefit the richest members of society is really pushing it.
These high speed lines will clearly benefit most commuters on the trains by clearing up space on slower local services.

If the HS2 wasn't put in place eventually the rail networks would need to expand regardless as the amount of passengers is on the rise.

It would be ideal if the construction of the HS2 line was carbon neutral. but it's not an ideal world. The best thing the environmentalists can do is accept that is it going to happen and suggests ways in which the impact can be minimized.

Simple schemes could be introduced when the rail line is in operation like an option to add a pound to your fare and a new tree will get planted in a forest that the HS2 has affected.

All that needs to happen for HS2 to be good from a CO2 point of view is:

Commit to allow in the project budget for enough renewable generation to cover the running of the HS2 trains, plus a bit more to offset the CO2 expended during construction.
Simples.
This would only cost of the order of a few hundreds of millions of £ (I've done the calculations).

200 yards wide - where did this come from?

The finished line would generally be about 33m wide in total.

During construction it would take up more land of course, but most of this is returned to public/private use.

This is one of the most ill conceived major infrastructure projects one could imagine. There is a far stronger business case for linking London to Cardiff with a rail line and new road crossing across a Severn Barrage that will generate 4 times as much clean electricity as the flawed proposal to build the Hinkley Point C new nuclear reactor.
The cost will be half this great white elephant that will mainly (once again) benefit London and Londoners and cost the rest of the country's taxpayers an arm and a leg.
The justification appears to be the capacity of the existing rail system at a time when high speed broadband and other communications technology advances should mean less not more need to travel around the country.
Of all the infrastructure investment projects this shabby bunch of incompetents that make up the Government could have picked, this is the worst by a country mile.

We need a proper rail network that serves people's transport needs. Not a vanity project for those that want to get from A to B a bit quicker. Of all the big projects that could make a difference, why has this one being chosen? It just shows what limited tunnel vision this government has.

JS: Why wait a few years?

HS2 high-speed route may only marginally cut emissions

That's not really the key point. The current lines are close to maxed out so new capacity has to be created, in which case why not build it straight and put faster trains on it, leaving the existing line for regional trains and freight.

Also ask the reverse question: what's the economic cost of doing nothing, when other countries are adopting these systems?

So, it's deemed that it is a good thing to arrive everywhere quicker. We are not allowed to 'waste' time' on travelling.
In order (primarily) to shift business people around the country a little quicker the govt is embarking on a wholesale carve up of (what's left of) beautiful countryside and woodlands.
Same fiasco in France. The new TGV line linking Bordeaux to Toulouse is in it's final planning stage (the trace line is to be released tomorrow). Critics and opposants to this French folly are raising the same objections as their English counterparts. The new, incredibly expensive, landscape devastating line will cut the 3 hour journey by around thirty minutes.

I live in the Midlands though not near the line as currently planned and am extremely concerned at the environmental impact. Simon Jenkins does a good job on this vainglorious white elephant today.

Saying that it will only benefit the richest members of society is really pushing it.
These high speed lines will clearly benefit most commuters on the trains by clearing up space on slower local services.

Oh yes? I personally have never used Virgin Trains on the west coast main line as their prices are simply extortionate. Will HS trains empty them and make them cheap? Their first class carriages often appear nearly empty as it is, unsurprisingly. I have to go to London at ungodly times via London Midland and taking hours to get a reasonable price.

So I'd have preferred us to spend on better, cleaner more frequent and affordable local and regional trains.

200 yards wide - where did this come from?

It came from the first sentence of the article of course...

And no, it isn't 'just' 33m wide - the width of cuttings, embankments and security fencing (not to mention 'screening' plantings, which I suppose we can't complain about!) frequently takes it much wider than that.

I've measured out the width where it crosses the roads and its way over 33m.

I suppose you're saying its going to be easy to put up with a mere 33m through an area of AONB, green belt, SSSI, nature reserve etc.

My point was that there are road widenings and diversions and other impacts (permanent ones) right along the route in a wide corridor.

And even if it is eventully bearable, years of construction traffic and road closures will effectively shut down the lives of a huge swathe of south Bucks - how are we to get to school or work? Who will visit for tourism? What will our businesses live on?

As so often when writing about carbon emissions it is the emissions per passenger per kilometre that is spoken of - very rarely is the embedded energy discussed.
So much of the embedded energy in UK's older railways came from people and horse power - from eaten oats. A very small proportion of HS2 energy will be of this nature - most will be from fossil fuel (I've not seen the 'greenest government' suggest building HS2 with horse and person muscle power to reduce the embedded energy cost). A railway incorporates an enormous amount of embedded energy over the full length of its route. Flying requires significant embedded energy at its terminals but, once aloft, the vehicles' depend only upon in-flight consumption - though there may be more embedded energy per passenger in aircraft than in rail carriages.
I'd like to see articles that compare different transport systems' energy needs including both embedded and running energy needs, costed over, say, 30 years - some 747 aircraft may be that old.
As for HS2? Not for me - I'm not convinced of the "needed in the 21st century" argument: 'wanted' maybe but not necessaily 'needed'. Explore all other options, such as reducing the absurd waste of energy of hauling 5 under-utilised First Class carriages up and down the country, first.

Was there the same level of opposition when the M40 or M6 (in Cumbria) cut far larger swathes through just as beautiful countryside? A railway is far less visually intrusive than a motorway- and we don't have many motorway tunnels. Bit of course the M40 will be used regularly by priviliged denizens of the Chilterns and boosted house prices.

What is being overlooked/ignored time and again is the fact that this construction will release capacity on other lines for both passnegers and freight- cutting down on motor transport . The time saving to Brum is a red herring. Rail is safer, less polluting and the way oil is going, for much freight, it will be cheaper.

Nice one Justine (and Lord Adonnis)

A transportation system exists to save people time but the time they spend includes the time taken to earn the money to pay for the journey.

A $16 billion cost shared out between 70 million people comes out at about £230 per head. Assuming that the average person's time is valued at a generous £20 per hour then we'd each have to save 11 and a half hours using the service. At a generous 30 minutes saving for each journey from London to Birmingham this would mean we'd each have to be able to make 23 trips at no extra cost.

Of course, some people will save time, but they're likely to be rich, and the rest of us will spend time helping to pay for it.

Viewed in this way, HST is fundamentally inequitable.

Even on the Government's best and likely flawed estimates the benefit cost ratio of the scheme is only just over 2:1. This contrasts with the 20:1 benefit cost ratio for walking and cycling routes, which clearly are equitable. http://www.sustrans.org.uk/assets/files/general/Economic%20appraisal%20of%20local%20walking%20and%20cycling%20routes%20-%20summary.pdf

Fine, except that no one walks or cycles from London to Birmingham.

You're quite right, few people walk or cycle from London to Birmingham and I the little bit I put in about benefit:cost ratios for different types of transportation measures is a bit of a distraction from the main point that HST is fundamentally inequitable.

To give another couple of examples.

When Concorde was developed the average cost per head of population was about £5. Average wages at the time were about 50p per hour. Mr Sting may have saved many hours cruising back and forth across the Atlantic but the rest of us lost at least 10 hours to pay for it.

Build a new expressway through a deprived neighbourhood and a few rich people save time at the expense of inconveniencing thousands of others.

The real Ivan Illich developed these ideas many years ago and they now seem quite prescient http://www.copenhagenize.com/2009/11/energy-and-equity-by-ivan-illich.html

I am not clear if the carbon emissions of construction work is included in this?

The main point that is certainly not covered in the various posts is that "high speed" is carbon intense; this is due to the exponential increases in air resistance once over 60mph.

Its a bit like "Slow Food"; slow travel is greener. Its not that much slower going by bus or local train. The money would be better spent improving existing capacity.

Also we are meant to be reducing emissions now ! This does not contribute; its a big vanity project that politicians Can Do; show that they've achieved something !

It is clearly wrong to suggest that high speed electric trains are "marginally" less carbon-intensive than flights. Their carbon intensity in use depends almost entirely on the source of the electricity that is supplied to power the trains.

In France, where much of the electricity is generated using nuclear power, the carbon footprint of travel by TGV is negligible. By 2030, in Britain, we must have gone a long way towards decarbonising our electricity infrastructure and that work must be complete by 2050, if we are to meet the legally-binding targets established in our 2008 Climate Act.

On the other hand, we have almost no way to decarbonise air travel and it is set to become one of the major global sources of carbon emissions by mid-century. To reduce unnecessary flights tomorrow, we must upgrade our terrestrial transport networks today.

So I'd have preferred us to spend on better, cleaner more frequent and affordable local and regional trains

Sounds reasonable in theory, but the trouble is the whole route is already very busy. The more trains you put on it the less chance there is for an express service to get through, so inter-city passengers end up going as slow as local trains allow.

Remember why railways were built in the first place, then consider we're trying to improve on the 19th century now.

"high speed" is carbon intense

So is speeding up and slowing down a lot, which is what happens on twisty routes with lots of other trains on them. Going in a straight line with very few station stops is much more efficient.

It's a project to provide more capacity on the rail network. Funny that, given that we've been peddled the mantra that predict and provide is bad and managing demand is good. Ever growing congestion suggest that the latter is flawed. Then again there's been an awful lot of tinkering to design-in congestion increases in cities where traffic has fallen to try and convince more of us to use already congested and overcrowded trains and to justify further restrictions to generate more and further congestion.

Does anyone know what propulsion system is planned for this train, eg diesel, electric or perhaps even maglev?

Do people want fast rail, or do they want reliable, cheap and comfortable rail?

Could then money be better spent on doubling up congested lines? Or lower tracks or raising bridges to allow double decker trains?

Or looking where possible to re-open as much Beeching damage as possible to improve access to rural areas? Or implementing an integrated system of light rail to link towns up to the main stations? Or looking at cities like Sheffield and Birmingham with mile after mile of seldom used freight lines to turn into a regional metro (like Newcastle has) with housing and future retail developments build around the newly reconstructed urban metros? Or could we perhaps use the money to electrify lines in cities such as Sheffield to reduce the need for Diesel trains, which can be then moved to the less popular lines (Central Wales, the Highlands etc).

Or we could spend billions on an expensive high speed line, that will be a premium service, that will do little to move people out of cars.

Apologies, the width of the line will vary of course depending on whether it's in cutting or not.

Where it's at grade (on the flat), the corridor will be about 22m wide (accroding to HS2, so we could add a few metres on to that if we don't trust them). But certainly less than 30m.

Then it's a game of compromises with visual and noise impact vs corridor width. You could have noise barriers without increasing the corridor width, but they may not look great. Or, you could have smoother grassed-over earth bunds (wider corridor), or - as has already happened to a lot of the route - you can put the thing in a ditch.

See the cross-section in here:

http://hs2ltd.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/engineering-factsheets/

and archipet,no need to worry about the climate act 2008 .It will be repealed within the next year or two.