Spend Any Money Saved On HS2 on SH2: Dual the A303, the A358 and the A30

The Sunday papers are filled with stories of Labour plans to axe the £42 billion HS2 high-speed rail link from London to the North of England in favour of a £6 billion route along the line of the former Great Central Railway closed by Dr Beeching in the mid 1960s.  Basically, savings can be made by adopting a route that is still largely undeveloped - affecting far fewer people than the proposed route for the HS2 and requiring less unspoilt countryside to be sacrificed. OK, the size of Labour's predicted saving may be an over-estimate, but money could be saved and the North could get a viable high speed link.

Rumours abound that many Tory and Lib-Dem politicians are also hoping to bail out of the HS2 project, but want to spend any money that is saved on sorting out other transport infrastructure problems in the UK.  What could be better than sorting out the main route westward from London - the entire length of the A303, the A358 and the A30?  The most sensible way of doing this would be in overcoming the long-standing sticking point that is the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.   What we need is SH2, not H2S.

So, there you have it, a possible way to achieve 2 major transport infrastructure goals, allow politicians of all flavours to backtrack on the original HS2 plans without any loss of face, and fund SH2, including a dual carriageway bypass for us here in Winterbourne Stoke, with a few bob left over for some other projects.

SH2

The real engine for growth!