High Speed Rail

In July 2011 London Councils’ TEC committee submitted its response to the Department for Transport’s High Speed Rail 2 (HS2) consultation. We support, in principle, the development of a high speed rail network, and recognise the potential positive economic and environmental benefits it could have for the city as a whole.

However in our response we also raised concerns with the detail of the proposals and suggested changes we wish to see which could maximise the potential benefits of the project for London, which included:

• We raised a number of concerns around the dispersal burdens that could be placed on London’s existing transport infrastructure, particularly at Euston. We recommended that construction of the Chelsea-Hackney line begin in parallel with phase one of the high speed project to alleviate these.
• We believe that the benefits of high speed rail would be maximised by having three stations on the HS2 line in London; two hub stations, at Old Oak Common and Stratford, and a central station at Euston.
• We support the consultation’s proposal not to include a direct link to Heathrow airport in the first phase of construction, as we do not believe this could provide significant benefits to passengers or to the environment.
• We welcomed the proposal to link HS2 to HS1 but did not believe that the current proposal to use existing track on the North London Line is acceptable. It threatens to impact on existing suburban services and will not provide a resilient and ‘future-proof’ network.

You can download our full response below