ABSTRACT
High Speed 2 (HS2) is a £50 billion passenger railway scheduled to open from Birmingham to London in 2026 and from Manchester and Leeds in 2033. The route might turn into the backbone of a trunk network supplementing the one built largely in the nineteenth century: the government has mooted both an extension to the Scottish central belt and a new line across the north of England (HS3). In any case services using HS2 are planned to link eight of the UK’s largest conurbations, either throughout by high-speed trains or by trains that also run on the existing railway.
