I was both saddened and annoyed by the HS2 release, and I wrote an earlier blog on the issue. The fact is that the potential savings in journey time are a sick joke. How a 30 minute saving per person between London and Leeds can justify such a huge cost is staggering. I am reminded of the idiocy of the guided bus system which runs down sections of the York Road in Leeds. Here in a nutshell is how that works. Point one, add extra guide wheels to buses = extra cost. Point two, build a central roadway with a fabricated raised curb to guide the bus = hideous extra cost! Point three, provide additional passenger entry/exit points in the newly created central reservation = extra cost. Finally create massive interruption whilst undertaking the project = extra cost. All this could have been achieved by simply surfacing the full width of the road and painting suitable coloured lines to indicate the bus only lane down the centre. Minimum interruption and cost, any bus could have used the lane, not just suitably equipped vehicles; but no, like all these schemes, they, because it is not their money have no trouble throwing it away like it grew on trees! HS2 will be the same. Any way the idea of an eighteenth century technology “rail” guided motive transport is so stupid in the present age it beggars belief.