Well until you can suggest alternatives, you can't tell if building HS2 is a better or worse choice, can you?
But the general consensus of railway engineers is that most of the quick fixes for the WCML have already been done and it's still bursting at the seams, the only solution is something as dramatic as building a whole new line to get express trains out of the way of local trains and freight.
having listened to 5 live this morning with many frustrated rail travelers phoning in it would seem HS is not wanted and updating the existing railway is, no one has mentioned getting to their destination faster the maim concerns have been cancelled trains (usually down to a lack of drivers especially on Northern) old uncomfortable and overcrowded trains (often caused by the knock on effect of cancelled trains) no one wants 106 billion spending to reduce travelling times for a small number they want it distributing fairly so they all benefit.
Nobody's doubting that people on SWT and Northern have had a really **** time of it lately - and part of it is because of the very thing Northern passengers want, new trains. Introducing new trains means taking drivers off for retraining - and Arriva seem to have bodged the retraining. Even something as "simple" as introducing new trains isn't as simple as the non-experts assume - and everyone thinks they can run a railway when they wouldn't dream of giving Sky hints on how to build a satellite.
But there's a deeper problem - one of the reasons Northern hasn't got investment is to avoid spending taxes on the relatively small number of people who use Northern (about 20% of the passenger-miles of say Thameslink-SWT). Northern's got real problems - it's the biggest loss-maker of the English franchises and has a relatively big network which means significant improvements cost a lot of money. The best option would probably be to close down half their network and pay taxis to move those affected, freeing up money for improving the rest of the network. But the people wanting improvements probably don't want that. They're getting their new trains, so HS2 won't affect whether they do - they've just been at the end of the queue when we're coming to the end of a generation of trains being replaced. But these things take time - and now that the rolling stock has been improved, it's time to look at what happens next. HS2 is that thing.
Northern are the junior partner on the WCML, and they are affected by the lack of capacity just like the express trains, but get even less say in things. So Northern would be prime beneficiaries of moving the express trains onto dedicated tracks. Imagine you had a road used by bikes and cars, but you could only have one or other on a given section of road. The cyclists would have to cycle a bit then move aside to let cars zoom by, then you'd have to stop the cars to let them cycle to the next rest point - it would be no good for either group. Build a separate cyclepath and both can move at the speed they want, and capacity is dramatically improved.
HS2 is primarily about more capacity to serve the fact that railway travel is mainstream, and in 20 years passengers have doubled on that main route between our five biggest urban areas (depending on definitions). Messing about in Dawlish doesn't fix that basic problem.
