[smcl]

Sadly I share your pessimism

[zeristor]

One would think that there would be diminishing returns to more infrastructure in London, that some investment in the Power House North would do wonders.

A high speed rail linking up Liverpool to Hull sounds like a good idea, there are the Penniness to drill though, but it would hardly be the Gotthard base tunnel would it.

Pennine base tunnel anyone?

[update: this turns out to be a study for a road tunnel]

https://transportforthenorth.com/wp-content/uploads/trans-pe...

[youngtaff]

HS2 does more than just improve transport around London, it improves transport in the regions it goes through be separating local and high speed rail

Midlands Connect cover some of the gains they’ll get in these docs https://www.midlandsconnect.uk/publications/hs2-released-cap...

Those gains are part of the reason HS2 should go all the way to Scotland and why the Northern Powerhouse route from Hull to Liverpool should be built too

[TheOtherHobbes]

Tory governments have negative interest in "levelling up" the North. There's a lot of rhetoric, but all the action has been destructive.

Liverpool to Hull would be transformative, as would an improved service to London.

But the Leeds leg of HS2 was (predictably) one of the first things to be cut, so I wouldn't expect either to happen any time soon.

[panick21_]

Its pretty terrible, that line would have had a major capacity impact on all the other Eastern lines. It goes a long way destroying the major benefits of HS2.

[lmm]

> One would think that there would be diminishing returns to more infrastructure in London, that some investment in the Power House North would do wonders.

Why would one think that? Everything we see suggests returns are compounding rather than diminishing.