High Speed UK (Advocacy Group)

High Speed UK (HSUK) is an advocacy group which proposes an alternative route to High Speed 2 that broadly incorporates the proposed Northern Powerhouse Rail (High Speed 3) scheme.^[1] Railway engineers Colin Elliff and Quentin Macdonald founded the group.^[2]

The HSUK proposal is not officially approved or funded by government.^[1] The scheme was launched in 2008, renamed in 2013 and received a parliamentary hearing in 2015.^[3]

Proposed Routes

According to the HSUK plan, there are 72 proposed services, as of August 2023.^[4] The routes are categorised into 7 service groupings.^[5]


Service group	Name	No. of routes	Source
S01	Crosscountry	14	^[6]
S02	Transpennine	15	^[7]
S03	North & Scotland	17	^[8]
S04	North-West Corridor	9	^[9]
S05	M1 Corridor	9	^[10]
S06	Great Western	-TBA-	^[5]
S07	Heathrow	8	^[11]

Comparison to HS2

The group claims various benefits of their plan compared to the proposals for HS2.^[12] This includes:

The cost of HSUK is £20 billion less than current plans for HS2 and HS3.^[13]
94% of journeys are improved.
40% less travel time on average.^[14]
600 million tonnes of CO₂ reduced.^[15]
The Chilterns are bypassed.^[16]
Most work involves improving existing infrastructure and restoring old lines, which is cheaper.
The project is one that integrates new infrastructure with existing infrastructure.^[17]
All principal UK cities are connected.^[18]

References

External links

HSUK official website

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High Speed UK (Advocacy Group)

Contents

Proposed Routes

Comparison to HS2

Comparison to HS2

References

External links