The Hunslet Club this Saturday (10 November 2018) plays host to the latest consultation event on ‘HS2’, the proposed new High Speed rail scheme due to better connect Leeds with London, the West Midlands, and Manchester – and there remain a wide range of local views on the scheme.
The event will run between 10am and 3pm, and will especially invite members of the public to explore and question the proposed environmental and ‘equality impact’ assessments for the scheme; click here for further event details, or here to read our previous article, for further background info on the scheme.
Judith Blake, leader of Leeds City Council and one of the Middleton councillors, previously commented:
“HS2 will be transformational for Leeds and the region. It will bring many thousands of jobs, and deliver enormous economic benefits, and huge improvements in connectivity. It is imperative however that HS2 is planned and delivered in a way that maximises its potential for Leeds while minimising its disruption to the city; I would urge everyone to have their say, to help HS2 Ltd get it right”.
But Ed Carlisle, for the Green Party in south Leeds, added:
“I like railways: it’s green travel. So I originally assumed that HS2 must be a good thing. But loads of research suggests it will disproportionately benefit big business and the London economy. Its costs are spiralling massively, now up to an estimated £200 billion. And it will actually be of limited relevance to most regular people. For a fraction of the price, we could genuinely boost our economies across Leeds and the North, by investing in bus travel, in local and regional rail networks, and in cycling and walking infrastructure. I might be wrong, but it seems to me like a giant vanity project.”
For more info on HS2, click here. For more info on the ‘Stop HS2’ campaign against it, click here. Comments on this latest round of consultation need to be in by 21 December.
