#1: BCC suggest High Speed 2 Railway route near Pitstone Author: admin,
You have posted in this forum: Sun Apr 25, 2010 11:14 am
The new High Speed 2 London to Birmingham Railway (HS2), is officially proposed for a route to the west of Aylesbury and Wendover. That is what the arms length company HS2 Ltd, set up by the government, has put forward.
However, Bucks County Council (BCC) think differently.
It is suggesting that the high-speed railway should come right through our area, alongside the existing West Coast Main Line, right next to Pitstone, and Cheddington.
BCC wants to keep the line out of the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) around and to the south of Wendover, and move it east towards us. The matter came before BCC on Thursday, April 22, and local county councillor Avril Davies tried to make the Conservative administration see sense. Astonishingly, the county council seems to have overlooked the fact that the same Chilterns AONB sits just south of our villages too, and would be equally devastated by the new railway. In the end Avril's amendment, for the county to come down in favour of no route in particular, was voted down. Avril has pledged to keep up the fight.
Before you despair at the prospect of HS2 tearing past our villages, remember that BCC's alternative route has no status whatsoever. HS2 Ltd deliberately chose a single route, the one west of Aylesbury, rather than a selection of four or five (as happened when the Channel Tunnel high-speed line was proposed through Kent) in order to avoid blighting numerous properties.
However BCC appears to be suggesting that this part of the county is somehow less important than the western part, south from Aylesbury and Wendover, around Great Missenden, Amersham and the Hughenden Valley. That the AONB areas there are more important than the parts of the very same AONB here. They're trying to soften the blow with a proposal for a new station in the high-speed railway at Milton Keynes.
Read Avril's blog here http://avrildavies.blogspot.com/
See this Pdf to see where Bucks CC would prefer the line to go http://www.buckscc.gov.uk/assets/content/bcc/docs/transport/high_speed_2.pdf
Bucks CC statement on HS2 http://tinyurl.com/2vv4xxs (Note point 6 after "This County Council believes:")
See official route map www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/rail/pi/highspeedrail/hs2ltd/route/
HS2 Ltd website www.hs2.org.uk
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