Closed petition Re-instate the great central main line rather than build hs2

Closed on 7 August 2012

There has been a lot of objections to the building of HS2.There is a solution .The planned route uses in part the trackbed of the former Great central main line to London .It was the last main line to built in Britain ,built in 1896 with no level crossings ,sharpe curves it went over ,under or through never taking an awkward route ,it was extremely direct and very fast linking Manchester to London if open today it would be extremly fast and certainly far better engineered than the Midland or West coast main line.Its visionary design was built to a European loading gauge to handle larger continental trains ,in mind was a future building of a channel tunnel ! We closed it in the 1960's because it duplicated other routes and because of its fast design did not connect as many towns as it "rivals".The trackbed through rural England remains largely intact and should be used as another standard main rather than build HS2 .