New HS2 film viewed by 100,000 people
A new film highlighting the families whose lives will be affected by HS2 has been viewed by more than 100,000 people in its first week.
An accompanying petition calling on transport secretary Chris Grayling to cancel HS2 immediately and cut all of its funding has been signed by more than 7,600 people.
Villagers in Woore are currently fighting the plans to bring construction traffic through their village near Market Drayton.
The current chosen route would see the majority of construction HGVs travelling from the A51 and turning on to the A525 at Woore.
The construction traffic will be using the routes from 8am until 6pm weekdays and 8am until 1pm on Saturday, which has sparked concerns from local residents and Market Drayton town councillors.
The petition and video has been launched by West Midlands MEP Jill Seymour, who sits on the European Union’s transport committee.
She said it is not too late to cancel the multi-billion pound ‘vanity project’.
“It will be our children – and their children – who will be paying this debt,” she said.
“When the £111 billion could be spent on our NHS, emergency services, new housing, and social services, why is the priority on a railway we don’t need?”
The six-minute ‘HS2 Disaster’ film reveals how it will affect the lives of families across many parts of the country, from Middlesex through to Warwickshire, Staffordshire, and further north.
At a public meeting last week, MP for north Shropshire Owen Paterson said he was “deeply cynical” about the HS2 rail line – despite voting in favour of it in parliament.
Mr Paterson said: “I’m deeply cynical about the whole project given we have dire broadband in Shropshire, we have driverless cars on the way in the not so distant future and the massive cost of the project which has got much, much more expensive.
“I did vote for the project at the time but none of us had a clue on the impact it would have on Woore. I’m prepared to vote against it next time but I don’t want to raise your hopes because it has the support of the Labour and Tory parties.”
The initial plan is for a new railway line between London and the West Midlands, which would see trains run at speeds of up to 250mph. The second phase would take the service from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds.
HS2 said the peak of the construction activity going through Woore will generate daily construction traffic flows of 274 HGVs northbound and 274 HGVs southbound on A51 London Road from A53 Newcastle Road to A525 Bar Hill.
However they said the duration of this peak is proposed to be for two months with construction traffic flows reducing substantially outside of these two months for the remainder of the construction period.
A consultation on the plans will run until September 30.
