I understand your sentiment. I think the way the project is presented ("Let's make the trip to Birmingham 30 mins shorter") is not very helpful either. And whil

I understand your sentiment. I think the way the project is presented ("Let's make the trip to Birmingham 30 mins shorter") is not very helpful either. And while I lack the knowledge to assess the project, I've read some counterpoints to this in an article linked here on hn. I think it went along the lines of: the couple tracks running from the north towards London from Midlands are all at the edge of their capacity. The HS2 will take some load off those and thereby increase the capacity by X percent for all the commuter trains. edit: I haven't been following this in the past year. Now I see they scrapped the Euston hub.