Birmingham Friends of the Earth Campaigning at local, regional and national level to protect the environment
HS2 = Sustainable Transport and Jobs?
A lot has been written, said and shouted about the proposed HighSpeed route from the Midlands to London. It would be easy to characterise the new route as a line of concrete and metal destroying the landscape with no regard to the environment in the name of progress. However, High-Speed Rail is not airtravel or coal-fired power stations, trains themselves are not inherently bad for the environment. In fact trains are a key part of any sustainable transport system. For something like High-Speed Rail the question as to whether it is a “good� thing depends on the specific plans in question and the circumstances in which they are being Continued on Page 14