High Speed UK (HSUK) is an advocacy group which proposes an alternative route to High Speed 2 that broadly incorporates the proposed Northern Powerhouse Rail (High Speed 3) scheme.[1] Railway engineers Colin Elliff and Quentin Macdonald founded the group.[2]
The HSUK proposal is not officially approved or funded by government.[1] The scheme was launched in 2008, renamed in 2013 and received a parliamentary hearing in 2015.[3]
According to the HSUK plan, there are 72 proposed services, as of August 2023.[4] The routes are categorised into 7 service groupings.[5]
Service group | Name | No. of routes | Source |
---|---|---|---|
S01 | Crosscountry | 14 | [6] |
S02 | Transpennine | 15 | [7] |
S03 | North & Scotland | 17 | [8] |
S04 | North-West Corridor | 9 | [9] |
S05 | M1 Corridor | 9 | [10] |
S06 | Great Western | -TBA- | [5] |
S07 | Heathrow | 8 | [11] |
The group claims various benefits of their plan compared to the proposals for HS2.[12] This includes: