When I first heard the proposal for HS2 and the price tag attached to it then my gut reaction was 'no way!'

It's not until you get beyond that and consider the need for such a link that you can start to assess the potential benefits.  Taken in isolation it may seem unnecessary in the same way that the M1 between London and Birmingham was considered by many at the time as a white elephant.  That one motorway was the precursor however to a national network of motorway links.

The rail links between the North and South of the UK are reaching capacity whilst at the same time the demand continues to rise.  It's very well to suggest we should discourage travel but that genie is out of the bottle. 

Of course the signalling and the rails on the existing lines could be upgraded but the cost of doing so in comparison to the additional capacity on a unit basis would be just as high, if not higher, as that for HS2 - with the additional problem of reduced capacity and travel disruption such an upgrade would cause.

Yes the distance between London and Birmingham is relatively short and the additional capacity and time savings are difficult to justify - however, as with the M1, HS2 can be the start of a national high speed train system - the distance from London to Glasgow is greater than to Paris, Bonn or Amsterdam, further than Paris to Geneva. 

If a negative attitude had been adopted when rail links were first mooted, (and indeed motorways), this country would never have developed in the way we have - not because railways were profitable, (they weren't), not because they weren't expensive, (they were), not because they didn't mean that houses and countryside weren't 'spoiled', (they did), but because they did encourage more movement of goods and people enabling the economy to grow.