British NIMBYs seem unusually strong, even in a world of NIMBYism. Best wishes to the British in defeating the Midsomer Historical Society of Bat-Loving Cranks, which apparently controls the deep state over there.
If you happen to come across any part of HS2 in some random village you've never heard of it's quite incredible the impact it's having on the locals. Locals who live miles away from the nearest station and therefore unable to use the line, by the way.
We also have very little wildlife left and we don't really want to live in concrete jungles.
Suffice to say, it's not difficult to see why it's like this in the UK if you actually come and see.
Because people inherently misunderstand the benefit of HS2, and how could they not if it's constantly being misrepresented by our media and politicians.
UK has one of the highest proportion of freight transported by road in Europe. That is fundamentally because our rail infrastructure is overloaded and unable to take any more freight. All non-perishable stuff that in other countries just goes on rail, in the UK is moved by trucks on our roads. Which as you can imagine, is causing tens of billions of pounds worth of damage to our roads, which we - taxpayers - pay for. All of these locals that live miles away from the train station are already affected by the lack of rail infrastructure - because every time they drive somewhere they have to contend with massive potholes and insane amount of heavy cargo traffic anywhere they go. If HS2 is ever finished, it will reduce congestion and our roads and reduce the wear and tear which again, is costing us billions in upkeep every year.
But according to our media, it's all about saving london commuters 2 minutes on a train from Birmingham, so every Dick and Harry is against it, because like you said - they live miles from the nearest station, why would they care?
If we wanted to address the freight situation it would be along the route of the A428/A14 from Folkstone (where much of the freight is landed) to the Midlands. That road already has a cheery sign on it pointing out how high the accident rate is.
It would of perhaps been an easier sell if we could of built it much closer to the WCML and told people, look this is to get rid of those horrible fast trains that wizz though your local station at 125mph.We'll use the space for more services so your commute to London from say Leighton buzzard is faster and less busy.
Knocking down half the towns that the WCML runs through to build more tracks carrying trains that aren't going to stop there would be neither easier nor cheaper than HS2.
You analysis is very narrow and only considered the benefits to a certain set of people.
HS2 actually follows reasonably closely to the old GCML. And for the same reason, its the best route to build a fast rail-line along.
I think your proposal complete ignores the additional cost of such a route change. And the cost alone, aside from anything else would make it unreasonable.
Many things go into selecting a route and in most cases where I think they made the wrong choice its usually because of cost concerns, like not building the needed tunnels into cities.