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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:
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