How to protect cake, free up cake, have cake, and eat cake

High Speed Two should enable released capacity to protect Coventry’s three-trains-per-hour intercity service to London, and enable us to think about better local services, West Midlands metro mayor Andy Street explained, in a response to BBC tv presenter Patrick Burns.

[Sunday Politics West Midlands, 27 Jan 2019, from ~09m20s on the iplayer version]

[Andy Street:] “One of the key issues around HS2 is that it actually frees up capacity on the existing line[…] so that should enable us both to protect the three trains per hour from Coventry and think about better local services.”

Many people were having difficulty understanding what this HS2 ‘released capacity’ was all about, but after Andy’s interview, it could be beginning to totally make sense. So in the case of Coventry for example, by taking intercity trains off the existing line, HS2 releases capacity to protect the three West Coast intercity trains each hour to Euston.