Why prioritise that line over the West Coast mainline, wondered committee member Lucy Powell.
Virgin will continue to run rail services along the West Coast mainline until November 2014.
But he said the council was unhappy with the performance of the West Coast Mainline.
Liberal Democrat president Tim Farron called for an emergency Commons debate on the West Coast Mainline franchise.
The firm runs local services in the West Midlands and some routes on the West Coast Mainline.
Buses replaced trains between Hemel Hempstead and Milton Keynes on the West Coast Mainline, adding an hour to journey times.
The transport secretary had earlier announced that Virgin Trains will run the West Coast Mainline for a further 23 months.
Rail services in the West of England will stagnate following the collapse of the West Coast mainline franchise deal, regeneration experts fear.
The West Coast mainline, he said, was continuing to improve and he was confident that Virgin could "build and sustain" the service.
About 31 million passengers travel on the West Coast Mainline every year.
Civil servants did not "deliberately" mislead ministers during a bidding process to run the West Coast mainline, the transport secretary has told MPs.
The mistakes came to light after bidder Virgin Trains, which had run the West Coast Mainline since 1997, launched a legal challenge against the decision.
Virgin Trains, which runs services on the West Coast mainline, told the BBC there was a "wider range of value fares than ever before" on their services.
The BBC has learned more details of mistakes made by the Department for Transport that led to the collapse of First Group's bid for the West Coast mainline.
BBC: West Coast mainline and the mistakes that ended rail bid
On Thursday , it's much quieter on the committee corridor - but look out for the publication of the Transport Committee's verdict on the West Coast mainline franchise fiasco.
Given the continuing row over the West Coast mainline franchise, and some strong criticism about the level of public subsidy to the railways, this will be a hot topic.
When the government called off the Great Western bidding process it said it wanted to re-evaluate it following the high profile collapse of the West Coast mainline deal a few months before.
Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson said his company would "try to continue to do a great job" on the West Coast Mainline now that it had been allowed to run the service for another 23 months.
For what it's worth, there is a fascinating test case of this spirit of forgiveness for errors made to improve the productivity of the UK: the botched awarding of the West Coast Mainline to FirstGroup.
After months of headlines about pasty taxes, plebgate, confusion over energy policy, West Coast mainline chaos, G4S Olympic security muddle, abandoned Lords' reforms and badger culls and so on, the government will hope it has a chance to change the narrative.
Saying that unless we can get more passengers for the west coast mainline that our sums will not add up is a bit like saying that unless the Financial Times and The Economist get advertising in their journals they will go bust.
Although the preferred route for HS2 does not include a dedicated station at Crewe, the line is expected to join a spur on the West Coast mainline to allow high speed trains to stop at the existing station and link up with other services to Liverpool and Preston.
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