YP Letters: Mad dash for faster trains will only lead to national ruin

THIS crazy dash for high speed trains all over the place is literally mad in the long run (The Yorkshire Post, August 22).

For, if we look at all those nations that have this, they have not created a dynamic economy.

You can see this clearly with Japan as a mere single example, which has been in the economic doldrums for nearly 30 years with no basic economic growth and, in many ways after inflation and currency fluctuations are taken into account, negative economic growth.

But there is no doubt that we shall have the same result because, at the end of the day, we shall not have created any significant new technological industries, just like all these countries with their high speed trains and more economic stagnation payback.

All this folly will of course, through a great deal of pure individual vested-interests involved from those who are pushing for all these new trains and what runs on them, provide substantial financial benefit for them. We – the taxpayers – will pick up all the bills as usual, that will no doubt eventually exceed £100bn-plus.

What about creating the unending formation of new technological industries and future jobs for all our generations to come? For we have the creativity and brains but where this apparently is lacking with our politicians is they simply want to build fast train lines in the hope that business will be there at the end of the tunnel.

From: ME Wright, Harrogate.

“Railways are a public service” (The Yorkshire Post, August 17).

How many times have you and the travelling public said this, in one way or another and how many times has it been dismissed as an irrelevance by Westminster?

Fares, which are already well above those of mainland Europe for greatly inferior services, are set to rise yet again.

Northern’s proposed new hit-and-miss schedules leave most stations between Harrogate and Leeds with only a half-hour service.

Just before the 2015 election, the carrot of ‘possible electrification’ was dangled before us, offering a 21st century service both to Harrogate and the north western Leeds suburbs. This would also give a long-overdue fillip to the city’s proposed ‘Poundland’ upgrade of the city’s archaic public transport network.

Once again, the question arises; what are the city’s eight MPs and those from the rest of Yorkshire doing about this?