Anger and doubts remain over benefits of HS2 to the North

WHAT a surprise! Patrick McLoughlin and the Department for Transport are telling us that failure to implement HS2, at a cost of £42bn, will result in 14 years of delays and bus substitutions while existing routes are upgraded at a cost of £20bn.

Question. Can anyone tell me of a major Government project completed at anything like the forecast cost? Massive over- expenditure is the usual outcome.

The DfT claims that HS2 is needed to meet future capacity shortages, but the real reason is they want to get more freight onto the East Coast, West Coast and Midland main lines.

HS2 will result in reductions in direct London services: Wakefield 34 per day down to 16, Sheffield, 30 per day down to 16, with similar reductions applying to Doncaster, in order to accommodate this freight. It is extremely doubtful that HS2 will be able to run 34 services per day.

Trains running at 225 mph need far more line space than ones running at 100mph. Think of the braking distance difference between a car doing 50mph and one doing 100mph.

The latter half of the 20th century was a period of gross mismanagement of our railways by all governments. In the 1960s, the DfT decided that the capacity provided by the Great Central Railway would never be needed. Blame Beeching, but blame the government also; they were told at the time what a grave error was being made, but, of course, they knew best.

The Great Central Railway was the last great railway built by the Victorians. It ran from London to Manchester via Rugby, Leicester, Nottingham, and Sheffield.

It was built to a continental loading gauge enabling lorries to piggyback onto trains in a revolutionary roll-on, roll-off service.

Why would New Great Central be so much cheaper than HS2? Very simply, it is much less intrusive. Something between half and two-thirds of the infrastructure is still in place. Trackbed, bridges, embankments cuttings can still be seen sweeping through swathes of the countryside, including large sections in leafy Berkshire.

From: SM Spensley, Church Fenton.

THE proposed property compensation for HS2 is derisory with only an estimated two per cent of properties blighted by the railway qualifying for compensation.

It is estimated that this will save the project approaching £14bn, thereby enabling the Government to reduce the true cost by moving this cost onto the households along the route. It appears to these people that HS2 is all pain for no gain.

Not only will the equity in most people’s main asset, their property, be reduced but in a large number of cases will result in negative equity.

This will prevent people from moving unless exceptional hardship can be proved in order to claim compensation, a task that is proving almost impossible on stage one of the route.

As more people on the proposed route become aware of the lack of compensation, I have witnessed first hand the stress that this is causing as I live in Church Fenton a village that contains the highest number of properties, along the whole line, that are isolated by the proposed route

From: John Spink, Ecclesall Road, Sheffield.

WHY do our politicians always adopt the most grandiose schemes in public transport, whether HS2 or Leeds trolleybus?

Incremental investment is nearly always best, like the recently announced Leeds-Harrogate-York rail electrification which will be a positive regional asset. Why not include with that a large park and ride facility on the extensive and derelict railway land on the site of the old Arthington Station in Wharfedale?

That would have such a positive impact on rail revenues and on all the over-crowded road networks in north-west Leeds, and at much less cost.

From: Clive Flynn, Wade House Road, Shelf, Halifax, West Yorkshire.

I REMAIN unenthusiastic about the HS2 project, not least because the proposed line will terminate at Euston. The North urgently requires high speed access to Europe which suggests a link with the Eurostar line at King’s Cross/St Pancras. Surely it would be better to upgrade the present East Coast main line (for which Eurostar is believed to be a bidder) and provide a short “loop line” from Euston to accommodate Eurostar trains from an upgraded West Coast main line? It’s modern railways, not rocket science.

From: Mrs M Bielby, Cromwell Avenue, Loftus in Cleveland, North Yorkshire.

I HAVE read many pages and watched various programmes and I am convinced the HS2 railway will not be of benefit to much of the North, in addition to the problems and destruction it will cause in several other parts of the country.

The initial publicity concentrated on shorter journey times from London to Birmingham and Manchester.

The mention of Sheffield and Leeds seemed to be a mere add-on as a sop to the southern view of the North and later still York got a bit of a mention.

The journey times list (Yorkshire Post, October 26) shows figures for Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh but these cities are not shown on the map of the proposed network.

A few days ago I saw a Transport Minister saying that the whole of the North would benefit from HS2.

I’m sure our Loftus Town Council would be happy to 
have him come to the Town Hall and explain to residents what it will do for us but I’m sure that won’t happen because he wouldn’t be able to find any benefits.

The small towns and villages of much of Yorkshire, of County Durham and Northumberland will help to pay for this expensive system but it will do nothing for them.

On Tuesday we left home at 8am, drove to Saltburn then needed two trains to get to York where we arrived at 10.50am.

All the way by car would have halved the journey time.

Money would be better spent giving more of us a reasonable service rather than a super service for a few.