Dubious figures show rail plan is £32bn fast track to folly

YOUR local economist, Professor Guiseppe Fontana of the University of Leeds, dented the university’s reputation for intellectual rigour by signing a letter in support of the High Speed Rail proposal (HS2) (Yorkshire Post, January 6).

The letter claimed that HS2 will “support the creation of up to one million jobs”. In fact, the report that they quote has those jobs being created by 2020 as part of various extensive regeneration proposals. That HS2 would make a substantial contribution is dubious as this is some six years before the line is scheduled to open!

The scheme is intended to cost £32bn at 2009 prices and most such schemes go well over budget. That is £51m of entirely public money from every Parliamentary constituency in the UK.

Those of us who live close to the proposed line have been dismissed as Nimbys, but at least we have taken the time to study the Department of Transport’s business, economic and engineering proposals in detail.

From: Pat Mellor, Rowan Lane, Hellifield, North Yorkshire.

CAN someone explain where £32bn is coming from to finance the high-speed rail link? The development is incongruous when the Government is reluctant or too impoverished to finance and improve the existing infrastructure – for instance putting passenger trains on the L&Y line between Lancashire and Hellifield, currently used by freight, could enable passengers to get to Manchester and vice versa, rapidly. Instead passengers have lengthy routes via Leeds or Lancaster.

Guided by the current prohibitive increases in rail fares, travel on the projected rail-link will be limited to the few. The only people to really benefit from this development will be the developers who have been handed an ill-affordable industry on a plate. Once again the average general public has been treated with contempt.

From: Mr IC Balgue, Old Scriven, Knaresborough.

I HAVE just heard the argument for and against HS2 on the News at One (January 10). Surely both the Government and the planners are missing the point; if they want the country behind them let the planners say that the southern end of the line will be connected to the Channel Tunnel and Europe, not just London and the new terminal at Euston.

How lovely it would be to board a train in Edinburgh, York, Leeds or Manchester, climb onto a couchette after a snack and a drink from a dispensing machine at the end of the coach and wake up somewhere in Europe. All holidays would start from home, not the nearest airport, crowded beyond capacity and during the winter months added to by flight cancellations due to bad weather or strikes.

From: David Armstrong, Sandholme Crescent, Hipperholme.

WHAT are the companies clamouring for HS2 wanting? To use it or just to build it?

Methinks the latter.