High-speed rail route that goes to the heart of the problem

If Britain was a company with a debt of two-thirds of its yearly income, it would be in liquidation. It will be difficult for the Government to find the capital to build High Speed 2 (HS2) (Yorkshire Post, July 14).

Certainly it cannot be found before the ThamesLink line at £7bn and Crossrail at £16bn, both in London, are finished – the latter in 2014, the projected start of the first leg of HST2. Also, because of the difficulty in raising capital, the west and east legs are unlikely to be built together.

Because of the economic difficulties of Britain it is likely that the protests of a small group of influential landowners in Buckinghamshire and the Chilterns will be used as a means of scuppering HS2 whatever the projected returns, especially as a lot of them are big donors to the Conservatives.

This is no problem. Forget the first leg and remove this excuse. The North West, Yorkshire and the East Midlands should unite with one voice to demand that a more direct line be built up the centre of England via Rugby, Leicester, taking in Nottingham, going through Sheffield for Leeds and, at a later date, points further north.

This would follow the route of the closed Great Central Railway, and indeed there are still significant parts of the track bed intact (although one very unfortunate part of doing this would be that the Great Central Heritage railway would loose its track from Loughborough to Leicester North – perhaps this could be overcome).

The route to Manchester and on to Liverpool would branch off at Leicester and go through Derby and then use the closed Midland Railway line through Matlock and Millers Dale, albeit with some straightening out.

The Government may be afraid of losing donors but governments are more afraid of losing voters and so the united voices of the regions just may bring this about.

Also it would mean that the North would get a High Speed Line much sooner than via Birmingham, especially if – because the vote of these regions is higher than London and the south-east – the Government might be persuaded to divert transport money to start High Speed North sooner.

Regarding a high-speed line from Leeds to Manchester, preferably going from York to Liverpool, surely this would be another project.

However there has been, for many decades, talk of creating a Linear City along the M62 corridor, and this would give a major boost to this.