HS2 work in London is helping Eastern leg to Sheffield and Leeds – Yorkshire Post Letters

LEADERS of Midlands and Yorkshire authorities are quite right to make the case for the HS2 Eastern leg to be completed in full (The Yorkshire Post, November 23), but it is important to realise that the essential infrastructure for operating the planned Eastern leg train service goes beyond the Eastern leg itself.

Trains need places to run to as well as from! In this respect it is a great concern that whilst the case for the Eastern leg is being strongly made, others are still arguing for reduction in the scope and capability of the HS2 London terminus at Euston in the face of cost pressures. But if the scope of Euston is reduced, fewer trains can run to and from London. And as the comprehensive service to the West Midlands and North West to be provided under Phase 1 of HS2 is hardly going to be cut back for Phase 2, one can only assume that it is Eastern leg trains that would not run.

Euston station is a critical component of the whole HS2 network, and skimping for short-term gain will damage the capability of the whole network. Completing Euston as envisaged in the HS2 Phase 1 Act, with 11 platforms and a flexible and robust track layout is not ‘spending on London’, but spending to enable the whole HS2 network, Eastern leg and all, to operate in full.

From: Graham Brown, Wakefield.

IT is the supporters of HS2 who are economically illiterate. By January of this year the cost benefit ratio of the scheme had dropped from 2.7 to 1.3 making it a low value project. Since then the pandemic has shown that there is even less reason to travel and the ratio may well drop below one. Add to that the fact that it is only Leeds and Sheffield who will benefit from faster times, leaving the rest of South and West Yorkshire with an inferior service and massive disruption. The project must be stopped and the money spent on improving the existing network.

From: Deborah Haley, Leeds.

SINCE March, I have continued to travel to work in an office in Leeds city centre. Firstly by car when it was free parking for key workers, then the train, which I have done for 20 years.

However the carriages are now empty and spoilt for choice of where to sit. During peak time, there are more staff than passengers in Leeds Station.

Please justify why HS2 is required as capacity is low and will continue to be in this age of digitisation.

No one will be travelling in the same numbers as they were before.

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