Let’s embrace HS2 to boost city region

Later this month, the Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin will unveil plans for the next stage of “HS2” – Britain’s high speed railway. For Leeds City Region, this will be momentous news. Opportunities like HS2 tend to come round only once in a generation. And we have to grab them.

So far, we have seen details of Phase 1, the route from London to Birmingham. Phase 2 is when the Government’s vision for high speed rail really starts making sense. By linking Birmingham with Manchester, the East Midlands, South Yorkshire and Leeds in a Y-shaped network, HS2 will connect nine of the UK’s ten largest cities; providing a massive increase in seats and services on the country’s busiest routes; slashing journey times; and freeing up much needed capacity on existing roads and railways.

By running through on to existing rail lines, high speed trains will also link places like Newcastle, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh. So the benefits will truly be felt nationwide.

HS2 won’t just transform the way that we will travel. It will also be a huge shot in the arm for our economy. Independent research by Volterra concludes that the new railway will deliver a million new jobs in and around eight major English cities – and that’s outside London. Two thirds of people living in the North will be within two hours of the capital. But more importantly, high speed rail will bring cities in the North and Midlands much closer together, so we can really start rivalling London for jobs and opportunities.

HS2 will come none too soon. The truth however is that Leeds City Region has needed this new railway for decades. Our transport system is over-burdened, and we have paid the price in lost business, lost investment and lost jobs. If we want our businesses to compete in today’s global economy, we need quick, reliable connections to markets, suppliers and labour sources; and that’s precisely what HS2 will deliver.

For far too long, in this country, objectors have frustrated almost every serious proposal to modernise our transport infrastructure. That is why we have a 19th century railway straining to support a 21st century economy; and it’s why almost every other developed country around the world joined the high speed rail revolution before us.

We can’t afford to repeat the mistakes of the past and miss this opportunity. Instead let’s embrace HS2 just like the Victorians embraced the first railway; and let’s get our city region working again.

From: David Reed, Hoses Hill, Huddersfield.

IN criticising HS2 for only saving 40 minutes on a journey to London (the actual saving will be almost an hour, virtually halving current times), David M Davies (Yorkshire Post, January 17) makes the popular mistake that the justification for HS2 is cutting journey times.

It isn’t. It is track capacity.

More and more people are travelling by train and in 10 years’ time both the East Coast and West Coast main lines will be totally full. If this is not remedied, the operators will do what British Rail did many times in the past; when short of capacity, increase fares to push people on to cars and planes, which is the last thing we want, as I am sure Mr Davies will agree.

He suggests curing the problem by four-tracking and similar measures. But tinkering with the existing Victorian railway is more expensive than building a new line and causes years of immense disruption to existing passengers while it is under way. It is cheaper and easier to build a brand new line to 21st century standards.

After all, when we were short of road capacity, we did not tinker with the A-road network – we built motorways.

From: David F Chambers, Sladeburn Drive, Northallerton.

I THOUGHT Gerard Binks’ photo (Yorkshire Post, January 17) of Rail Minister Simon Burns beside GWR locomotive Olton Hall was splendid. I confess my ignorance of the Harry Potter films is almost total, but I find it hard to believe that No. 5972 Olton Hall (which prior to its renovation spent 17 years rusting in Barry scrap yard), was portrayed as “Hogwarts Castle”. “Castle” locomotives, also GWR, and contemporary with the “Hall” class, were very distinctive and well known, and differed from the “Halls” both in their appearance and engineering design. This all comes as a rather nasty shock.

From: ME Wright, Grove Road, Harrogate.

CLIVE Betts (Yorkshire Post, January 21) informs us that many of our rail services are once more state-owned – but by France or Germany. I am one of many who sing the praises of their vastly superior standards and eminently affordable fares, which we appear to be subsidising. Doesn’t much trumpeted “transparency” demand an explanation from Westminster about this?

Perhaps I should add that this letter is written following the latest costly trip to York on an overcrowded, unheated, four-wheeled rattletrap train.