Who will own 
HS2 some time down the line?

DURING all the arguments about HS2, one item still puzzles me: who will it actually belong to if and when it is built?

I know the taxpayers will finance it but will it remain their property or that of, say, some Franco-Chinese alliance or, at the worst, a cheap bus company?

Whoever gets it handed to them on a plate will charge rip-off fares for a couple of years then go bust and hand it back as it will only carry half the passengers estimated.

The normal task about bringing business to the North is just that! Just look at the plan of it – it’s shaped like a funnel to drain resources back to London.

From: Michael King, Parlington Meadow, Barwick-in-Elmet, near Leeds.

HAve David Cameron and his HS2 supporters ever really properly thought of their portable “white elephant” idea through to a viable conclusion? Our recent history of so-called brilliant ideas, only for them to flop in a spectacular (or in some cases, fatal) manner is on track for repeating once again.

The K-class and M-class submarines during and after World War I; the “tilt and turn” train that is now a museum piece; the Earth Centre near Doncaster or the Music Centre in Sheffield that wasted millions of lottery funding; the Millennium Dome
in London; the super-fast Concorde passenger-carrying airliner designed to cross the Atlantic at twice the speed of conventional aircraft but only with fares that most of the ordinary public couldn’t afford... and the list could go on and on and on!

Can’t our existing railways be improved – say by an extra track; more frequent services; new rolling stock; longer trains, especially at commuter times; electrification; new branch lines and more help to the heritage lines to link up with main line services?

In Yorkshire, we could revive the Malton-Pickering line and fully extend the Wensleydale Line to both Northallerton and also to the Settle-Carlisle line. The list could go on and on.

From: David F Chambers, Sladeburn Drive, Northallerton.

READERS’ views are invited (Yorkshire Post, October 26) in the debate over the proposed HS2 trains.

What could be seen as a risky, very expensive bid for prestige should not be attempted at this time. Our railways are in need of investment, but not in this direction.

In any case, these crowded islands are not ideally suited to this project. High speed visual communication we already have. High speed travel is less important than it was. Journey times would be a little shorter for the few (mostly businessmen) who could afford HS2 fares, but their computers enable them to be gainfully employed whilst travelling anyway.

To avoid ridicule the HS2 would require a constant, reliable and adequate supply of electricity. Oh dear, I suppose for some the ultimate pipe dream might be of HS2 running on exclusively wind-sourced power?

The problem of congestion is largely one of getting daily commuters to work, and is not solved by a few high speed long distance expresses.

Safety at speed demands advanced track design and maintenance, infallible train control, computer reliability, unflagging discipline. The effects of vandalism and of derailments/collisions at speeds of 250/500mph have at least to be borne in mind.

It recently emerged that many major centres would suffer a reduction in existing rail services.

I’m a train enthusiast and wish I could say something in favour of the project.

From: Richard Billups, East Avenue, Rawmarsh, Rotherham.

OUR Transport Minister Robert Goodwill and Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin should first look at history before urging us to accept the HS2 plan they have in mind.

In my three score years and ten plus, I have never seen big projects come in on time and on budget. They always cost more than the people pushing them ever quote. Being a railway project, if it was on time it would be the eighth wonder of the world.

Yorkshire common sense should tell people that it will start in London, get to Birmingham and the rest to Leeds will be mothballed for lack of initiative and money.

From: Iain Morris, Caroline Street, Saltaire, Bradford.

IT was Elizabeth Gaskell who was especially close to Charlotte Brontë who wrote North and South in 1855.

She was born in Chelsea in 1810, spent a couple of years at school in Stratford-upon-Avon and lived in the north of England until her marriage in 1832 to the Rev William Gaskell, later the famous minister of the Unitarian Chapel in Manchester’s Cross Street.

It was Benjamin Disraeli, our only Jewish prime minister, briefly in 1868 and again between 1874 and 1880, who said of the first great industrial city in the world: “The age of ruins has past. Have you seen Manchester? Manchester is as great a human exploit as Athens.”

I have it from London businessmen themselves who think it is very different up here that they find no difficulty at all in travelling between King’s Cross and Saltaire to do a day’s business in Yorkshire as it is.

You only have to take The Times every day and The Sunday Times too to know that high speed rail will not alter the North-South (London) divide.

From: Brian Appleby, Harper Grove, Sutton In Craven.

THE supporters of HS2 keep telling us that it will bring great economic benefits, but somehow fail to spell out what they are.

Will we suddenly start building factories and start manufacturing a wide range of products? Somehow I don’t think so.

I try to weigh up both sides of the proposal but find it very difficult to see the benefit and feel the money could be used in a way to benefit the majority rather than the minority.