YP Letters: North needs both rail investment and HS2

From: Nigel Davies, London.
Will HS2 help Yorkshire?Will HS2 help Yorkshire?
Will HS2 help Yorkshire?

Andrew Vine is right to ask for more rail investment in the North (The Yorkshire Post, August 28) but he does not address the point that the East and West Coast main lines are already full. A further “patch up and make do” approach will not work, and a new line is required.

The North should certainly see huge investment and an excellent letter to the Chancellor in July from a cross-party group of 69 MPs and Peers from across the North and elsewhere correctly addressed the issue of sustained under-investment in the North.

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The letter rightly asks for £100bn of investment in infrastructure across the North to be completed in time for 
the arrival of HS2 in the early 2030s.

Mr Vine is absolutely correct that the North’s rail network certainly requires sustained investment after decades of under-investment and this should be undertaken now.

However I agree with the MPs and consider that this should be built in tandem with HS2, it is not an either/or option.

HS2 is arguably the most important project to provide world class infrastructure across the UK, and begin to reverse the huge inequality across the UK. The East Coast and West main lines are already full, and HS2 is the right project to rectify this problem.