Why we must say no to HS2

Published: 17th March, 2011

• INSPIRED by your coverage (‘We’re all going in same direction to oppose HS2’, March 3), I obtained and read the official consultation document from cover to cover. 

I found it utterly unconvincing and was angered at the apparent presumption that if one favours trains then a vote for the HS2 is imperative. Across the globe the love affair with ultra high speed trains seems to be turning sour. 

In the world’s two largest economies problems with party politics in the largest and corruption in the next have checked high speed rail expansion. China is reducing the speed of trains because of failure of building materials used. Generally, railways across the globe need subsidies and HS2 will be no exception. 

On aesthetic grounds and for reasons of sustainability a lot should be spent on upgrading the existing, (by world standards), already fast UK network. Ours is a small crowded island where a network of modernised lines criss-crossing the country and trains stopping every 20 minutes would be infinitely preferable to an élitist, enormously costly, energy-intensive development whose environmental credentials have been discredited elsewhere. 

The minister should stop claiming meekly to be playing “catch-up”. If the game is played we will certainly catch high speed disease.

Some of us remember the folly of sitting in traffic jams in Chiswick and on Long Island at the beginning and end of the Concorde experience whereby the aeroplane part of the overall trip was greatly exceeded in time by journey times to and from airports. 

The nuttiness of HS2 is that the same lack of total analysis is in prospect. Say NO now.
Peter Cuming
Talacre Road, NW5