Runaway train we simply can’t afford
YET again HS2 has managed to creep under the wire without further investigations into the cost and need for it. Brexit was one shield, then it was the General Election and now it’s coronavirus. Nothing seems to be able to stop this runaway train. The Government has yet to justify the need for this project, yet it is the one thing that is allowed to go ahead when the rest of the country is in lockdown. My husband, Ken, and I live just 300 yards from the proposed line in a beautiful, historic village where the only sound should be birdsong. Our Grade II-listed, 17th-century house is next door to the church. Mail journalist Harry Mount visited our village when he was investigating HS2 and Ken told him: ‘This is where the trains will hit 225 mph — the noise will be like a Formula 1 car. That’s 90 decibels. We came here for the sound of silence and it’s the most wonderful part of the world. ‘We wanted to stay here for ever and then hand the house on to our son, but who would want to live here when the trains come?’ Now the go-ahead for HS2 has been given, I have seen construction workers not following social distancing, chopping down trees and grubbing out hedgerows where birds are nesting. Andrew Stephenson, the minister in the Department for Transport who is responsible for this project, says HS2 needs to go ahead to keep construction workers in a job and to level up the country after the coronavirus crisis. This is a very small percentage of the population to pander to. There are thousands of small and large businesses who will need assistance to get back on an even keel after the country reopens for business, so the £110 billion-plus being set aside for HS2 would go a long way to help them. We were told the whole reason for this railway was capacity and speed, with 18 trains every hour. But it has been announced that the number of trains has been cut to just six an hour. How can that be viable? No business would invest in this frivolity, so it’s down to the taxpayer to fund it. The country should not have to fund Boris Johnson’s love of useless, big projects. People deserve help at this terrible time; what they don’t need is a white elephant draining resources.
BArBArA COOPEr, Chetwode, Bucks.