Unjustifiable HS2

SIR – Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, has declared that trains will be 90 per cent empty after the lockdown (report, May 10), and announced plans to encourage people to cycle or walk. The Government has also suggested that driving is preferable to travelling by train.

Surely there is no justification left for HS2 – an absurd, delayed and expensive “investment” in old technology.

It becomes clearer by the day that more advanced digital communication will, to a large extent, obviate the need for physical travel – and rail travel will increasingly become a leisure activity rather than necessity.

Why has this Government buried its head ever deeper in the sand, refusing to acknowledge the irrelevance of HS2 and the irrational diversion of more than £110 billion of our money from more pressing causes?

The cancellation of this project is well overdue.

Rupert Wilson Shepley, West Yorkshire