Once upon a time in America I managed to have a letter about the NHS published in the Florida Times-Union newspaper of Jacksonville. Today I managed it a little closer to home, getting published in the Yorkshire Evening Post. This latest piece was about the proposed HS2 railway from Leeds to London, and was a response to a letter from Cllr Andrew Carter (Cons) supporting the coalition government’s announcement. It follows below in full…

I am the son of a retired railwayman, and given our family didn’t own a car until I was 12, I grew up using rail and public transport as the main means of getting around. That resulted in a lifelong love of railways, and that mode of travel. So you might think I would share Cllr Andrew Carter’s excitement about the HS2 line to Leeds (YEP 09/02/13).

But I don’t. I would love to see the £33 billion spent more wisely on the rail infrastructure to improve the travel experiences of the majority of passengers, reduce ticket costs, and reopen former lines to increase the network. Renationalisation would be my ultimate aim because the public paid far less subsidy to British Rail than it does now to entice private firms to run trains for profit.

The £33 billion for HS2 will build a line for business people to shuttle to and from the capital for fares that ordinary people will struggle to afford. It will do nothing to alleviate the overcrowding and capacity problems of the current network, and it will wreak environmental damage in some outstanding countryside. Research shows that rather than benefiting places like Leeds, the benefits will flood to London.

I share the Green Party’s view that HS2 is not good value for money. Spending the same amount of money – more than £1,000 for each household in the UK, on improving local and regional links, producing a truly integrated transport system to get people around home-work-school-leisure in an affordable way would be a far better use of the money, and would create jobs.

Remember it was a Conservative government that gave us Dr Richard Beeching. Can we really believe this wretched government, with its history of poor judgments, can make the right decision about our railways?