It
is excellent news that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are giving their
backing to HS3. Developing this service must be treated as a priority – it
cannot wait until the late 2020s (The Yorkshire Post, October 27). Clearly the
route needs to be one that enables the journey time between Manchester and both
Leeds and Sheffield to be around half an hour. It does not need to be super-fast
– that just means excessive construction costs, higher running costs and a long
lead time: 125 mph running would be sufficient to transform the journey
time.
The problem is that this only resolves a fraction of the
problem. Traffic build-up on the M62 is so horrendous that even if this were to
reduce it by a whopping 10% (an impossibility if ever there was one) it would
hardly make one iota of difference. For the numbers of vehicles, the UK has one
of the fewest number of motorway miles of any developed nation.The desperate
need for motorways: along the east coast abandoned route, the M67 partially
completed route from Manchester to Sheffield and from both N.East and N.West
into Scotland is paramount. Spending to appease Greens and make rail travel
faster for the well-heeled few is surely a
non-starter.
.jpeg)