Readers’ Platform
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Dr Beeching and HS2S
I WAS interested to read the feature by Mike Jones on the Beeching Report and its consequences (April issue).
The report envisaged the network being reduced essentially to an inter-city system where anyone wishing to make a journey would first have to drive to their nearest railhead, from where they would start their rail journey. But that policy ignored the problem at the other end of the journey. A cross-country journey might end with the passenger being left miles from their destination, with the only options available being either a bus or an expensive taxi.
It seems that decision makers still do not understand this. All the talk about HS2 ‘terminating’ at Old Oak Common is utter nonsense. On the Continent, highspeed services do not run from dedicated station to dedicated station; rather, the high-speed line ends on the city outskirts and the trains then complete their journey using the ‘classic’ route.
In the case of HS2, this would mean services leaving Old Oak Common and transferring to the Great Western main line to terminate at Paddington. Old Oak Common Interchange should be retained as an interchange for those passengers who would find it useful – most European cities have a major suburban interchange where inter-city trains call in both directions – but completely terminating the HS2 service there is idiocy.
Robert Day Kirby Muxloe, Leicestershire
YOUR Headline News article on the descoping of HS2 (April issue) rightly condemns a lack of commitment and vision. However, is it in practice a real disaster for the line to finish at Old Oak Common rather than Euston?
I have made many hundreds of longdistance journeys into King’s Cross and can count on the fingers of one hand how many of those were completed on foot. On every other occasion, leisure or business, my onward journey was by Underground, mainline, Eurostar and only rarely (when someone else was paying) by taxi.