High-speed Sheffield

For example, high-speed trains will take 13 minutes to reach Sheffield from Chesterfield without a stop in Chesterfield and 17 minutes with a stop there.

The latter journey would be about 17 minutes shorter, if the track between Chesterfield and Sheffield were high speed.

One of the reasons for providing only a link to Sheffield from the main high-speed HS2 line, which will pass nearer to Doncaster and Rotherham, is the current relatively low volume of passenger traffic from Sheffield to London compared with much higher volumes from Leeds and Newcastle-upon-Tyne to London.

Thus Sheffield is not regarded as so important, so is being provided only with this concessionary link.

The main traffic will speed up and down HS2 bypassing Sheffield completely.

This seems to fly in the face of the concept of the high-speed HS2 link connecting northern cities to London to help them to grow economically.

It has, in effect, already been agreed that Sheffield is not only currently economically unimportant, but will remain so in the future.

Planning should be for the future, not the present.

If Sheffield is to be encouraged to grow economically, it should have a high-speed line into Sheffield Midland station.

BW Jervis

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