• COUNCILLOR Flick Rea’s letter (Who will compensate us for the HS2 mess?, August 29) hits the mark but there are multiple physics and engineering-based arguments which also render this HS2 project absurd.

It is ridiculous that HS2 is designed to continue to use the technically bankrupt two-rail system, so roundly condemned in the 1960s for its over-kinetic restraint.

It is not even high-speed; the Japanese are testing at 25mph short of 400mph and Elon Musk’s first Hyperloop service, far from being sci-fi nonsense, is well on its way to completion.

Eventually the system is scheduled to run, almost free of air resistance, at around 700mph. If more traffic is needed, then a low-cost solution would be to drill out tunnels, raise electrical gantries, alter some stations and use double-decker carriages.

PETER RUTHERFORD
NW6