Britain's High Speed railways,- at last HS 2 begins to slice through the.................

The contents of new HS2 Chairman, Australian Sir David Higgins' , report on the project's best ways forward were announced by the Transport Secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, in the House of Commons on Monday. The news was positive and gave the sense of long overdue new impetus.

Media coverage,which is unfailingly substantial and enthusiastic about anything that is critical of or hostile to the new railway was muted . It mainly focused on the perceived negative but actually very sensible dropping of the link between HS 2 at Euston and the existing HS 1 Channel Tunnel terminus a few hundred  years down Euston Rd at St Pancras. Travel between provincial points in the UK and continental cities is and always will be better and more cheaply met by air services. The idea of these routes being important either to the travellers or HS2 itself has always been a red herring . It is now thankfully shovelled out of the way by Sir David. An underground moving walkway or airport type shuttle train between the two stations is long overdue anyway. A non moving one could and should have been built at least when Euston was rebuilt in the 1960s or even earlier . Little thought was given then to joined up transport , passenger convenience or comfort.

 Sir David's philosophy of "Let's get on and do it", is enough to give HM Treasury and Britain's legions of "Say No To.." campaigners a touch of the vapours. In their worlds "Let's not do it" or the only slightly more subtle "It needs further investigation/consideration/research/looking into." give much warmer and safer feelings. Those who despairingly  follow the Davies Commission's spending several years of expensive "looking into" London and the south East's need for additional runways will be delighted that someone in the transport strategy business is saying "Let's go". It helps of course that Sir David is unencumbered by being part of the British establishment or celebrity world especially those elements  of both centred or with friends in the Chilterns from whence comes much of the vociferous and well heeled opposition. From the noise, vitriol, mis and dis infomation, absurdly exaggerated claims about the effects of a narrow sliver of quiet electric railway one would think that the area of outstanding natural beauty ,if not all of rural Britain was about to be torn apart. It's not. The Chilterns cover a large area between the the Thames and their northern edge. There are plenty of them left after a sliver of a twin track railway has been cut through it and within a year or two of completion it will barely be noticed. The actual building is the messy and noisy bit so the sooner that's done and over the better for all concerned.

Predictably and right on cue some of the leaders of the "Say No To"s, including the Buckinghamshire County Council which has given or pledged half a million pounds to the anti HS2 campaigns, have written to the Times wringing their hands with a string of the sort of one liners they have been pushing out for the past 2 or 3 years. Drearily predictably they use an already discredited Treasury forecast of £73 billion for the project. The actual estimate including trains and a substantial contingency is £ 50bn. The best way of ensuring that figure is exceeded and the total does become unacceptable is, as the protesters  well know, to delay the start of work for as long as possible . This would  let inflation do its work . So would demands for ever more expensive "environmental" protection. The latter would essentially mean more tunnels and cuttings in the Chilterns . The tunnels are particularly environmentally unfriendly because they create air resistance to the trains. This in turn means that each and every one passing through them for evermore consumes more power and costs more to operate.  The tunnels and cuttings also all ensure that the tens of thousands of daily passing travellers are denied the chance to share the delights of the much vaunted declared scenery. How friendly is that?

Refreshingly Hugo Rifkind in a "Let's do it " article in Tuesday's Times concludes ".. for God's sake , build the damn thing or we might as well give up on ever building anything again". We couldn't put it better.