AS someone who travelled on the original high speed bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka in Japan in July 1970, I feel obliged to comment on the HS2 train our Government is proposing to waste £60 billion plus on.

We are told it will be ready sometime in 2022, or so.

Take the estimated cost and date with a very large pinch of salt.

In any event, it will be a ‘white elephant’ when complete.

A museum piece in the making?

Rail technology has moved on from wheeled trains on metal tracks, subject to leaves on the line.

The Japanese and Chinese are building Maglev trains, which travel at well over 200mph - our ‘new’ ones will do 150mph plus.

If one considers the speed of advance of communications, many of the prospective business rail travellers will ‘meet’ each other online, by visual means, rather than wasting time on expensive trains.

That will leave the ordinary traveller with very expensive fares, trying to pay off the debt incurred by this ‘prestige project’. Shades of the Millennium Dome fiasco?

I’m sure Guardian readers, most of whom will never use this line, can think of better ways to spend £60 billion?

Many homes and lives will be ruined just in our area in building it, thenb multiply that by all the places it will go through from London to the north.

Senseless.

Let’s oppose it while we can.

Allen Wheat Weaverham