Sir – Your prominent front page article (June 4) about the impact of building HS2 is seriously misleading. To say that building the railway will bring “10 years of misery” to residents of North Oxford is totally wrong.

You quote “campaigner” Keith Dancey as saying that “frightening levels of noise and vibration can be expected for 10 years”. Not true.

There will be no outward traffic from constructing the railway. Such projects are designed so that the volume of excavation equals the volume of fill (inelegantly, on site, called the “muck balance”). If the muck balance does not balance, the shortfall is excavated from places immediately alongside the route (called borrow pits).

In any case, trains do not cause any vibration. Diesel-powered trains only make much noise when they are working hard going up a rising gradient.

The line from Oxford to Bicester is virtually level the whole way. And constructing the HS2 will not take anything like 10 years.

I know what I am talking about. I am a retired civil engineer who worked for what was then called British Railways and also on building some of the early motorways.

Dr Martin Barnes CBE
Kirtlington