THE proposed high speed railway line would benefit no-one but its builders and their suppliers.

Building it would leave a huge carbon footprint. And 250mph trains are not green; they use about four times as much energy as 125mph ones.

Nick Newman (Oxford Mail letters, September 16) cares about our environment. However, he has been misled by false claims for HS2.

HS2 could reduce short-haul air travel, but short-haul flights produce only about two per cent of UK CO2 emissions. Road traffic produces 19 per cent, and this figure is rising.

Britain needs affordable new railways to reduce car and lorry use, not unnecessary and unaffordable 250mph lines.

Transferring Intercity trains to HS2 is meant to increase freight capacity on existing main lines. But HS2 would have only two tracks. That is too few to take all Intercity trains off the Euston to Birmingham line.

Rail freight could be increased much more affordably by reopening the disused Great Central main line to the Midlands, which opened 110 years ago to carry big, Continental-sized freight trains.

HS2 would not start before 2026. Its environmental benefits are so meagre that it would take 30 years to off-set the climate damage caused by building it.

By then climate change would already be irreversible.

Instead of HS2 we need dozens of affordable rail schemes like Project Evergreen 3, which will accelerate the Marylebone to Birmingham Chiltern Line to 100 mph by 2011, and increase capacity.

This will improve choice and competition, relieve the M40, cost far less than HS2 and not damage the climate.

Hugh Jaeger, Park Close, Oxford