“HS2 will bring little, if anything, to the population as a whole.”

“The new HS2 line will boost passenger services,” claims a Telegraph reader. Photo: John Nguyen/JNVisuals

Meanwhile, Dorothea Bradley suggests that the failures are due to a lack of investment in infrastructure. She shares Mr Baldwin's view that «HS2 is a capacity issue — clearing the roads of freight traffic.»

“The Treasury and Whitehall have repeatedly cut or reduced investment to 'save money' but ultimately the result has been specification cuts. at huge additional costs. This is what I call the threshold argument. The infrastructure needed to serve 100,000 people is different in nature from the infrastructure needed to serve 10,000 people. It's not a matter of simply expanding or developing further.”

Stuart Hicksagrees: “The main reason for HS2 is capacity, and that is what it is.”

He explains: «The West Coast Main Line is busy with freight and commuter trains and trains will still need to serve stations such as Milton Keynes, Rugby, Nuneaton and Coventry.»

» Train frequency could be increased to provide a better service when long distance trains to Birmingham, Manchester and the north are transferred to HS2.»

«We are now almost certainly unable to build such a train»

Telegraph reader David Gray shares his frustration that “as the country that invented the railway, we are now almost uniquely unable to build it.”

He believes that “fixing HS2 and delivering it” would be “cathartic.”< /p>

“It would mean that we can do hard things and not resign ourselves to accepting final, messy decline. It is preferable to do something and learn something than to do nothing and learn nothing.”

Now it’s your turn. What do you think about the future of HS2? Join the conversation in the comments section below.