• BY now, perhaps, even the dimmest minds behind the HS2 project will have realised that it was a very bad idea to bring such a major project into one of the most crowded parts of London, (Fury as – after years of demolition and disruption in Camden – HS2 is delayed to the 2040s, March 16)!

Surely, even before the project was devised, passenger surveys must have told them that many, if not most, of the people coming to this area from the north were not heading to London itself, but to one of the airports surrounding the city or elsewhere in the region?

As a Mancunian, of sorts, one of my first visits was for exactly that reason: I was heading to Heathrow back in the 1960s and in those days, the journey to the airport was via the West London Air Terminal.

I still recall getting angry with the Labour Party when Tony Benn sanctioned the spending of millions on Concorde when it took three hours to get from central London to Heathrow!

I am also on record (in The Evening Standard, sorry!) as suggesting that the HS2 route should have been to a terminal with the Crossrail system near Heathrow.

Then those wanting to get to central London would have an easy transfer, and the rest were either close to their destination, or at least with good links to the other airports such as Gatwick and Luton or Stansted.

It’s too late now, of course, so the residents of Euston are doomed to endure the decade of delay; but we do need better public transport links if we are going to cut car use and make connections in this tiny country more efficient.

High-speed rail is a major part of the future, but next time can we get project managers who understand what they are doing, in detail? And perhaps, in future, they could listen to local views more closely?

This is a message I would send to all planners, especially those in Camden who seem to have no idea how the borough works or what the needs of its people are.

I see council leader Georgia Gould is telling the HS2 developers not to leave the site fenced off and unused, so wonder what she thinks of the mess at Swiss Cottage where the 100 Avenue Road site (devised with help from Camden’s planning department) has been boarded off for most of the last decade.

DAVID REED
Eton Avenue, NW3