I HAVE just been on-line to check the pricing of Manchester-London return to get me there by 8.30am and return after 6pm, to allow a full days work and the price for standard return is £274.

So can our politicians tell me how much a ticket will be to travel on HS2, I assume they are not going to drop the price. So if the aim is to get more people quicker between north and south to boost the job market, who do they think will be on the train beside them. Although they only travel 1st class and generally that always half empty due to the price.

If we are going to spend billions of pounds on our transport system, just go down to the M61/M60 interchange in the morning and see the millions of pounds every day being wasted in lost man hours, or try to go/come from Leeds or even worst think about the trillions lost in man hours every year between M6 J10 and M6 J5.

Heart ache, frustration and death on our congested roads, OK build a train that's faster, but make it affordable and take people off the roads. Better build a double decker motorway system, car on top, trucks below, maybe not the best environmental result, but certainly a lot less frustration and accessible to more of the public.

But that's to simple.

Andrew Davidson

Bury