THE news that the new parkway station at Worcester is on course to open by the end of the year is one that will be welcomed by many regular rail users.

The project has been more than a decade in the making, and at times during those years, there were widely-voiced fears that the ambitious scheme might not happen at all.

So it is a considerable relief to learn that construction work is set to be completed for the scheduled mid-December opening.

Worcestershire Parkway has the potential to offer a great deal to travellers from the Malvern and Ledbury area, with an increased range of services open to them, including CrossCountry service operating between Nottingham and Cardiff, which previously bypassed Worcester's two stations entirely.

The potential benefits of the new station contrasts strongly with the continuing HS2 debacle, which seems more and more to be a complete white elephant.

Indeed, ministers were told this week by a leading think-tank that HS2 should be scrapped and the money - the staggering sum of £88 billion - should be spent improving the existing network.

Suggestions made include overcoming bottlenecks in existing lines, building new lines into major cities like Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds, and reopening currently unused lines.

And the trains themselves should be brought up to date, with upgraded seating, wi-fi and charging points to suit the meeds of the modern traveller.

Now that would be a good way to spend public money on genuine improvements.