Labour will be travelling on the wrong line if it continues to support the proposed HS2. This is one infrastructure scheme that deserves to hit the buffers.
The arguments in favour of HS2 are that substantial additional rail capacity is required, that a new high-speed rail network is the best way to provide it and that this will bring substantial economic and environmental benefits. In fact, the main justification for HS2 is not the faster journey times, but that the existing West Coast Main Line is fast running out of capacity. Phase one of HS2 – the London to Birmingham line – will cost £1bn, but will deliver no benefits until 2026.
Indeed, on closer inspection, the proposed benefits of HS2 are vague in the extreme, and largely consist of estimated time savings as people use the new line instead of their cars or the old lines. Indeed, a large proportion of the estimated £32bn economic benefit comes from an assumption of increased productivity because people will spend less time travelling. Much more contentiously, the figures rest on the ridiculous assumption that business travellers do no work on their journeys at all.
Readers who have not yet made up their minds about whether the scheme is the kickstart required to get Britain moving, a project which offers unparalleled benefits, or whether it will be a £32bn white elephant, could do a lot worse than to read a High Speed Two Commons Library Research Paper, which looks at the proposed scheme from quite a neutral angle.
Labour finally made a commitment to electrifying more main lines far too late in its dying days, but at least it was a step in the right direction. Ensuring that the commitment to electrifying the Midland Main Line beyond Bedford to Nottingham Derby and Sheffield is kept, and by electrifying and further upgrading the much improved Chiltern Line – where journey times to Birmingham are already only about 10 minutes less than on the West Coast Main Line, there would be viable alternative routes to Birmingham and further north.
For a fraction of the cost of HS2 Pendolino trains could be converted to carry more standard class passengers. Indeed, train lengths are already being extended. At present, trains run with four first class carriages which are usually about one-fifth full. Turning at least one of these empty carriages into standard class and adding the additional carriage would yield dramatic improvements in capacity.
To further increase capacity, at very little cost, (except to the train operator’s profits) Labour should commit to ending the excessively blunt instrument of airline style demand management systems for ticketing on the railways. The number of trains per hour between London and Birmingham or Manchester does not actually matter if advance fares are restricted to one train per day, with penalty fares in the stratosphere if you take the wrong train. There has to be affordable flexibility with tickets.
Looking at the environmental impact, it is also worth noting that HS2 will not just be damaging to the Chilterns. As Euston Station will be rebuilt over eight years, HS2’s own submission said that they would expect to maintain at least the off-peak level of service in the worst case. In the ‘worst case’ that is a 40 per cent reduction in commuter peak capacity into Euston. This is likely to cause outrage when the full impact is made clear.
If readers are still unconvinced, let’s look at what has already happened Britain’s only high speed railway – HS1 in Kent. Passengers have been pushed onto a high-speed service that most cannot afford and do not want to use.
The National Audit Office recently released a report stating that HS1 was built on the basis of hugely optimistic assumptions about international passenger numbers. Rather than spending £17bn (£32bn if the line is extended north of Birmingham) on a project which won’t deliver its dubious benefits for decades, there are a number of viable, effective and significantly cheaper alternatives.
The line charges premium fares, about 20 per cent above those on the ‘classic’ lines, and runs at about a third of predicted capacity. Fares for every passenger in Kent have risen for several years by three per cent above inflation, the highest in Britain, to pay for the line.
Before HS1, the journey time on the traditional line from Victoria to Faversham was 66 minutes, with six stops, two minutes faster than the high-speed service is now. So, to make the high-speed trains look better, South Eastern slowed down the ‘classic’ trains, and also cut their frequency. And performance on the ‘Cinderella’ lines has decayed as resources are concentrated on high-speed trains.
Is there any reason to believe that train operators will not perform the same trick if HS2 is built? Transport writer Christian Wolmar says, ‘most of the benefits [of HS2] will accrue to private individuals and companies, whereas most of the cost will fall on the taxpayer.’ The costs – financial and environmental – will be socialised in aid of what is already a ‘rich man’s railway’ as Philip Hammond put it.
A well thought out transport policy would recognise that it is not created in isolation. And a genuine regional policy would mean that getting to London 15 minutes quicker would no longer be as important.
Increasing train lengths, making more standard class seating available and making tickets more flexible, together with some infrastructure improvements are solutions that can be implemented very quickly and for much less money.
Of course, we must support a better rail network, but what we really need is an excellent railway for the many, not a high speed line for the few.
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Rob Williams works in public affairs and as a journalist
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Excellent article Rob! Am inclined to agree with many of your points as the railway should always be for the many. I wonder what your views would be on a high-speed line dedicated to freight traffic?
a great piece on the realities of train travel – swapping 66 mins for 1hr 36 from the Kent coast simply to justify HS1 is indeed hardly a bargain. It has simply served to disjoint rather than fuse the region. Vitally, there are areas of the country such as East Anglia where infrastructure investment is urgently needed and for a fraction of the cost of HS2. At a time when efficient funding deployment is a primary concern, HS2 will only serve to create another tier to services which are already inweildy and insufficient, at little or no benefit to the majority of travellers. HS2 is the whitest of white elephants.
It’s important to remember that HS2 releases capacity on existing lines and this is what is desperately needed. Here, in the West Midlands, it is this released capacity for better local, regional and freight services that doubles the economic benefits HS2 brings.
It is too simplistic to suggest we can continue to tweak our overcrowded (and largely Victorian) network. Remember that £9bn was spent a few years back on the existing West Coast Main Line and it hasn’t solved these problems.
Network Rail concluded in January that the main alternative to HS2 would allow for no growth in rail between Birmingham and Coventry and would remove London services from Stone, Atherstone and Rugeley (effectively closing the first two).
We have already lost stations because of lack of capacity (Wedgwood and Barlaston in Staffordshire for example) and more will follow. As Lord Adonis said this would be a policy of continuing ‘patch and mend.’
Operators would surely have something to say about simply emptying first class? Would this not have a significant effect on subsidy?
London and the SE has benefited from huge transport projects such as Jubilee Line Extension and Crossrail, so we want similar investment for the West Midlands and other regions.
Time-savings are not negligible and not just about London: Birmingham times to Manchester would be cut from 1h 30m to 41m and to Leeds from 2h to 57m.
Rail is growing at 6% per year and has doubled in the West Midlands in a decade. We need to invest in our infrastructure and ensure we do not force people off rail and onto our congested roads.
Finally, it’s worth noting that opponents to HS2 support building a Stafford bypass which will cut through 14 miles of countryside at a cost of £1.23bn and deliver only one extra train per hour….
“London and the SE has benefited from huge transport projects such as Jubilee Line Extension and Crossrail, so we want similar investment for the West Midlands and other regions”
Crossrail was 60% funded by London & London businesses – with businesses paying £4.1Bn of the cost thru a Business Rate Supplement. What percentage of HS2’s cost do you think should be funded by West Midlands Businesses thru increased Business Rates?
I have written in support of HS2 for Progress so you will expect me to disagree on this. You don’t seem to offer a capacity solution that actually fits the requirements. We are already one third of the way into the patronage increase that HS2 Ltd predicted between 2010 and 2026 – that is the scale of the issue.
Your point that we can reconfigure the Pendolinos is also not much help. They are being extended from 9 to 11 cars right now. They cannot be extended further without a multi-billion pound investment to adjust the infrastructure along the West Coast – that of course would also add no benefit to the Midland and East Coast mainlines, something HS2 will also do.
Your points about HS1 ring hollow when you consider that 71% of passengers between Canterbury/Ashford and London use HS1 – i’m afraid the 51M/Aghast briefing you are using (we are well-versed with this text!!) is just wrong.
Also bear in mind that the costings for HS2 have used a huge optimism bias – i believe a third of the costs projected are essentially contingency. Then bear in mind the level of spend on the existing railways anyway which by 2026 will dwarf the cost of HS2.
The time savings are helpful but not too vital. Bear in mind it is a 35 minute time saving (from 1h24 average to 49 mins average) so your 15 minute claim is pretty naughty too!
As for regional transport policy, Labour is on the case, and so are the regions thank you very much! I am Head of Strategy at Centro, the West Midlands Transport Authority. The Regions support HS2 including all the major cities and conurbations.
Finally, to use emotive language of rail for the many not the few is a pretty amusing concept. Why would a huge increase in supply (ie rail capacity) lead to more expensive rail tickets??? Virgin Trains already inflate fares to manage demand on certain services. We need a huge uplift in capacity and this cannot be done through another upgrade of the knackered old railway we have. Network Rail recently said that HS2 gives a key opportunity to shut the West Coast Main Line for a year or so as it will be completely knackered by 2026. Seriously.
So if you have a serious alternative to HS2 that has not been seen yet (everything to date has failed to provide the needed benefits) then it would be most welcome, because HS2 is still comfortably the only solution on the table.
Like many opponents of #HS2 the author of this piece seems to have forgotten about the North West, preferring to concentrate on small capacity gains that can possibly be achieved between Birmingham and London. Gains which whilst possibly good in the short term for Birmingham have no benefits for passengers in the North West or Scotland.
Having studied the 51M “alternative”, HS2-NW, Network Rail, Centro, Go-HS2 and GreenGauge21 have all concluded that it delivers insufficient capacity and will itself be full by 2030. Longer 11 car Pendolinos (The longest that can fit within WCML stations without expensive remodeling) will still see the WCML full by the mid 2020s according to industry experts.
A £1bn 14 mile bypass through Staffordshire countryside is proposed by the authors of the 51M “alternative” who unsurprisingly all live close to the proposed route of HS2. This shows, as the bypass only delivers 1 extra train for Manchester per hour at a cost of over £1bn, this is not value for money. The rest of the North West on the other hand gains no extra services, meaning Liverpool will have the same number of services in 2040 that it will have by the end of this year.
HS2 phase 1 from London to the West Midlands actually delivers what the 51m “alternative” fails to, this is additional capacity for the North West and Scotland at a time when it will be needed most. Not only will the first phase of HS2 deliver much needed capacity for the North West it cuts the journey time from key cities by between 20 and 30 minutes saving an hour on a return journey, which most people will agree is not to be scoffed at.
It’s all well and good opponents of HS2 saying there is an “alternative” to HS2, however not one proponent of this 51M package is willing to admit to it’s massive failings or the fact that it is not so much an alternative rather a compromise. It’s clear residents of Atherstone and Stone will not be happy when the services they fought so hard for on the WCML are cut, resulting in the closure of their stations. We are certain that Liverpool will not benefit from the so called “alternative” and other key North West commuter towns will lose out also.
“The only real way for the North West see journey time, reliability and capacity improvements is if a new railway line is built from London all the way to the North West and eventually beyond to Scotland.”
HS2 North West
Why is your definition of the Northwest restricted to Manchester? Liverpool currently has same journey time to London as Manchester. Post HS2 it will take 35 minutes longer to get here than to Manchester. Fine to advocate for Manchester advantage but disingenuous to call yourselves “North West”.
You can’t know what will happen to Liverpool’s services post 2033 as the route North is yet to be finalised. It’s no good just opposing HS2 for the sake of this supposed “30 minute” time difference. HS2-NW is active in ensuring that Liverpool gets the connection to HS2 that the city deserves. Having said that, supporters have been told for years that “time savings do NOT matter”, so it ironic that now they have spotted a potential but not confirmed time saving difference between Manchester and Liverpool opponents have decided that time savings are important after all.
Liverpool will benefit from HS2 after the first phase is opened in 2026 and it will benefit from additional capacity, which is the key deciding factor, not time savings. Without HS2 Liverpool will see no additional services past 2012. So you have to ask, with no HS2 how will Liverpool benefit from having exactly the same services in 2040 as it will have by the end of this year (2 11 car Pendolinos during peak and 1 off peak)?
So you’re saying HS2Ltd’s own data should be taken with grain of salt? That’s where I found the “supposed” 30 minute time difference. http://www.hs2.org.uk/key-facts#jou
HS2 will result in the removal of most long-distance train services from the West Coast Main Line. This is the Government’s stated aim – to move the intercity trains to the HS2 line in order to free up space on the existing line for more local commuter services.
So it is highly unlikely that Liverpool will keep its existing intercity services on top of the two HS2 trains per hour.
In fact, HS2 Ltd’s suggestion is that direct Pendolino services are scrapped between London and Liverpool and the route served by an intercity service via Birmingham. This would be a stopping service taking more than 3 hours, so will not be used by many people travelling from Liverpool to London.
In this case, the two HS2 trains will provide the only direct service between Liverpool and London. The HS2 train will be smaller than the Pendolino it replaces, with fewer seats. Hence with two HS2 trains per hour, Liverpool will actually see a reduction in seating capacity.
Thanks for your comments Paul. I would be inclined to look at freight more holistically, and consider reopening some freight only lines, building the East-West link and even investigating possiblities of transferring non perishable freight onto the canal system.
To the pro HS2 commentators, thanks for your points. Just to be clear, I am not a Luddite against progress, and I am certainly not anti rail. Quite the opposite. But your arguments in support of HS2 just don’t really work.
Britain cannot be compared to France, Germany, Spain or Italy and the growth of high speed rail there. Our contry is smaller, and the distances – and journey times – between major population centres are much smaller. When the first TGV line was built btween Paris and Lyon it almost cut the journey time in half. With HS2, journey time savings between London and Birmingham, and even Manchester will be measured in minutes rather than hours.
The whole journey time argument is not one supporters of HS2 can justify. A few minutes’ time saving and a truly idiotic calculation that time on trains is “unproductive” for bisunessmen.
Add to this the fact that we are talking about 15 YEARS before the proposed line would open to Birmingham, and far, far longer before lines further north are completed and you are in fantasyland. Add on 8 years’ worth of mayhem on the West coast Line out of Euston and we’re looking at more of a nightmare than a fantasy.
So, your other argument is about capacity. I seriously wonder where huge growth in demand for travel to and from Birmingham, let alone Manchester and Leeds is going to materialise from. I also ask what happens between now and 2026? Leave the West coast mainline to rot, or maintain and improve? Additional coaches, including fewer three quarters empty first class carriages on Pendolinos will make a very rapid and clear improvement in capacity.
Between London, Birmingham the Midlands and the North, electrification of the Chiltern Line and Midland Main Line would improve services more quickly and cheaply than HS2. In any sane world, we would have a single national rail body rather than the costly, incompetent and idiotic franchise system and track/train seperation
Alex, you said, “Network Rail recently said that HS2 gives a key opportunity to shut the West Coast Main Line for a year or so as it will be completely knackered by 2026. Seriously.”
Seriously, that is utter bollocks, as well as political suicide. It wouldn’t happen in any other country, ones where engineers are more important than accountants. If the West Coast main line is that bad, then spend money on it rather than an expensive pipedream that only benefits big construction companies
I’m afraid you are really missing the points we are making. It might be that you just aren’t close enough to the subject perhaps?
The most successful high speed rail line in Germany is Cologne Frankfurt which at 177km is the same as Birmingham – London. In France the line between Paris and Lyon are 400km apart, a bit further than Manchester and London.
Again, journey times are nice but it is the capacity that is crucial – for intercity trains, local/regional trains and freight. Your frequent attacks on idiotic journey time stuff is fine and doesn’t bother anyone but the capacity issue is vital. You can ignore the stats we present but its your argument that suffers when watching the trends show growth in patronage being far higher than HS2 projections – any response? more than guesswork please! the growth is happening and scarily more quickly than any of us realised – 6% pa even in a recession.
the other killer issue you can’t answer is that Euston station will be rebuilt anyway irrespective of HS2 so afraid you can’t try that trick!
upgrading the chiltern line to 4 tracks will be even worse for that area than a new line, will shut that line and thus cause massive problems for Bucks, Oxfordshire, Warks and the West Midlands – the same disruption you don’t want to happen anywhere else??!
And as for Network Rail – well, if it’s knackered then political suicide is better than another Hatfield.
So while you can take the tone of the Anti-HS2 brigade, and copy and paste their fatuous ill-informed arguments, the evidence from the vast majority of the transport sector is overwhelming.
Alex, you know very well that the non-HS2 plans for Euston involve redesigning the station building, NOT moving every single track and platform and taking eight years to do it, so please don’t you try that trick.
HS2 is completely unecessary and expensive and WILL COST £79 BILLION – this is not just the construction of the Y network at £36.4bn but £21.7bn on operating costs capex, £8bn on rolling stock capex, £3.4bn on the Heathrow spur/ loop and £10bn on dispersal of people at central London/ Birmingham – new tube lines/ parking etc etc and the mass disruption that will cause. This is 1/12th of the national deficit (£990bn)!!! This is when government departments are being forced to make stringent cuts – 5% each and we have just entered a double dip recession. And do not be fooled – HS2 will cost more jobs than it creates: about 60,000 in Wales and the South West for starters according to the Cardiff Busines Partnership. The WCML is operating at about 50% capacity at peak times according to independently sourced data (Customer Research Technology Limited). Yes population will increase overall across the country but while HS2 Ltd would love to have you believe so it won’t affect demand for railway travel between London Birmingham and the north. 95% of railway journeys are made locally. This is where transport investment is badly needed – locally – not on some hyped up long distance travel glamour project. Wake up – HS2 is not needed will be used by a tiny proportion of the population who will be able to afford it – its built by fat cats for fat cats.
HS2 should certainly ‘hit the buffers’ as soon as possible before any more money and time is wasted.
A case of politicians believing their own spin and not getting a grip on the detail before it is too late.
I can’t put it better than:
The HSR project is a strange beast. It has not emerged from a rigorous process
of problem definition, scoping of possible solutions to these problems and formal
appraisal of all possible solutions to identify the best performer.
It will not regenerate northern cities, it will not make a respectable contribution
to carbon reduction, it will not bring about enough modal transfer from road or air
rips to deal with capacity or value for money problems in dealing with demand in
those modes and it ignores the reality of technological advance that clearly
demonstrates the growing importance of electronic communication substituting
or physical travel.
At a time of extreme difficulty in delivering enough public expenditure to meet
the demands of citizens across a wide range of services it is unacceptable to
embark on a project that is so deeply flawed and lacking in substantiation.
JOHN WHITELEGG
Professor of Sustainable Transport, Liverpool John Moores University
HS2 Commons Written Evidence
Actually Alex, yes, response to this supposed underestimation of demand is a simple question. How do you explain this finding ? “The data document a massive problem with inflated
rail passenger forecasts. For more than 9 out of 10 rail projects, passenger forecasts are overestimated; for 72%
[67%] of all rail projects, passenger forecasts are overestimated by more than two thirds.”
http://www.honolulutraffic.com/JAPAFlyvbjerg05.pdf
Alex, as the House of Commons paper reports, Business Cases and forecasts of demand are always based on lots of different assumptions. They are subjective and your assumptions of contiuning 6% growth in patronage is no more than guesswork either.
There is rebuilding and there is building a completely new station. At Euston, the HS2 proposals are far more disruptive. Regarding the Chiltern, you know as well as I do that no one is proposing to quadruple the whole line. Suggesting that it would have to be closed to electrify it, or add passing lines at pinch points, is disingenuous.
The alternatives to HS2 are not “fatuous”; various proposals have been made by a number of parties who have transport and railway expertise. It is rather patronising to pretend that you know best. At the very least, i suggest that your lobbying skills do not work that well, as proponents of HS2 seem to have failed to convince an awful ot of people that the scheme is value for money or worthwhile.
Finally, i really do not understand why it is amusing to talk about excellent railways for the many, not high speed rail for the few. I suggest to you that it is at the crux of the argument. HS2 will divert much needed resources way from where they could be used more effectively.
At last some commonsense. Hs2 is an all or nothing response to perceived problems. A strategy of incremental imprvoements to the exsiting network in repsonse to sensible demand predictions accompanied by much more sensible fare pricing is a better way forward.
If the government really wants to get the economy going, create jobs and spread the benefits then it should invest billions, not on an iron horse, but in very high psed broadband across the whole country- now.
Good to see a down to earth, factual analysis of the case for scrapping HS2. Rob Williams might have added that the Business Case for HS2 has now been downgraded for the fourth time in two years to 50% of the level originally claimed (BCR of 1.2 gaianst the original 2.4). Even this near break-even level depends on the unrealistic assumption that every minute saved on the journey can be valued as a proportion of the traveller’s annual salary, in spite of the acknowledged fact that people work on the train! The Transport Select Committee asked DfTto recalculate the Business Case with a lower figure for the value of time savings; DfT refused , preferring to stick to their ‘tried and tested methods’. – methods which overestimated HS1 traffic by 200%.
The National Audit Office recommended that “departments should ensure that demand forecasts are subject to rigorous scrutiny and scepticism. Departments should assess the benefits under a range of different scenarios, perform a sensitivity analysis of key assumptions and a sense check to understand the reality of meeting forecast demand”. This has not been done for HS2; if it were, the project would have to be scrapped
…but HS2 is not a £33bn railway. This headline cost is a fiction. The latest HS2 economic case published in January 2012 puts the capital cost for the Y route to Manchester and Leeds at £36.2bn. Rolling stock another £8.2bn and the Heathrow spurs – details of which HS2 has still not decided on – a possible further £3.2bn. And how much more cost such as tax, interest on capital etc must be added in? The cornerstone of the wider economic benefits that are supposed to offset this cost still include the falsehood that businessmen do not work on trains and claims that any time saved will be translated into productive working time (£24.5bn). In reality time savings will more likely mean getting home earlier for tea or getting up later before the day out to Manchester. So HS2 would be a £50bn railway, or more put more accurately, vanity project.
All this is true but some additional points are worth making. One is that a recent Public Accounts Committee Report found that improvements to the West Coast Main Line to remove bottle-necks would speed it up, increase capacity and be much better valus for money that HS2. It would also be far less disruptive to services than the rebuilding of Euston will be.
Another is that the argument that the WCML is running ut of capacity is largely anecdotal. There a few long distance services that are full but that is because if wha Philip Hanger called the ‘fares cliff’. An independantly audited survey last year found that long distance trains leaving Euston between 4 and 7 pm on weekdays were at an average 56% full. Increasing use of new technologies for meetings is going to have an effect on the numbers travelling for business, but in the world of HS2 broadband doesn’t exist and no account is taken of it.
Where there is pressure on the West Coast Main Line is in commuter services to Milton Keynes and Northampton, which are overcrowded at peak times. But grade separation work at Ledburn, which could be completed in 5 years at around £500 million – a tiny fraction of the cost of HS2 – would double passenger capacity on commuter services at peak times. This could be put in hand straight away with benefits to commuters before 2020. But it would undermine still further the shaky case for HS2, so commuters are being left to suffer while juicy HS2 contracts are going to construction companies who will be the real beneficiaries of the taxpayers’ largesse.
Here is a different issue to toss around the discussion – understanding how HS2 fits into the EU-TENT (transport) way of thinking. TEN-T have just undertaken a major review of their programme and talk the language of ‘biggest review ever’. Essentially this seems to be a major shift to a more politicised agenda, which we could interpret as a way to free rail investment interests from the ‘tedious’ business of national parliaments and democracy.
The TEN-T maps have always shown the west and east coast lines to Scotland (as well as most of the line to Bristol) as ‘high speed’ in their definition. Suddenly on the latest maps, the east coast route has been shown as a ‘strategic’ high speed route but the west coast line as far as Birmingham has been downgraded. What is going on? Well the EU has classified the development of the European rail network into ‘Core’ and ‘Comprehensive’ projects. The projects that are labelled part of the ‘Comprehensive’ network are the bits that the EU says national governments have decided to develop in order to fill out their networks. By contrast, the developments that the EU is now calling ‘Core’ are what they have decided are necessary to the creation of a ‘strategic’ network across Europe. So far so harmless??
If you read on, the proposal is to leave the operation of the Comprehensive network to national governments and to cross-national partnerships where routes go over national boundaries. However the Core routes will be run under the administration of “Platforms” (no pun intended) which the EU promises will be flexible, ‘non-bureaucratic’ groupings of public and private interests. The downgrading of the existing London to Birmingham west coast route is clearly in order to make space to declare HS2 a Core strategic route when and if it is built.
So where is the problem? Well here are some of the potential concerns. Firstly, by declaring certain lines ‘strategic’ or Core, the EU gives the national state the legitimacy to ignore the democratic process in deciding whether and where to build a line. The presumption of being a ‘strategic’ route is that the case cannot be made on the national scale in terms of national policies or needs – so national parliaments have no particular legitimacy to make the decision. Secondly, it seems the EU is also proposing to take the contracts for running these strategic lines out of the hands of national governments. The EU is moving towards privatising/leasing the strategic Core routes as single entities under the control of those “Platforms”. That could mean one privatised contract for Birmingham to Budapest or Edinburgh to Istanbul eventually, run by some kind of a Platform representing the interests of train companies – and who else? The EU documents are coy on the issue. Anyway, the leasing/privatisation of Core railways will no longer be a national prerogative; no longer tied to anything as ‘tedious’ as the interests of national citizens or the democratic processes or policies of national governments. Does this seem progressive?
It seems it is this trajectory that is being played out particularly in the Susa Valley but also around HS2. (If anyone wants to know more, I will contribute another blog on Susa). All attempts at rational and independent discussion about demand figures and capacity; about generated jobs; or concern for the impact on CO2 levels are ‘irrelevant’. Once a line is declared ‘strategic’ these arguments are meaningless. They are over-ridden by an EU policy that could be interpreted as doing 3 things (whatever the official discourse): freeing rail services from ‘annoying’ democratic controls; securing trade links and political integration right across the emerging EU; supporting transport capital to grow into globally competitive enterprises.
I’m interested to hear your views – particularly if you are connected to the UK trade unions that think HS2 is simply a ‘win-win’ case of delivering more jobs and growth in the UK. Let’s see – that will be driverless trains; ticketless offices; run by ‘Platforms’ with no democratic controls; breaking free of Network Rail; no need to recognise national (or therefore any) unions; and no requirement at all to use UK personnel. Given that we have a choice whether to put £34 billion into transport infrastructure right across the UK, or £34 billion into creating a ‘Core’ route that will subsequently be taken out of UK political control, what do you think Progress should do?
This article is completely London centric and ignores the benefits HS2 will bring to the cities it serves. The new line will effectively put Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham on the tube network and free up capacity for regional services, boosting local economies. Just because the benefits will not be so strongly felt in the southeast, does not mean the line should not be built.
The truth is that HS2 is not expensive. At £33bn it will cost just 25% of the annual NHS budget or 30% of the amount spent on welfare. We are talking about spreading the cost of HS2 over the next twenty years. In government spending terms, this project is peanuts. Labour wasted tens of billions on futile and fiercely opposed wars in the middle east. Even if the cost of the project doubles, it will still only be equivalent to six months’ NHS spending.
HS2 will also make air travel much less attractive for certain journeys. Manchester to Paris in five hours will be possible.
As someone who travels a few times a week on the westcoast mainline I can safely say that it is heavily overcrowded. Businessmen and women do not work on the train. There are too many disruptions and not enough space. If you can achieve half an hour of productivity on a two hour journey you are extremely lucky.
Italy is about to launch a high speed rail service. It is privately owned. Were there a business case for HS2, there would be private investors. It is telling that there are no private investors for HS2 and that, not only is the taxpayer being called upon to fund construction of HS2, the taxpayer will continue to subsidise it for eternity.
There are better infrastructure investments for Government in this time of austerity.
The author is a London conurbation resident?
Always in these these debates the issue of who or what benifits from improving transport is not fully analysed.
It has mainly been the case, here and worldwide, that those improvements actually cause degradation of the place at one end or the other of a new transport infrastructure.
This issue must be fully researched.
For example:
It may be the case that the 19th century construction of the British railway system has actually significantly caused the decline of the North and Midlands and the enhancement of the capital. Capital has clearly benefited but long term have the people benefited?
The author is correct about the issues he discusses but the benefits have to be fully analysed.
Cllr Robin Turner
PS
I am glad I moved, in 1955, to my City of Derby from North London. we have a chance to make things even better here.
RT
Thank you for the article and particularly the House of Commons Research Paper. Having read the paper it would appear to anticipate that good money will be thrown after bad and HS2 will be built as proposed.
It is a great pity that so much has to be spent (about 5% of anticipate total cost) and that spend may be an excuse for continuing.
Gradual upgrading of capacity, particularly south of Rugby/Northampton, would seem to me to be a much better use of UK Ltd resources and a prompter return upon investment. It may eventually require a further two tracks over this section and indeed north of Birmingham should regeneration of regions promote greater traffic between Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds and Edinburgh.
I would suggest that anyone still not sure about this goes and visits our You Tube channel at http://www.youtube/stophs2 to see Labour MP Margaret Hodge in her role as chair of the Public Accounts Committee totally rip apart the HS2 mandarins for their complete ineptitude. I reckon if it had gone on much longer, she’d have got her shotgun out!
I agree with the overall thrust of this piece but more capacity is needed on the West Coast line. An opportunity was wasted when it was upgraded. More carriages are a much cheaper option and this has been put into effect at least in part. I don’t know whether anyone looked into re-engineering the line to take larger trains which carry twice the number of passengers per carriage. At the moment there are 3 trains an hour from Manchester to London. Double capacity trains with sensible ticketing would make it much more economic than building a new high speed route through the country side.
However the main reason for backing HS2 was that it was a replacement for the third runway at Heathrow which the Tories cancelled on coming into office to keep their poodles happy. Whatever green credentials anyone may claim, the reality is that air travel is more convenient, more flexible and much cheaper to build. Given that flights at LHR are about one a minute, that becomes a safety issue. The argument should have been put forwards on safety grounds, which would have made it much more difficult to cancel.
There was a lot of BS and filibustering from HMG over the announcement of HS2.
Liverpool and Merseyside are the 4th largest economic region in the UK. They never took into account the Wirral in passenger demand – the Wirral is virtually suburbs of Liverpool. Not one foot of HS2 infrastructure comes anywhere near Liverpool. This is clearly to make ex mill town Manchester into the UKs 2nd city, a city, unlike Liverpool,which has never been a large commercial city.
Manchester and Liverpool are approx the same distance to London, yet Manchester is 1hr 8mins and Liverpool over half and hour longer. It just does not stack up.
HS2 crosses the Lpool-Mcr line – 15 miles away. This can serve both cities using a slower line for 15 miles for each city with similar times to London. Manchester is getting a 7.5 mile tunnel to its city centre and they whine about a few bridges being widened to Liverpool. The cost of the tunnel can be used to widen bridges on the Lpool Mcr line. Short tunnels can be dug under any difficult bridges such as the Queens Drive/M62 bridge which foolishly in the 1970s took 4 tracks down to 2. It could be made into 6 tracks with a few short tunnels serving L’pool-Mcr, Merseyrail and HS2. under the whole bridge – and no inconvenience to road traffic.
This is all to benefit London. Liverpool, Manchester & Leeds are approx 35 miles from each other. There should be HS2 between these these major economic regions. There is none.
London divides and rules again. All Merseyside MPs have to get together and protest STRONGLY at the shabby treatment of Liverpool. I noticed a few MPs said it was a good thing for Liverpool. What planet are they on?