High speed rail: no brainer?

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond yesterday committed the Coalition to press ahead with High Speed 2, the Y-shaped fast rail route from London to Birmingham and on to Manchester and Leeds.

It's a bold, and very expensive, move. The London-Birmingham bit alone will cost £11bn to build and over £1bn pa to operate. But is HS2 the no-brainer that Ministers say it is?

Last March, Labour's transport secretary Andrew Adonis unveiled plans for a 335-mile Y-shape High Speed Rail network. It would slice 35 minutes off the route from London to Birmingham, 48 minutes off London-Manchester, and 1 hour off London-Edinburgh.

Hammond's plan is a very similar Y-shape route. He promised yesterday to "consult in the New Year on the strategic roll-out of a High Speed Rail network and on our preferred route for the first leg between London and Birmingham".

All of which suggests that High Speed Two is a foregone conclusion. I'm not so sure.

So far, all the attention has focused on the proposed route - with lots of cities up and down England wanting their own HS2 station. Of course, we can't have too many HS2 stations - otherwise it won't be very high-speed.

Once the London-Birmingham route is finalised, opposition may start to emerge from those places that fail to get their own stop-off station. Meanwhile, NIMBY-type protest groups are already starting to form, in eg Warwickshire and Bucks. As more people start to realise that HS2 may run through their back yard, support is likely to wane. Ditto, as people start to question the total £30bn cost.

Instead of focusing on the proposed route, campaigners for HS2 should start talking about the wider benefits. For example, a super-fast line from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds will relieve congestion on other rail and road routes. And instead of talking only about time savings, HS2 supporters should also focus on frequency of service. Commuters are just as interested in how often a service runs to and from London, not just the journey time.

So far, the case for High Speed Rail is too narrow - and not yet won. I detect a public backlash, in classic Middle England, as the Coalition firms up its HS2 plans. If Hammond and others are to avoid a repeat of the disastrous 2007 Downing Street petition against congestion charging, they should set out the wider case for HS2 much more clearly.

Comments

[Ben Harrison]

I share some of your scepticism Dermot - primarily because of the likely cost. Over and above the cost to the Government, it's my understanding that local areas will need to generate significant funds themselves to fund the development of stations in their areas.

On the other hand, perhaps it provides an opportunity for local areas to deploy their new TIF powers...

[Richard Houghton]

The business and environmental case for HS2 is fatally flawed - see link below - but deals around the cancellation of Heathrow's 3rd runway mean it is being pushed through. Wider economic benefits and projected numbers are laughable.

http://www.hs2actionalliance.org/HS2businesscase.php

[Andrew Yeomans]

Relive congestion? What about the extra load that HS2 would put on the London transport system? The Victoria is already over-full at peak times in Euston, and the Northern line not much better.

[Dermot Finch]

Fair point, Andrew - although my point on congestion was aimed at road and rail routes outside London.

And thanks Richard for the link to the Six Myths about HS2

http://www.hs2actionalliance.org/powercms//files/cms_files/myth%20summary-2%281%29.pdf

Ben - HS2 would definitely be a massive opportunity to deploy tax increment financing. If only TIF had been around when the Jubilee Line was built in the late 90s.