My views on HS2 have changed over time. I started being philosophically in favour (infrastructure improvement, investment during a time of austerity, linking the country, trains) but thinking that it would probably never happen, and then, as I learned more about it, to being practically against (overpriced for the returns, unnecessarily damaging route) but thinking it probably would happen.
I’m now settled in the position that this plan should not go ahead and it’s finely balanced as to whether or not it will.
Certainly recent media reports (see BBC, The Times, Sky) make it easier for Boris Johnson to move to kill it off.
Chris Packham said: “Having declared a Climate and Environment Emergency it is imperative that the government acts to minimise, mitigate or eliminate any further environmental damage – and HS2 would be enormously damaging through its habitat destruction, impact on endangered species and its considerable carbon footprint. Put simply, if HS2 was ever a good idea – it is not now. Of course, there is no doubt that we urgently need a greener transport infrastructure and this is why, given the funds allotted to facilitate it, we are asking the government to #ReThinkHS2 with the environment at the core of its decision making.”
Carol Day, solicitor at law firm Leigh Day, said: “Given the terms of reference of the Oakervee Review, the environmental organisations that submitted evidence to it believed their concerns would be taken into account in the decision-making process. It would appear that this has not been the case. Our client therefore welcomes Lord Berkeley’s dissenting review, which recognises the environmental factors require further consideration, particularly in the face of the current climate and ecological emergency.“
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I don’t know why but just before Chrimbo I travelled by train from Stratford International to St Pancreas and back. I’m not a Railway Nerd, so I’m not sure, but I think the train was one of those Javelin things that can run at high speed on high-speed track if it’s there. Not only was there enough room to actually sit in a seat without employing some elementary contortionism but there was also room to get past people to get off of it even past the man in a wheelchair at the end of the carriage and the cheerible Southeastern chap who did the announcing seemed to be enjoying his job and for some private and personal reason was looking forward to arriving in Margate.
I contrast this with the miserable experience of traveling on GWR into Waterloo where the miserable staff resent the fact that you are doing so and one is shoe-horned into carriages that were sized for smaller than average adults and normal people can only enter the lavatory sideways whether or not the train is standing at a station. I have heard on the Meejar that trains in the North are even worse, and there aren’t enough of them to provide a service fit for people who need to get to work on the same day that they have their breakfast.
HS2 was never a good idea and should be scrapped. The money would be better spent on upgrading existing services and rolling stock and providing a uniformly good rail system over the whole of England and Wales. There’s plenty of money, as the Gubmint keep proving by wasting it on pointless and ineffective things. If the people who were expecting to get rich from HS2 don’t get rich from HS2 – then Boo-Hoo.
Two Points
1) All HS2 will do is create a further commuter belt for London extending to Birmingham and beyond . This will attract more money flows into London possibly at the expense of the very areas that this project purports to benefit.
2)Capital infrastructure projects are often plagued with overspend , delays and financial collapse. For truly innovative projects this may have to be a necessary part of the risk profile but for a project that is at heart a capacity upgrade then there is to much financial risk here . Spend a lot less money and with more control investing in better transport integration and upgrading (physical and timetable) to ensure car less travel everywhere (outside London) is possible without transfer and reliability delays .
My views have similarly evolved over time. There’s no doubt the route needs more capacity, and only building a new line avoids a decade of severe disruption from trying to expand or upgrade the existing route.
But it’s the “High Speed” part that makes HS2 so expensive and so damaging. A new regular line could largely go around both nature conservation sites and existing financial assets like houses, but a High Speed line has to be straight and hence plough through them. In its present form HS2 is just a hideously expensive vanity project for the politicians. The sooner it is killed off the better.
In my opinion the answer is emphatically “ Not to Be” .
Take Cross Rail for example announced today only part of it will now be commissioned at the very end of 2021. What a farce and the longer these projects go on the more they cost. Spend the enormous amount of money involved on many more deserving cases including Natural England and nature conservation.
A high speed line in the UK does make sense, but only if it runs from Scrabster via Glasgow or Edinburgh -but preferably Glasgow- right to the Eurotunnel with no changes. You can make a case for it stopping in Nodnol, but not for any of the other English cities.
Only when there is real accountability for overspend on projects of this kind will risk aversion and reason deliver value for public money? Until there is proper accountability the public are just lining the pockets of fat cat directors in order for politicians to have their vanity projects, will history properly record ‘legacy’?