High Speed Few

with the mayor of london announcing "nearly" a billion pounds* for cycling in the capital, we may have forgotten a "public" transport scheme which dwarfs this plan in scale and cost. (*over ten years!)

Phwoar! A bridge over a canal, what an engineering-fest. Photo from
HS2 website.

I refer of course to High Speed 2 or the friendlier HS2 which will connect London with Birmingham and if we are lucky, Manchester and Leeds at some point in the future, possibly.

Here is a summary of some statistics to start us off:

• The whole scheme (including a spur to Heathrow) will cost £34.5bn
• It will create "benefits" of £47bn (over 60 years)
• It will raise fare revenues of £34bn (over 60 years)
• The level of spending on the project spread over 20 years is expected to be less than £2bn a year
• If the whole scheme is built, it will create 330 miles of track
• 18 trains per hour in each direction when fully operation
• Up to 1100 people per train

So, by my rough maths, that will be £104 million a mile - or a bit more than the Mayor's proposed (and not quite funded) annual cycle budget for the entire city. 

Here is part of my route to work, the carriageway

is shot. The surface is bad enough, but the water 

has got in underneath and it is falling apart from 

the deeper layers. Still, if a few people can get 

from London to Birmingham a little bit quicker,

that will be fine.

Or looking at infrastructure already built, this year it is estimated that there is a highway maintenance budget shortfall of £829m in England or to bring the road network in England and Wales (including London) back up to standard will need a £10.5bn (I realise the survey is undertaken by a trade body, but it gets an awful lot of replies from local authority engineers). There is estimated to be 245,000 miles of roads in the UK. 

I am not interested in who pays what for the roads as we all pay one way or another and we all benefit, but it is a scandal that the UK has left its biggest piece of public infrastructure to crumble like is has and for so long. 

The motorways and trunk roads are in pretty good nick and so most of the neglect is on the local streets we rely on to get to work, school and the shops; our day to day travel.

I know I am a highways person and I don't have much professional interest in rail, but with the state of our existing transport infrastructure, HS2 seems like something we can ill afford. 

I am just not sure who needs to travel across the UK on all the time and why doing it a bit quicker will help the rest of the UK. If we need to spend on rail, we need schemes like Crossrail and London Overground in major UK cities to get people in and out efficiently and safety, plus it will free up road space for cycling and essential city functions like deliveries and waste collection.

HS2 tells us there will be many advantages;

• Creating crucial space on crowded routes
• Releasing room for freight
• Better journeys between cities
• Economic benefits and jobs
• A whole new passenger experience
• Positive environmental benefits
• Regeneration

The Institute of Economic Affairs is less convinced, they state "The estimated cost of £34 billion to construct HS2 is equivalent to £1000 per UK income-tax payer. Most taxpayers will derive no benefit from the scheme." HS2 Action Alliance is not in agreement with the scheme and rebuts HS2's positives. So, just who are we building this scheme for?

I don't commute long distances between major cities and I don't know anybody who does. I know people in Brighton and Stevenage who work in London and get there by train, pay the insane rail ticket costs and HS2 certainly won't help them. I know sales reps who travel all around the country selling their wares and HS2 won't help them. 

HS2 is essentially about linking up London with Birmingham and then (probably) spurs to Manchester and Leeds, but it will do nothing to help people move around these cities. Will people switch from their cars stuck on the M40 and M6 for HS2? Will HS2 help children walk to school? Will HS2 improve transport in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland? Will HS2 do anything for East Anglia's hammering by freight lorries using the eastern ports?

HS2 will do nothing to sort out local transport problems like the
traffic congestion on Oxlow Lane, Dagenham, when the school run is
on. We need to make places like this easy for pedestrians and cycle
users so they don't need to sit in traffic, like the bus from which this 
photo was taken!

I am less worried about the various arguments for and against HS2 and more worried about whether it is the right scheme for the UK, even though it will keep many of my fellow professionals in a job. The trade press is full of articles praising the project and it is a bonanza to the private sector which is advising the Government on the project and who will build and operate the scheme (like HS1).

Against the backdrop of the ongoing scandal of our (literally) crumbling local roads and people's daily travel needs, this project is in my opinion, yet another centralised bit of political vanity. Imagine if this money was invested in walking, cycling and public transport in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds?

Update October 2023

Ten years on and this is the one post I no longer stand by, but I am leaving it up as a reminder to never trust the Institute of Economic Affairs because they are terrible people and to perhaps try and learn more about the subjects you have strong opinions on. In this case, the writings and rantings of Gareth Dennis where I have learned so much about the project in terms of how it relates capacity for local services and freight.

However, Perhaps my scepticism for the legs beyond Birmingham were well-founded given how the UK Tory government has behaved at the start of this month. I am happy to leave this up as a testament to the need to change our minds.