HS2 just a damaging ‘political vanity project’

Published: July 28, 2011

I HAVE found your reports of protests against the HS2 proposed high-speed rail project extremely useful.

But it is worth highlighting the fact that this isn’t simply a case of “nimbyism”.

Now the Institute of Economic Affairs has dismissed the financial case for the project as unfounded, labelling it a “political vanity project”.

That reflects the conclusion of the Green Party, the only party nationally to oppose the project. We remain strongly in favour of rail travel in general, but the expense and environmental damage of the HS2 proposal is in no way justified by the results, the chief of which might well be the development of areas of Birmingham as new commuter suburbs of London.

It won’t take one plane out of the sky, but it will burn 50 per cent more energy mile-for-mile than the Eurostar, and be a “rich-person’s railway”, with its own business case assuming that a third of passengers will be on incomes of £70,000 or more. We need to stress that this is a badly conceived project for the country – as well as for London.
Natalie Bennett
Chair, Camden Green Party

Why the hurry?

IT has been reported that HS2 would shorten the journey time between London and Birmingham by 35 minutes.

Probably I am not the only one who cannot see the point in it; where are we going to in such a hurry?

I once travelled from Birmingham to London after picking up a customer at Heathrow, and chauffeured to Birmingham, coming back to Euston by train. The train that I intended to catch was cancelled and I had to wait for the next one for half an hour.

There was nowhere to sit at the station and so I had to stand like a lamp-post on the concourse. When I boarded the first class carriage, it was almost empty despite being in the evening.

When (not if) HS2 trains are delayed or cancelled by wrong kind of leaves/snow/heat, train defects, signal failure, person under the train, staff shortage or whatever, this “35-minutes saving” will be wiped out.

It is definitely not worth demolishing estates in Regent’s Park for the HS2 plan. I wonder where the residents would go.

What is more, even if trains are introduced from Germany or Japan, we will also need people from Germany or Japan to run them.

The railway in Japan was privatised in 1988 and now run successfully, and delegations from BR and the UK government visited Japan before rail privatisation in this country in 1990s. They could have learned something there, I think.

Incidentally, the Mayor of London might have been impressed by the Chinese high-speed trains between Beijing and Shanghai, as reported, but I heard that safety issues have been compromised in order to achieve the speed, not like Japanese bullet trains (Shinkansen, means new artery line), which now covers the entire length of the mainland.
Atsuko McCarthy
Phoenix Road, NW1