HS2 rail sums don’t add up

Published: 29 September, 2011

• TRANSPORT minister Norman Baker has genuine concern and expertise, particularly about urban transport but he is seriously misinformed about HS2.

He acknowledges (New Journal, September 22) the damage that HS2 would do in Camden and the Chilterns but believes that other reasons for opposing this line are spurious. In reality they are very powerful.

Carbon reduction was originally claimed as the principal justification.

Here, for example, is what the Prime Minister’s direct communications unit wrote to me in November 2010: “The government’s objective is to establish a high speed rail network as part of a programme to fulfil its ambitions for a low-carbon economy. The government’s vision is of a truly national high speed rail network for the whole of Britain.”

However, according to the official calculations, HS2 would not reduce carbon but would only be carbon neutral. Even that conclusion is too optimistic, since the calculations do not allow for important ways in which HS2 would lead to increased emissions.

The substitution of international flights for domestic ones at Heathrow, which is a prime purpose of HS2, would hugely increase carbon.

Easier access to airports would encourage flying, which again means more carbon.
Some rail journeys made by Intercity would be replaced by journeys on high speed trains to more distant destinations.

Emissions would increase both because of the longer journeys and because high speed trains emit more carbon per passenger.

The claim on which the government now seems to rely most strongly is that high speed rail will change the economic geography of Britain and help close the North-South divide.

Transport secretary Philip Hammond has said this many times, and The Times of August 10 quoted a transport department spokesman as saying, “the government believes a new high speed rail network would present a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to redraw Britain’s economic map, bringing our major cities closer together and providing a rail network fit for the 21st century”.

This was never plausible. As the Eddington report pointed out, British cities are already so well connected that further increases in connectivity could only be marginal and reducing travel times between an economically strong region and a weaker one could harm firms in the weaker region by exposing them to more effective competition.
The benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) claimed for HS2 make no allowance for their severe environmental impact.

They are unimpressive even so, nor should they be taken at their face value. The assumed future rate of growth of rail travel is implausibly high.

No account has been taken of the possibility of substituting electronic communications for many commuting and business trips.

It is assumed the time business people spend on trains is wasted, whereas it can be more productive than time spent in the office.

Frequency of service assumed seems to be higher than is technically feasible.

Simpler and cheaper ways of increasing rail capacity, such as lengthening trains, have not been considered.

Fare revenues are wrongly treated as a reduction in costs rather than as an increase in benefits; correcting this error in presentation is sufficient by itself to reduce the BCR for phase one (London to Birmingham) to 1.26 without wider economic impacts or 1.6 with them. According to NATA Refresh: Appraisal for a Sustainable Transport System (DfT, April 2010), 95 per cent of recent transport investments achieved a BCR of more than 2.0 and these schemes were split roughly equally between those with BCRs of more and less than 4.0.

The government and the three main political parties got into this mess by failing to adopt a rational procedure of analysing problems, formulating alternative options and comparing them in a systematic and comprehensive way.

Instead it was assumed from the outset that our future transport system must include high speed rail.

The best solution now would be for the government to withdraw the plans for HS2 and to set up an inquiry addressed to the following two questions.

l What part should the railways play in a policy designed to reduce CO2 and all the other environmental, social and resource costs of transport while providing citizens with a high standard of access to other people and facilities and industry with an efficient system of goods distribution? 

l What measures, affecting both the railways themselves, competing modes of transport and alternative means of providing access, are required to ensure the railways can play this part?

STEPHEN PLOWDEN
Albert Street, NW1

Longer trains

• THE proposed HS2 rail line to Birmingham, (and eventually beyond), must be stopped.

It would destroy large parts of the countryside, woods, fields, streams, farms and houses that stood in its way. For what? To save 30 minutes travelling time.

Above all, where Camden is concerned, it would destroy at least 400 houses round Euston and this at a time when Camden’s housing waiting list stands at 18,000.

This scheme will cost more than £30billion when essential small organisations are being closed for lack of a few thousand pounds.

We have a perfectly adequate rail system covering most of Britain, but it should be taken into public ownership.

If extra coaches are added on to each of the present trains, this will provide the necessary increase in capacity needed.

It will also take more people and freight off the roads.

P WAGLAND
Brecknock Road, N19