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if this is as good as the sums are going to get, I can only conclude it
remains vital and necessary.
There are, nevertheless, very substantial problems with the
Department for Transport’s case. The government has built its
case around the cornerstone idea that high speed rail would
reduce the imbalance in the UK’s economy between north and
south by improving transport links to the north. But is it really
credible that Manchester would be transformed by having trains
to and from London taking 80 minutes, rather than two hours,
and four trains an hour rather than three Nor, as Rod Eddington
pointed out in his report on the UK’s transport networks in 2006,
is there anything to stop better transport links allowing people to
live in a provincial city but to do their business somewhere else. It
is distinctly possible that, as some suggest high speed rail in France
has done, new links would benefit professional services, retail and
other sectors in the capital, at the expense of the provinces.
HS2 is also being given perverse priority over other schemes
that would, at least according to recognised cost-benefit analysis
methods, do considerably more good. The arguments for a third
runway at Heathrow – that the existing infrastructure is so
overstretched that the only option is to build something new – are
precisely the same as those for building HS2 over tinkering with
the existing West Coast Main Line. The private sector would fund
the runway and one serious study put the benefit-cost ratio for
the project at 3.6:1 – against 1.4: 1 under the latest calculations for
HS2.
But events in the early hours of 3 February – when a
Freightliner Class 90 derailed at Bletchley, blocking all four tracks
of the West Coast Main Line – have made further nonsense of the
already fairly far-fetched claims of those that claim high speed rail
isn’t needed to solve London to Birmingham capacity problems.
The single derailment illustrated precisely how fragile the existing
line is. No-one who has ever spoken to a senior Network Rail
manager about the challenges of handling a 200kph express train
every three minutes on the fast lines, while juggling the needs
of freight and commuter services on the slow lines, would ever
seriously entertain the anti-HS2 campaigners’ claims about the
potential to enhance the line’s capacity. Moving block signalling,
longer trains and some route straightening are all desirable – but
far from sufficient to solve the looming capacity problem.
This leaves the question of whether it could be done another
way. Roger Ford, the Modern Railways columnist, has argued
for the building – at far lower cost – of a new, 200kph line to
parallel the West Coast Main Line. Instinct suggests this is an
inconvenient half-way house, offering few of the journey time
improvements of a high speed line while requiring much of the
necessary investment. There are also voices calling for the new
line’s maximum speed to be 300kph, as on High Speed One, rather
than the 400kph proposed for HS2. But it is hard to imagine that
the savings – which would mainly come from allowing tighter
curves than are possible on a 400kph line – can be seriously
justified when there are already 380kph top-speed trains on order
in China.
Yet the truth remains that the cost-benefit calculations have
been undertaken mainly for a negative reason – so that they can
be produced at the almost inevitable judicial review hearing into
the government’s decision. The serious arguments in favour of
the project have, in fact, got far more to do with the theories
championed by economists such as Oxford University’s Dieter
Helm, who analyses the nature of the networks the UK needs in
future, rather than the precise costs and benefits of individual
links.
Such arguments, not yet a recognised part of UK transport
planning, hold that cost-benefit analysis fails to capture properly
the benefits of radical changes to a country’s transport networks.
It is, of course, possible for new transport links to prove less
popular than expected and for costs to spiral out of control. The
new line’s effects on the UK’s economic geography will probably
be very different from everyone’s expectations.
But, since the last few years’ frantic debate has produced no
better solution to the looming capacity problems than HS2, now
is surely the time to stop arguing about whether to go ahead. The
task now is to make the best possible job of building it.
Robert Wright is the shipping and logistics correspondent for the
Financial Times: robert.wright@ft.com
Clarification: In Robert Wright’s February column he wrote that, on the
day of the 2012 fares announcement by the Association of Train Operating
Companies, Michael Roberts, its chief executive, stuck to arguments about
how fare rises would pay for new trains and better services. We are happy
to point out that Atoc issued a press release – and Michael Roberts made
a number of national broadcast media appearances – explaining the overall
level of fare rises is determined largely by government policy and the
industry is working together to continue cutting costs. To see what Atoc
issued that day, visit www.atoc.org/2012fares
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