HS2: Where did it all go wrong?

Many of you will have seen a tweet by Rishi Sunak saying he took ‘long term decisions’ to boost Britain’s transport while travelling on a private jet (his normal mode of travel) and pandering to conspiracy theories about 15 minute cities this week. After Boris Johnson and Liz Truss most fair-minded observers didn’t think British politics could sink any lower. Correction: We hoped it couldn’t sink any lower, we were wrong. So private jet man has effectively sold the North of England down the river with his decision to axe HS2 North of Birmingham. It’s not the biggest surprise as HS2 has been steadily descoped in the past two years, but it’s still shocking that the biggest rail infrastructure project in the last 100 years has been canned (for now). Continental Europe has extensive high speed rail networks, why can’t we have the same? How did we get here?

Same old Tories, cancelling everything
If we look at the last 13 years the Conservative record in the built environment is pretty shocking. It cut the extensive and long term Building Schools for the Future scheme the moment it took office, only pre-existing contracts were honoured. A few years later the Coalition government came up with a new school building programme, far more modest in scope and with a budget per school much reduced – headteachers from these new schools, in the Priority Schools Building Programme, have contacted me and told me about all the short cuts taken. Rishi Sunak talks of making long term decisions, but his Government is incapable of anything that takes persistence and patience. It’s failed to tackle chronic repairs backlogs affecting schools, hospitals, prisons, council houses, you name it, pretty much everything in the public sector estate.
The path to Net Zero is a long one, increasingly it should not be problematic as the technology to decarbonise pretty much everything exists and the costs are coming down. Solar – prices down by 99.6% in 40 years, Wind – huge price drop and can be put out to sea, battery storage – massive price drop and using fewer raw materials, tidal stream – massive price drop, constant and predictable. Clean tech has a lot to boast about, but Sunak and other libertarian Tories aren’t listening, they’ve bought into the wackjob Net Stupid agenda instead. Don’t bother insulating homes to save lives and save money in the long term – it’s an effort.
In the context of not being able to stick to any long term public sector building programmes or environmental commitments it’s no surprise that this government would not be able to oversee a project that was originally supposed to be completed in 2035. This is the hallmark of populism – a complete failure to deliver, a lot of posturing and constant drama about things under your nose, with no capability to do anything strategic.

Visions of a future unresolved – Euston, Sheffield and Birmingham HS2 stations

We’re not used to new railways
The vast majority of Britain’s railway network was built in the 19th century with maybe a few bits built just before World War I, so the general public has got extremely used to the railway as a constant unchanging network, post Dr Beeching cuts. New stations and new track are a major novelty. To a great extent Network Rail is a victim of its own success. As we can see in the chart passenger numbers more than doubled from the point of privatisation in the mid-90s through to the immediate pre-pandemic level in 2019.

Rail passenger numbers more than doubled in the 25 years between 1995 and 2020, with virtually no new track added to the network

Throughout this time capacity has increased, that’s been achieved by putting on more services and increasing the number of carriages per train. In terms of physical infrastructure what changed was lengthening platforms and adding the odd chord here and there. Network Rail has avoided building substantial new track at all costs – it’s expansive and it’s unpopular. This gave off the impression that ever greater passenger numbers could be achieved with no new track forever.
The plans for HS2, EastWest rail and Northern Powerhouse Rail are an indicator that’s no longer possible and we have a railway that’s bursting at the seams. The general public has to accept that if we want a successful and reliable railway network in the future, where we’re not packed in like sardines on all commuter lines, new track has to be built.

HS2 Press coverage – mindless hostile drivel across the spectrum

A collective hatchet job by the written press
You’ll never get universal agreement on infrastructure schemes, but the opposition to HS2 across the print media was something to behold. It’s not surprising that the right wing press has been hostile to HS2, they know public transport users tend to be left wing, and heavy use car drivers tend to be right wing. Britain is one of the most car dependent countries in Europe – let’s keep it that way. Also Europe is keen on high speed rail – they’ll be ramming their wine and truffles down our throats next! A steady stream of articles in the Mail, Express and Telegraph have said we ought build branch lines instead, that HS2 is an EU plot or focussed on the increasing costs, never the benefits.
Perhaps the worst offender in the press, however, is The Guardian. The Guardian has run a number of hysterical hit-pieces about HS2 over the course of several years. Senior members of the Scott Trust must be thoroughly delighted that HS2’s Northern legs have been cancelled. The Guardian swallowed whole a misinformation campaign about the environmental impact of HS2. Often it seemed that they regurgitated press releases from anti-zealots with no investigation or questioning at all.
An excellent forensic thread on twitter by Phil Sturgeon explains why the claim that HS2 destroyed 108 ancient woodlands is total nonsense. It is pretty astounding if you think about it – a 140-mile railway going through 108 separate wooded areas and they all happen to be ancient, one every mile or so. It turns out HS2 will, in fact, reduce our ancient woodland cover by about 50 acres. For perspective there’s a field between my village and the posh village next door, Hartley, which is 64 acres.
Anyway, the higher ups at The Guardian must be dancing a jig, sabotaging HS2 is one of the only policy wins it’s enjoyed in 13 years. While its circulation isn’t the biggest, perhaps the hostility of The Guardian carried a lot of weight because press opposition to HS2 went across the spectrum and gave it a legitimacy it didn’t deserve.

Some experts such as Phil Sturgeon did an excellent job of debunking the misinformation surrounding HS2’s impact, unfortunately their voices weren’t heard

Lessons from HS1, lessons from Europe

Many people have, quite rightly, asked why HS2 has a cost per mile that far exceeds other high speed rail lines in Europe. Looking at France there are two major reasons. France is four times the size of England with roughly the same level of population. It’s pretty straightforward to route a high speed line between the major cities, outside of heading into the Massif Central. The population is sparse and the topography is easy to deal with, asset purchase costs are far lower.

Furthermore France is able to keep its costs down via a process of continuous construction. It’s had its nose to the high speed grindstone for 40 years, the acculumated knowledge and experience really helps. This is in stark contast to the UK’s chaotic stop – start politicised construction processes. One of the many startling revelations to emerge this week is that HS1 construction boss Rob Holden has never worked on HS2 and has never even been consulted, what little high speed rail project knowledge and experience we have has been left to wither on the vine.

It’s a fair question to ask if HS1 has lessons for HS2, compare and contrast – what you can pick up is that HS1 doesn’t have the gold-plated mitigation features HS2 has and is a bit more inclusive. By inclusive I mean that East Kent is covered by a station at Ashford and West Kent is covered off by Ebbsfleet. There is only 34 miles between the two stations and it takes 18 minutes travel time. It’s a fair question to ask if there would be value in having an extra station along the 140 mile London and Birmingham route on HS2? If so, surely some of the opposition in the Northern Home Counties would be far less, as they would feel included in the project.

One problem that exists in the UK is a large post-industrial landscape that we have to build over that doesn’t exist to the same extent in Continental Europe. This has jacked up costs significantly, the line between Birmingham and Manchester would have to feature extensive viaducts as the area is home to several former and current salt mines. We either accept that our industrial past complicates our infrastructure future or we sit on our hands forever more.

The benefits: communication breakdown
Delving into the history of HS2, the project was originally conceived during Labour’s 2005 – 2010 parliament, with work carried forward by the coalition government, which firmed up details about the route. Cross-party consensus over project existed for a long time, perhaps that was a drawback because it led to a lack of debate and a lack of communication of the fundamental rationale for the project.
The purpose of HS2 is create a new separate trackbed for a high capacity railway that in turn frees up capacity on other lines leading to improved freight and passenger services. There’s plenty of information on the HS2 website showing that, for example the line (if built in full), would greatly improve journey times between Newcastle and Birmingham.
There were some headline figures quoted from time to time – the line would have a daily capacity of 576,000 passengers, but because HS2’s cheerleaders were half-hearted and ineffective they let the narrative get hijacked. Over and over again the reductive statement that we’re spending £100Bn to go from Birmingham to London 20 minutes quicker was trotted out. Rarely was an effective counter-narrative offered. There’s still no estimate, however, of how many passengers would benefit from the improved services created by the freed up capacity.
I’ve got to hold my hand up at this point – I live just a few miles away from HS1, I benefit personally from its existence although I never use it – trains into London from my local station here in Kent run fast taking 30 minutes, before HS1 the fastest train was 40 minutes, the improvement is because HS1 has taken services off the Chatham main line freeing up capacity. The children of those who campaigned against HS1 in my local area now benefit from that swift service without a moment’s thought as to how it happened, I’m sure.

Taken from the HS2 website – the line built in full speeds up services leading to most major cities between London and Glasgow, Joe Public has no concept of this because it was never communicated properly

Covid – when the wind changed
Covid 19 has been a disaster for our economy and our society in general, and it’s been terrible for the rail industry in particular. The long march of increasing passenger numbers has been stopped in its tracks, all future confidence in widespread use of trains has shattered. All of a sudden people are writing off railways and talking of working from home, and many aspects of human interaction ported to Zoom or Teams meetings online. Acute cost pressures in the construction industry – labour shortages and materials shortages have jacked up the estimates for HS2, though the chronic mismanagement, wanting to slow the pace of construction has undermined the project too. This is what Sunak is referring to when saying that the ‘facts changed’ around HS2. On the basis that HS2 is supposed to be a very long term project and in 100 years time teleportation and jetpacks won’t be mainstream technologies, we can be confident that the existing forms of ground transport will still be used, and used extensively. I’m happy to concede that train travel will take a five year hit from Covid, but as passenger numbers are now crawling back to pre-pandemic levels despite cuts in services this will not be the paradigm shift that pundits have predicted.
Two things to note about internal Treasury calculations about HS2. Officials were alarmed that Sunak took control of cost:benefit analysis of the project while chancellor as he had no previous experience of transport analysis beforehand – this was probably obvious in the flawed methodology he employed. Furthermore Treasury officials are incredibly sniffy about any major projects that go from A to B where neither A or B is London. There’s a special set of calculations made for London, not merely on the basis that a lot of people use London transport but that a lot of rich and important people use it. Those using the improved Newcastle to Birmingham HS2 service matter less than those going from Kennington to Battersea Power Station on the new Northern Line extension. Not all British train passengers are created equal – suck it up whippet owners and pigeon fanciers!
Anyway, new cost:benefit analyses put the Northern legs of HS2 below a value of 1. These calculations, if you’re Northern or from the Midlands, could be said to be heavily biased and supporters of rail infrastructure in the future will have to produce numbers to support the reopening of the project, if rail passengers numbers recover in the way they have in the last 18 months then a new case can be made. This week it seems like we’ve seen the beginning of the end for HS2 Northern – maybe it’s only the end of the beginning if enough people are willing to fight for it.