This will be a long post, so sorry in advance. I'll try to stay firmly on track, but there are a couple of big quotes.
No shovel has yet turned a single sod in the
HS2▸ construction, and already there is political trouble afoot. The project has hitherto enjoyed cross-party support within the coalition and the Labour opposition, as it had done when Labour was in government. The coalition called in the plans in 2010, but the task before Lord Mawhinney was not to decide whether or the not the scheme should proceed, but whether it should route not from Euston to Birmingham, but from St Pancras via Heathrow, something the Conservatives in opposition had argued for.
IMO▸ , the depth of the consensus on the need for a new route is adequately demonstrated by the result of the Mawhinney review. Though he had been transport secretary under John Major, his review supported the route put forward by HS2 Ltd, the company formed under Lord Adonis to develop the project.
Cross-party agreement is essential for a project of this magnitude, as it was with the Olympics. Without it from the get-go, I do not think we would have made it as far as we have by now. Planning and construction will take the lifetime of at least four governments. The Edinburgh tram system shows the perils. The previous Labour Scottish administration started the scheme in the face of hostility from the SNP opposition. It is only going ahead now because cancellation would cost more than completion (or because the SNP secretly always thought it made sense, but didn't want to be blamed if it went wrong). No-one would risk starting a project costing tens of billions if he thought it would be cancelled after years of work. Uncertainty causes delay and expense, as it did with Edinburgh, Crossrail and the Great Western electrification, announced and cancelled at least twice, though thankfully unstoppable now.
There have been grumblings from the back-benches, particularly those
MPs▸ with rural constituencies that will be bisected, but not served, by the line, but support has been strong at higher levels until now. Alistair Darling, former Chancellor and Transport Secretary, took to
the Times to argue for cancellation.
HS2 must terminate here. All change, please
Alistair Darling
Last updated at 12:41PM, August 23 2013
I can no longer back high-speed rail. There are better ways to spend ^50bn than on one line
The great economist John Maynard Keynes is reputed to have said: ^When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do sir?^
We might ask the same question today. When it comes to HS2, the high-speed rail link from London to the Midlands and the North, the facts have changed. The projected cost has risen from about ^30 billion in 2010 to ^50 billion in July this year.
In the past few days it^s been reported that the Treasury now believes the cost could top ^70 billion on just one railway line. To put this in perspective, the Department for Transport spends about ^9 billion a year on all capital projects, including roads, rail and other public transport.
It is time to revisit the case for HS2.
I am an enthusiast for the railways. By the time I left the Department for Transport in 2006, Britain^s railways were carrying more passengers than at any time since 1947. This was down to hugely increased investment by the last Labour Government.
The railways were starved of investment from the late 1980s while the Conservative Government delivered a botched privatisation. We virtually rebuilt the West Coast Main Line, got rid of postwar rolling stock, improved the London Underground and finally gave the go-ahead to Crossrail.
All this, however, depended on a commitment to maintain investment year-on-year and for decades to come. HS2 runs the risk of substantially draining the railways of money vital for investment over the next 30 years.
My experience in government also makes me suspicious of big projects that can easily run out of control. In the Department for Work and Pensions it was IT. In transport the useless Railtrack had a plan to upgrade the West Coast Main Line that would have cost more than ^14 billion, and rising.
It assumed that we could switch from trackside signals to onboard signalling: a technology that was still in development and untested at the time. The costs were eventually cut to ^8 billion by using tried and tested technology. The result was reduced journey times all the way to Glasgow.
Politicians are always excited by ^visionary^ schemes. One thing I have learnt is that transport, rather like banking, is at its best when it is boring. That is when it tends to work. Political visions can easily become nightmares.
So what is the case for HS2? The most compelling argument is that we will need increased capacity between London, the Midlands and the North West. That is true. But there are also severe capacity problems on commuter lines, particularly in the South East.
And why high-speed trains? Certainly it^s handy to cut the journey time between Birmingham and London by half an hour. But at what cost?
The economic benefit that is claimed will come from this is highly contentious. The business case depends on an assumption that passengers aren^t productive ^ that is, that they don^t work on the train. That may be true on a commuter train but not on long haul intercity services. Arguably, more work is done on the train than in the office.
It is also claimed that we would then have a high-speed network, building on the existing link between the Channel Tunnel and St Pancras station in London. But this new line doesn^t link with St Pancras. Nor does it go to Paddington, which connects with Heathrow. Instead it goes to Euston, an already congested station.
Then there is the cost. This is ^50 billion on current government estimates that can^t then be spent on upgrading the East Coast Main Line, the route to Bristol and South West or the lines out of Liverpool Street to East Anglia. Nor can it be put towards improving the much-needed links between cities outside London. Put it another way. If you gave England^s biggest cities ^10 billion each for economic development, would they spend it on HS2?
The English regions have lagged behind London and the South East and Scotland in terms of growth. They could well do with ^50 billion of investment. I^d guess that they would spend it on smaller scale investment, on housing or transport.
It^s not just the railways. Road improvements are needed too, as well as spending to upgrade bus services and cycle routes.
And if we do want to be visionary, why can^t we decide what we are to do with Heathrow now instead of halfway through the next Parliament? Certainly if we spend ^50 billion on HS2 there will be no money for transport links to the proposed Boris Island or to any other new airport.
The next Government and the one after that will be very short of money to spend on the infrastructure that we desperately need. To commit ourselves to spending so much on a project that rules out any other major schemes seems foolish. And the costs are not yet nailed down.
The facts have changed. The case for HS2 was just about stateable in 2010. I don^t believe that it is today.
It is not too late to revisit the project. We need to ask ourselves what we would gain if it goes ahead. Equally we must then ask ourselves what we will have to lose. Politics is about priorities. That will be especially so in the coming years.
The effect of this
volte face is potentially enormous. Darling left front-bench politics after the Labour defeat in 2010, to spend more time with the Buds of May. His voice remains a big voice. Only two other people served in the Cabinet continuously throughout the Blair and Brown premierships (Gordon Brown and Jack Straw). Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are quoted as saying they support HS2, but will not do so if costs spiral. Two Eds may be better than one, but this is equivocation, surely.
Patrick McLoughlin has led the charge to shore up the project. He is quoted in today's
Times:
Patrick McLoughlin, the Transport Secretary, had earlier denied that crossparty support for the 225-mph line was weakening. ^The Labour Party are very much in support of HS2 and certainly when I met the core city leaders where HS2 will serve, all of them Labour Party members, they are very much in support.^
He added: ^This scheme is very important to the infrastructure of this country and all big infrastructure projects are controversial. No doubt Alistair Darling knew that when he signed it off as Chancellor of the Exchequer.^
Mr McLoughlin denied Mr Darling^s contention that HS2 would drain resources from other rail investment for the next 30 years, insisting that the Government was committed to putting billions into electrifying 880 miles of track over the next five years.
^The simple fact is Mr Darling says that it would be a nightmare if we do HS2. It would also be a nightmare if we didn^t do HS2 because what we have seen is a massive growth on our railways over the past 20 years.^
My own view is that they are both right, but McLoughlin is much more right than Darling. I say this even though my general political stance is closer to Darling's than McLoughlin's by a good cheap-day return.
Darling talks about "visionary" projects being glamorous, but says that transport works best when it is boring. I know what he means, but he has got it wrong. If a new railway is a necessity, then it ceases to be visionary unless the proposed vehicles are powered by Dilithium crystals or anti-matter. The high speed aspect could be visionary, but it makes perfect sense to me, at least, to future-proof and get the maximum benefit from the new line. I find support for this view from McLoughlin, again in a
Times interview, this time from 22 June:
^One of the things I regret is that it^s been called ^High Speed 2^ it^s not primarily about speed. It^s about capacity and how do we carry on with the growth we are seeing on the railways. If you are going to create more capacity, you may as well build the best and go for a high-speed version as opposed to a traditional rail.^
Darling's view is more cautious, more small-c conservative. It is the same caution that scrapped the Bristol tramway and gave us instead a half-assed road building scheme in the Trojan horse of Metrobust. Darling, remember, was the man who agreed with Atkins' suggestion to rip up the Severn Beach line for a busway. He also turned down Manchester's Metrolink extension, although he relented in the face of the campaign of obstinacy that was mounted. The success of the latter two shows that he was wrong in those instances.
Darling says correctly that the business case for HS2 is crucial. This approach is exactly what got us Metrobust in Bristol rather than improvements to public transport, but he has a point. He destroys it by saying that people are productive on trains because they can work during the journey. He doesn't mention that they can't if the have to stand outside the toilet for the whole journey because of overcrowding. Capacity, not speed, is the clever bit of HS2. More people will be able to work on trains if it is built, because there will be more of them.
The cost is a bit of a red herring. On a project of this size, we will probably only be able to estimate the full cost about two years after the route is complete. Any figures quoted now will be the roughest of guesstimates. This is not to say that we should not control costs - far from it. Every stage of the route should be scrutinised with an intense scrute, and every best practice implemented.
On the terminal matter, the proposal is to use the former Curzon Street station. It was originally called Birmingham Station, but was renamed in 1852 as other stations opened. Although the Grade 1 listed former entrance is the only building to survive, the area has not been heavily developed since closure in 1966. It was then used as a Parcelforce depot until 2006. Birmingham City University have (had) plans for a new campus using some of the site, and Birmingham City Council planned to refurbish the entrance hall for rental to a quality tenant. iIt is,
BTW▸ , the oldest surviving example of monumental railway architecture in Britain. Continuing the line to New Street, Moor Street, or any other station would involve considerable demolition and/or tunneling, plus significant enlargement of the chosen station to reduce congestion. Birmingham Curzon Street ceased to be viable for passenger use because of being on the eastern edge of the city, giving rise to traffic problems even in the 1850s. It ceased to be a major interchange when New Street opened in 1854, but ceased passenger use in 1893. It has my support as the new terminus, but will need links to the other nearby stations.
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