Of the many issues facing the Labour government’s transport team, the least discussed has been the future of HS2. Louise Haigh, the Transport Secretary, has said she will make a statement but there is little sign of that coming in the near future as the focus has very much been on the ‘renationalisation’ of train operations.
HS2 is seen as a problem for the longer term and therefore decisions can wait. But that is a mistake. Not only is an immediate decision required on what to do about the tunnel boring machines which need to run between Old Oak Common and the approach to Euston but the fate of the biggest infrastructure investment this country has ever seen in a single project cannot be allowed to remain uncertain.
I have had considerable response to my appearance on the excellent Panorama programme first screened on September 16th and it has reinforced my view that the project was flawed from the start by the insistence that it should be built to a 400 kph per hour standard, rather than the 300 that has mostly been the norm elsewhere. According to a source close to the project, that created much of the extra cost which has been the project’s downfall. Indeed, I am told that in the early stages of the project, the technical director of the scheme, Andrew McNaughton, one of its principal architects rejected a report which showed that running at 360 kph would result in vastly increased costs. There is no shortage of irony in the fact that McNaughton, who is now chairman of Network Rail (High Speed) Ltd blames ‘overengineering’ for the increased costs of the project.
Inevitably, THERE has been some pushback in Twitter responses on my view that the 360/400 kph requirement was a core reason for the high cost, and I have been pointed to the review of the speed consideration – and indeed of the route – in a report by HS2 published in 2012. Entitled ‘Review of HS2 London to West Midlands Route Selection and Speed’ it is a clear case of an organisation marking its own homework and justifying the decisions on the route and linespeed with very selective evidence. Clearly it was one of those reports written from the conclusion backwards, rather than a proper assessment of the project.
The report rejected alternative routes on the notion that they went through more populated areas than the chosen one through the Chilterns, rather ignoring the fact that this might have made an intermediate stop useful, and also suggesting they would have needed more tunnelling – when in fact the present route requires a remarkable 32 miles of tunnel out of 135 miles. The report admits that building a slower line would be 9 per cent cheaper – a great underestimate according to several of my sources as it does not take sufficient account of noise mitigation and other changes – but that this would impact on the benefits. These, of course, under the Webtag methodology used to calculate the gains from infrastructure projects largely consist of small time savings from people travelling on the train which are then assigned a monetary value which varies according to leisure or business use. As I have written many times, this is a fundamentally flawed methodology and, as I will set out in a future column, must be changed by the present ministerial team to ensure that far wider societal factors are taken into account when assessing transport schemes.
In respect of HS2, however, the emphasis on these small time savings has distorted way that decisions on speed and route were determine. The report says that reducing the line speed to the more usual 300 kph would mean add an extra four minutes between London and Birmingham but reduce the benefit cost ratio by 15 per cent. This demonstrates irrefutably that the crazy methodology, rather than wider considerations or just plain common sense, led to the decision over linespeed that has proved so costly.
Since appearing on the programme, I have been told of lots of examples of the reason costs have soared. The cost of the rolling stock, which is not always included in estimates of the overall expenditure, has undoubtedly been raised considerably by the need to go fast. In effect, it has required manufacturers to devise a completely new train since no other railway operates at that speed. One consequence is that the wheels have to be bigger because otherwise they would wear out quickly, and as a result that means the trains’ floors have to be raised, which in turn determines that the height of the platform cannot not be the 91.5 cms that is the industry standard. Therefore the platforms must be higher and consequently trains will need to be fitted with steps to enable them to be used on the rest of the network. It will also complicates any attempts to adapt existing Pendolino stock to use on HS2.
Another correspondent related how when the Bill was going through Parliament, mitigation measures in respect of water drainage were assessed without anyone undertaking surveys but, rather, in desk top exercises. It was, according to my source, real finger in the air assessment of costs which eventually resulted in greatly increased costs. There is evidence, too, that the decision to build the line to a 120 year specification was never properly discussed and again added costs, perhaps the ‘overengineering’ which McNaughton complains about. Another correspondent explained to me that the contracts handed out by HS2 Ltd only specified limited aspects of the work, allowing vast scope for variations.
Beyond the anecdotal stories, however, the recent publication of the Institution of Civil Engineers report into the cancellation of the northern section of HS2 provides a wealth of evidence of what went wrong with the project. In particular, the key message throughout the report is about the lack of proper oversight, notably – and something which has been repeatedly said to me – that HS2 Ltd was given free rein with very little input from either ministers or the Department for Transport.
Indeed, one of the obvious failings of the oversight is the lack of transparency, demonstrated as I have mentioned before, by the redacted minutes of HS2 Ltd which even cuts out who has attended meetings and what was discussed. Just look at the recent minutes for the June meeting which has sentences like ‘The board noted that while the independent review to the….BLANK’ and ‘The board discussed the potential change for a BLANK’ . As I have joked before, there are more black patches than on a pirates’ ship and this is frankly shocking, a public show of contempt by an organisation spending some £6-7 bn of our money annually.
Greater transparency is something which the new ministerial team should address straight away. Labour is very much stuck between a rock and a hard place on what to do about HS2. There is no doubt that leaving it as the Acton to Aston shuttle means that the approx. £100bn spent on the line will largely be wasted. However, building the tunnel to Euston and the terminus there, along with some improvements to the railway north of Birmingham will undoubtedly add £10bn+ to the overll bill. A reconsideration is needed. Possibly scrapping the existing rolling stock programme and devising a cheaper and more effective train might be necessary. Radical options should not be excluded but millions are spent every day on this scheme, and some of it is clearly wasted. Decisions need to be made but as I tour around the Labour party conference in Liverpool, I find precious little evidence that Labour are grasping this particular nettle.
Barnstaple rebirth
In my travels promoting my latest book, I found myself in Appledore on the North Devon coast a couple of weeks ago at a wonderful book festival. I confess when invited I had to look up where it was and found that to reach the little town there was a 10 mile cycle route from Barnstaple along the Torridge which is called the Tarka Trail. So I squeezed my bike into the worst cycle facility on the planet, the terrible little cubby holes on the Great Western’s Hitachi trains which involve hanging the front wheel from a hook, not an easy task for anyone with a heavy bike, or who is less than my 6ft height. The trip was fraught with both a suicide and a potential suicide – an all too frequent and very sad event these days – but I reached Barnstaple, on the lovely branch line from Exeter, an hour late, enough time to cycle to the bridge over the river near Bideford. The cycle route is, of course, on the old railway and I met the hardy campaigner Tim Steer for dinner to discuss his long time efforts to get improvements on the Barnstaple line and the nine mile line to Bideford reoprned. After three years of campaigning, he is taking a back seat role now but is optimistic that the dream could be realised.
The success of the Barnstaple branch, which reached more than 800,000 users, a record, last year, shows how important such rural lines can be to the local economy. Indeed, on my return, there were around 80 people waiting on the platform. Running to Bideford would undoubtedly be a fantastic boost for the town and the area, but in these austere times, there is probably little hope of a scheme like this being given the go ahead, despite the excellent work of the very pro-rail Devon council supporting it. First, though, Barnstaple needs more than an hourly service, and therefore that line requires investment, something which has the support of Great Western. At least that will give Tim something to smile about.