In all the fuss about the future structure of the railways, there’s a rather big elephant in the room that has been left chomping away at the magic money tree. And every day that passes is a missed opportunity to develop a positive story about the railways and turn a disastrous situation around – at least partly – on the nation’s biggest ever transport scheme.
That project is, of course, HS2. Remember it? This behemothd is eating up some £150m every week without any clear control or oversight. Older readers (both of you!?) will know that I have been an inveterate opponent of HS2, arguing it was a ridiculously expensive scheme which did not integrate with the existing system and which was designed in haste along the wrong route. Nevertheless, to leave it as a site for mushroom growing and for tourists from better organised countries to laugh at is not an option. Yes, good money is chasing after bad but there is no choice.
The first section will, then, be built between Birmingham Curzon Street and Old Oak Common, the Acton to Aston shuttle as I have dubbed it, at a cost of at least £70bn and probably considerably more. It will, too, reach Euston eventually because there would be no sense to have a line that terminates five miles away from the centre and reached only by a very busy Elizabeth Line that runs east west.
But then what? It was one of the most callous and ill thought out moves by a Prime Minister in recent years to cancel the phase 2A of the scheme between Birmingham (or Handsacre Junction where HS2 meets the West Coast Main Line) and Crewe. It was announced by Rishi Sunak at the 2023 Tory party conference with the narrowest of short term interests in mind and without even the acquiescence of the rail minister at the time, the railway friendly Huw Merriman. This was the wrong decision for many reasons, not least that this was the most valuable and viable part of HS2 and the part of the route which most needed extra capacity. No thought had been given to the consequences of this decision, other than spurious claims that the ‘money’, which did not really exist anyway, could be recycled to other transport schemes including roadbuilding and pothole filling. The fact that Mark Harper, the then transport secretary, acquiesced in this shameful episode confirmed him in my mind as the worst holder of that job since I started writing about transport 30 years ago – and it is a heavily contested field.
Now it would be reassuring to be able to write that the new Labour government in its first few months of office had realised that HS2 was a project which had been left in limbo and that needed addressing. Unfortunately that has not been the case. Essentially, the scheme is still in the same dismembered state it has been in since Sunak’s announcement 18 months ago and Labour ministers seem not to have understood the urgency of making a decision over the line north of Birmingham. The need to do so is prompted by the fact that the original legislation to enable that section to be built was passed in February 2021 and only last for five years which means that all the land has to be acquired by that date or the powers lapse. They can be renewed but essentially that would mean starting all over again with a public enquiry planning process or with a Transport and Works Act, both of which would be cumbersome and take several years, kicking any likely start date well into the 2030s.
The Department of Transport has not been pushing for a decision because it is aware that the Treasury has become increasingly hostile to railway projects, which is partly understandable given the chaotic state of HS2. However, leaving the project in limbo is probably the worst of all worlds as eventually some phoenix will have to emerge from the ashes and that is very likely to include a line at least to Crewe. Incidentally, initially the new line section of line could just run to Madeley in Cheshire where it will run parallel to the West Coast Main Line up to Crewe, a distance of about 25 miles from Handsacre junction and relatively cheap as there is no need for tunnelling. That, at least, would be an initial compromise that could probably be undertaken for £6-7bn if it were descoped to what insiders suggest is the best compromise linespeed – between economy and passenger benefits – of 270 kph rather than the 400 kph originally envisaged. Apparently more than half the required land has already been bought, but the Department is quickly running out of time to ensure the rest can be purchased before the February 2026 deadline. I have been advised that every day counts and yet nothing seems to have moved since the election.
I have, in the past, been sceptical of industry pressure groups lobbying for HS2 but it is difficult to disagree with the thrust of the paper just produced by the High Speed Rail Group and intended for consideration as part of the Treasury’s imminent spending review stressing the importance of restarting the process of acquiring the land on what, the Group rightly points out is the most useful section of the whole line. Dyan Perry, the chair of the Group puts it succinctly: ‘HS2 is at a crossroads. If delivered correctly, it will unlock national transport capacity, generate a multi-billion pound return to the Treasury, drive economic growth across the UK and enhance regional connectivity. However, if cut short, the Government risks wasting substantial investments to date, short-changing the national account and squandering HS2’s far reaching socio-economic benefits’. Even though I have previously opposed the scheme, I have to argue this is spot on.
The crucial point is that there are no easy decisions about HS2 given so much money has been spent already, especially as the politics is always going to be fraught. However, this could be presented as fitting in with wider aims such as improving transport in the north, rather than focussing so much on London and the south. Indeed, allowing this section of HS2 to die while supporting initiatives in the south east such as the third runway at Heathrow (which despite being a private sector scheme will require considerable public money for road and other transport improvements) and the Lower Thames Crossing which the Chancellor seems to have endorsed, despite an estimated cost of £10bn. So the Labour government, which professed to be seeking a green agenda and would create jobs in the deprived areas of the north is favouring two unsustainable projects in the south, while letting allowing he most important transport infrastructure scheme of the century to moulder. It is not a great look.
Mumbai, a city of contrasts
I was privileged to spend a couple of days being shown round the transport system of Mumbai by my old friend and fellow railway author, Rajendra Aklekar. It was remarkable enlightening. Mumbai may have lost its trams but it has a wide variety of rail systems, including the famous and heavily used extensive suburban rail system, an elevated monorail, the only one in Insia, and both elevated and underground metro lines. A whole metro network is being constructed with four lines already completed and a further eight under construction. While the early metro lines were elevated, the new partially opened line 3 is being built to a standard which almost matches the Elizabeth Line. We travelled on the section under the airport which has been opened and the ride was extremely smooth and there were doors protecting the track at all the platform which were almost as long as those on the Elizabeth Line. The stations have been built on a grand scale, with the expectation that footfall will be heavy. It was most impressive, especially in a city where above ground the road network is often at a standstill, the suburban network is creaking under the strain of overuse and underinvestment and the standard of the road surface is at times little better than a desert track.
I was impressed, too with the monorail, a technology which has never really taken off presumably because it is more expensive than rail, but the line in Mumbai was built because it is able to deal with bends that would be far too tight for a conventional railway. Interestingly, some of the newer metro lines have not attracted as many people as expected because they are more expensive than the suburban railway network, where the fares, which have not risen for more than a decade, are just 9 rupees (9p) for every 10 kilometres. And inevitably, much of the ransport money has been absorbed by an astonishing new road running along the coast, with a 5 km tunnel, out to the airport. Inevitably, as always happens with new roads, it was incredibly fast running until, about 4km from the airport, it got so busy it took half an hour to cover that final distance .(you can listen to more detail on my India trip on my podcast, Calling All Stations).
I am now heading for China at the end of this month for meetings with senior railway officials and I will report on the amazing progress that rail has made with a remarkable 45 cities and towns boasting a metro system and a remarkable near 50,000km of high speed line, carrying 10 million people every day. Dream on.