High Speed Rail 2

As of last week the government announced that the wheels had been officially set in motion on HS2, and the lumbering, £32-billion-at-the-best-estimate rail scheme is going to go ahead. This decision, however, has been met with a torrent of criticism and opposition, portraying the plan as a government white elephant: a London-centric travel plan that purports to help revitalise the North while doing nothing of the sort. Supporters of HS2 see it as a necessary investment for the future of the country, and a bold move by the government that needed to be taken.

So then, what exactly is HS2, and why (let's be honest here, I'm thoroughly against it) is it so bad for the country?

HS2 is the Government's grand scheme to rejuvenate rail travel in the UK. Weighing in at a whopping (estimated) £32 billion, the plan is to construct a high-speed rail line from London to Scotland, slashing journey times by an hour when the entire route is completed. Being built in stages, the first part will run from London to Birmingham, and be completed by 2026, and will reduce journey times by a rather less impressive 20 minutes. So what are the problems with HS2?

First up is the sheer cost of the project. £32 billion is a significant amount of money to be spending on one project at any point in time, and is an especially large one considering the economic times we're currently in, and the cuts happening across the board. How can we justify spending such a significant amount of money on a railway line while making sweeping cuts to healthcare and policing? Additionally, the cost of HS2 is disproportionately greater than other alternatives (such as a renovation and improvement of service on the WCML) and costs four times more per mile of line than any equivalent European high-speed rail-line. Not to mention the additional costs of building tunnels under the constituencies of certain MPs who would have otherwise opposed the project (a rather dubious political technique called porkbarelling, where an MP gets concessions for his area in return for support for an overall project)

Second is the issue of demand and supply. Use of HS1 is only a third of what was originally predicted, and there will undoubtedly be a lower take up of HS2 than is predicted. As well as this is the rather dubious claim that the current rail infrastructure cannot cope with predicted rises in passenger numbers. It's as a result of a lack of investment anywhere other than London that people are commuting there in greater numbers, and should be seen as a cause of concern – something to seriously address – rather than the basis for driving even greater numbers of people to London. If there were more job opportunities in places like Birmingham and Manchester then the issue would disappear overnight. There is also the additional question of why the private sector can't provide this upgrade? If there was enough demand for a high-speed rail route the rail companies would have already moved to build one themselves and capitalise on demand. As it is, no such demand has been seen, and HS1 was sold to the private sector at a £3.6bn loss to the taxpayer – a figure that may well be a drop in the ocean compared to the price of HS2.

The biggest, and most damaging effect HS2 has isn't one that is inherently obvious. It's a rather more insidious, long-term effect – that of continuing 'London-centricity'. The entirety of HS2 is designed simply to connect major cities to London, and make commuting there and back quicker. Why is this a problem? I hear you cry! Well, by constantly encouraging people to commute to London you create a number of problems...

1) You continue to make it exceedingly expensive to live in. Living costs in London and the suburbs around it are already significantly higher than those of the rest of the UK, and by channeling more people down from the North on HS2 these costs are only to rise even further

2) We end up with London as our centre of industry (which it already is now, but to an even greater extent) but with a few 'favoured cities' elsewhere. Why locate yourself in a city that isn't on the route of HS2? Why bother to build your offices in Liverpool, or a factory near Leicester when you're actively going out of your way to avoid the 'benefits' of HS2 if you do so?

3) You make it harder for people to commute from cities that are currently on the ECML or the WCML, as the services running through cities like Coventry will be reduced. Why? Well, if you're actively pushing everyone on to HS2 then those trains will be emptier, thus pushing up ticket prices on other routes, and reducing the number of trains running. It might make it easier for a businessman in Birmingham to commute to London, but far harder for anyone in the rest of the Midlands who now have to go out of their way to change in Birmingham to take HS2.

There are numerous other reasons, but for the sake of brevity I've stuck to the major ones. In short? HS2 is a raw deal for the British public, an extortionate waste of public money, and a blow to any hope of revitalising the economy in the North.

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