The HS2 rail link performs badly against its four objectives and costs five times as much as a new high speed line in France, according to a new report.
The French Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV)
HS2 and the railway network : the case for a review, by a group of academics and transport experts, says a range of policy options should have been considered to meet these objectives and that these ‘must now be reviewed objectively, transparently and dispassionately’.
The report says HS2 adds to rail capacity, ‘but there are much less costly and environmentally damaging ways of doing so,’ and provides only limited improvements to connectivity, while worsening London services for several cities, as well as many cross-country journeys.
It adds that the scheme’s wider economic benefits for the North are uncertain and that HS2 contributes nothing to the objective of reducing carbon emissions from transport.
The main authors of the report are Anthony May, Emeritus Professor of Transport Engineering at the University of Leeds, and Jonathan Tyler of the Passenger Transport Networks consultancy.
They claimed that ‘the civil engineering profession has increasingly focused on what it now sees as a “$1 trillion global opportunity”,’ while northern councils have been encouraged to believe the scheme would bring them substantial regeneration benefits and environmental groups decided not to oppose HS2 partly on the grounds that it is preferable to investment in road and air.
The report compares HS2’s cost of £105m per route-km with the £20m/km cost of the TGV line from Tours to Bordeaux, which is currently under construction.
In response, a spokesman for HS2 Ltd said: ‘High speed rail offers some of the lowest carbon emissions, and significantly less than cars and planes. By increasing capacity and improving connectivity HS2 will make it more possible to transfer both passenger and freight traffic off the motorway on to the railway with a subsequent reduction in environmental impacts.’
He added: ‘The French section of track is not comparable. The French track has no new stations, it does not go through a dense built-up urban area, it does not have the tunnels that we are building on HS2 to protect the environment and property prices are very low in comparison to the UK.
‘The net result is that it is cheaper, but we will use joint ventures including continental firms with experience of building high speed rail and this will drive down our costs.’
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