Over the weekend, a review by Network Rail of alternatives to the HS2 proposal has been made public. It looks into alternative rail proposals for increasing capacity which could be used instead of spending £33 billion on the HS2 proposal.
One of them, Rail Package 2 (RP2) was produced for HS2 Ltd as part of the process for developing HS2. Most business leaders would say that before spending £33 billion on a single project, one would need to look at credible alternatives to the proposal. This should be the best possible alternative they can develop.
However if Network Rail – who were involved in developing the HS2 proposal – now find RP2 is so easily criticised, this shows that HS2 Ltd have not used credible alternatives. Clearly the challenge panels, set up by HS2 Ltd “to provide independent expert scrutiny” and which included the Chairman of Network Rail, have failed in their role to adequately scrutinise the materials used in developing the HS2 proposal.
Further, given the nature of Network Rail’s criticisms of RP2, one has to question the accuracy of the other material used by HS2 Ltd and the Department for Transport in the course of developing the HS2 proposal.
This includes the passenger demand forecasts. Nine out of ten rail projects – including HS1 – overestimate expected demand. This brings further into question any case made by the Government for the existing HS2 proposal.
Incremental packages of improvements spread risk and can bring more benefits to more people, more quickly and for less money then HS2. However the high risk HS2 proposal would provide no extra capacity at all until at least 2026.
HS2 Ltd say that building HS2 will involve 8 years rebuilding at Euston station, causing misery to commuters and other travellers arriving there. In addition, if the Department for Transport goes ahead with HS2, there will need to be alterations to the West Coast Main Line (WCML) so that HS2 can join it. This will cause disruption for passengers travelling along the Birmingham-Manchester stretch. Network Rail, the DfT and HS2 Ltd don’t seem to have taken any account of the disruption the HS2 proposal will cause on the WCML at the same time as arguing that improvements to the WCML are unfeasible.
If the HS2 proposal has been so badly scrutinised by the people who have been specifically tasked to do so, surely the only way of getting adequate scrutiny is by holding a public inquiry if the government still wants to continue the process.
Read the Network Rail report here: Network Rail Strategic Alternatives
The NR Review just shows how inadequate the rail network is as a whole.
HS2 phase 1 is equivalent to building a free-standing 8-lane motorway with a 1-lane magic roundabout at the end.
From the Network Rail Review :-
“The additional capacity provided by the 51M outputs does not match the demand profile on the route as it leaves over 1,300 people standing on the suburban services in the high-peak hour in 2026, increasing to approximately 2,200 in 2035. This is a worse situation than today, as approximately 800 people currently stand in the high-peak hour on these services. Therefore, this option does not solve the main driver for a capacity intervention on the route, which is the overcrowding on suburban services at the southern end of the route in the peak.”
So the main driver for HS2 is ” overcrowding on surburban services at the southern end of the route”. i.e. a London commuter problem. The Goverment is proposing a massively expensive, long distance, white elephant to solve the wrong problem. Instead of an under utilised, expensive, intercity line they should be proposing additional commuter line capacity into London. Doh !
How can I sit and watch David Cameron on Countryfile last Sunday and hear him say how much he wants to conserve our countryside, then in the next breath agree to this eyesore sweeping across the country. Railway companies can’t run what we’ve already got with their shoddy late timetables and staff that don’t ‘feel’ like working over Christmas. It’s time people across the country started speaking out and standing up for what they believe in instead of watching our hard earned taxes run down the drain by uncaring Governments. There are plenty of ways for the country to get back on it’s feet if they took their blinkers off, take a look at property standing empty, there’s jobs immediately for plumbers, builders, electricians etc, not to mention getting people off the streets and families out of B+B’s. Come on David have some common sense!
£32000,000,000 divided by 100miles = £320,000,000 per mile. The government and HR2 Ltd need to be committed to a lunatic asylum – permanently
For that kind of money you could upgrade both the east and west coast routes to Scotland with better stations, trains, rolling stock and signalling and probably some cross rail linkage as well.
What is it about Westminster that they want to waste tax payers money so much? The banks, (trillions) the Euro (billions) the EU (billions) to name but three. And then there’s the cost of having 5 million immigrants to educate, house and provide medical and social services to. So, you can understand my point when I say that most people in Westminster are really quite mad. This latest ‘white elephant’ (ooops is that racist? Should that be ‘black elephant’) takes the biscuit. The idea really is quite mad and utterly disturbing. Time to emmigrate, I think.
Couldn’t have put it better myself, your comments made me smile!
This is crazy ….. what a waste of money so there building a railway … just cos people want to get somewhere FASTER gonna go and ruin our beautiful countryside… why dont the govt spent money on thing s that s REALLY MATTER you have to look at our economy to see what a mess Britain s in ….
Well if one was being cynical, one could say that Network Rail, HS2 Ltd, and the government are all one of the same, certainly in cahoots with each other.
But yet again, no study of Maglev, could it be that this new tech makes HS2 look bad?
How does the government explain rejecting a faster, cheaper, more flexible tech, in favour of a slower, more expensive, inflexible one?
Slightly missing the point Luke, on this topic as with many others the Government does not have to explain anything.
By the time this is built the rest of the world will have moved on to better tech and then we will go through it all again.
Once again Luke:
You are actually proposing a different technological version of a new high speed rail across the UK.
Your suggestion still adds-up to being a brand new fast train and rail line for the UK.
Put simply – Most people on this site don’t want a new high speed train line near them – be it conventional, maglev, steam or lego!
Rebuilding Euston has been on the cards for a long time anyway. Plans were suspended when the station emerged as the HS2 terminus. While I realise it’s only an initial concept design, the station design shown in the HS2 documents looks better than what was proposed before, which seemed to be more about retail than serving passengers. As Morris says above, they are rebuilding New Street with minimal disruption. That’s possible with stations, but plenty of rail users would testify as to how much disruption there was last time they upgraded the West Coast line – doing so may be cheaper than building a new line, but it’s not better value.
Now the case for HS2 seems to be capacity will the Govt be borrowing a proportionate amount to provide capacity on our roads as I understand 88% of journeys are by road
This is insane. Where I work has commissioned its own “report” on the economic benefits. This is no “double blind” report, it was quite clear that the “independence” of this is zero. Frankly those who did the work knew full well that anything other than an endorsement means no future work. Its a discrace.
The government know that this will not make money.It is just an excuse to borrow more money and hide what they are doing.Future generations will pay it so they do not care,those who have children should think about this.those who keep borrowing eventually go bankrupt.
we were given a consultation ,what a farse.They think that we will be appeased by a few tweeks, and some of the awfullness may be slightly improved.and if we were just worried about our back yards we might think they had cared.We care about the Country about the fact this is not the way forward for a country in debt.One that needs small business to be set up all around the country NOW to enable the school/university
students to get jobs now not in 2026,and that is if its on time.We are in Debt this plan will cost a fortune for each job made.
You keep saying that the rebuilding of Euston station will be misery to commuters, they are rebuilding Birmingham New Street which is about the same size as Euston. The new street redevelopment is causing very little misery. So I think this is normal hot air debate by Stophs2
Experience tells otherwise. During the last WCML upgrades at Euston, disruption was so immense that I received over £1000 refund on my season ticket due to “void days”. That doesn’t include the delays and overcrowding of the services that ran sufficiently close to time that they were not declared void.
Over 71 million people use Euston station each year.
Birmingham New Street handles about over 35 million people every year.
These are approx but Birmingham New Street is hard work when busy- imagine over twice the amount.