In December of this year, so we were told, the first phase of an ambitious and ground-breaking transport project, which will deliver untold benefits to the people of the United Kingdom, will come into operation. It is the inception of a network that its architect proclaimed as “the union railway, uniting England and Scotland, north and south, richer and poorer parts of our country, sharing wealth and opportunity, pioneering a fundamentally better Britain”.
I, for one, can’t wait. Sadly, this is but a mirage. Because the first phase of this wonderful, forward-looking, exciting and vital element of our national infrastructure won’t actually be arriving as scheduled this year. The Government is sorry to announce that the high-speed train expected at Euston Station in late 2026 will unfortunately be 13 years late. This is due to planning issues, empty promises, political volatility, hopeless mismanagement and, as we discovered yesterday, too much rain on the line.
It was Lord Adonis who, as Labour’s transport secretary in 2009, made that bold claim about a “union railway”. HS2, as it was more prosaically called, was a plan to connect London, Birmingham and the North to boost regional economies and make Britain more joined-up in a very material way. It was, said Adonis, “a bold nation-building policy to promote national unity and help overcome the north-south divide, one of our most debilitating legacies from the past”.
Even in his speech resigning as Theresa May’s infrastructure adviser in 2017, the peer made mention of HS2 “when it opens in just eight years’ time”. It is quite a journey we have made from there to here. This week, the current Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, told the House of Commons that HS2 will now not open until between 2036 and 2039, will cost £102bn (the original estimate was £39bn) and trains will run at 199mph rather than the proposed 224mph in order to save money.
In pledging a “reset” on the project, Alexander told MPs that it would now cost as much to cancel the project as to complete it. This is a crucial point, given that the latest estimate means it will cost more to get a passenger from London to Birmingham 30 minutes quicker than Nasa has so far spent on its Artemis mission to establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon.
One of the major reasons for the delay (and subsequent overspend) on HS2 is that successive governments have felt the need to question the basic validity of the project. So while a tunnel has been built through the Chilterns, Britain’s longest railway bridge has been constructed across the Colne Valley, and the bones of an extraordinary prehistoric mammal have been exhumed in Northamptonshire, politicians have been debating, delaying and deconstructing the ongoing work.
There should be no question about the purpose of HS2, only about its delivery. The lack of commercial nous in government, Whitehall’s obsession with process and the exigencies of our electoral system precluding long-term thinking by ministers have all contributed to HS2’s becoming a textbook case of waste and prevarication. And it’s not like we are unable to complete large rail infrastructure projects, as the Elizabeth Line was brought in on time and on budget. (Northerners suspect that this was an initiative that benefited the South of England, rather than the North, so more political capital was spent on it.)
The practical arguments in favour of HS2 – increasing passenger capacity to cope with greater demand, dealing with the structural deficiencies of the West Coast line, the reduction in carbon emissions and the boost to regional economies – have been well rehearsed. But there is a fundamental point that is often missed, largely because ministers dare not express something that plays to emotion rather than common sense.
A functioning, modern and rapid transport system makes people happy, proud and more productive. Look at what Andy Burnham has done in Greater Manchester with his integrated tram and bus system: it has been a definite boon to people’s lives, and has shown how political vision can turn into an everyday benefit for society. HS2 can do the same, but it needs government to articulate its higher purpose.
And then there’s the other, more intangible, question of our debt to history. Trains were invented in the United Kingdom. And now our railway network is a joke compared with other European countries. The case for HS2 is unanswerable. The tunnels have been made, the bridges built, the crested newt has been saved, and, in Lord Adonis’s words all those years ago, here’s an opportunity to create a “fundamentally better Britain”.
So let’s just build the damn thing. I only hope I’m still alive to see it.
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