HS2 is out of control: slam on the brakes

Hands up, who really wants HS2? Politicians, associated hangers-on in all those regional regeneration agencies, myriad advisors, construction industry members, architects, bosses who would like to get to London that bit quicker – you’re not allowed to vote.

What if we ask a different question: do you believe the £106bn currently apportioned to the new fast rail link could be better spent elsewhere? Same exclusions apply.

Hopefully, Ispos Mori will be able to provide the answers. The pollster has been added to the list of firms occupying that grey PR, public affairs space aimed at telling us why HS2 is a good thing. There were 17 on the ticket, make that 18. Ipsos Mori is on a 4-year deal worth £1.96m. It’s thought to be one of the biggest ever struck by a UK public organisation.

I could save them the money and the bother: my wife and I both hail from the North of England; neither of us has ever heard anyone, not in our family, local friends, folk we’ve met on numerous visits, ever say they’d like a quicker train to London.

Rather, they do marvel at how speedy the service has become, compared with when they were children and what they do wish for, that is transport-related, are better links between the local towns and cities, more routes across the Pennines. They’re conscious that travel in the South is much easier, that places like Croydon, Guildford, Woking, Watford, Cambridge, Brighton and Southampton are more accessible by road and rail.

I must admit I’ve wavered about HS2. I’ve been opposed, then I thought that if it heralded the beginning of a renaissance, a “levelling up”, then it was not all that bad. But that was when the cost was projected at £50bn not £106bn (and likely to climb still further) and it was pre-pandemic.

I accept the argument that HS2 will boost capacity, freeing up space for improved local and cross-regional services. As I said, that’s what people, from my admittedly unscientific polling, desire. But I now have serious doubts that follow-on will ever happen, that the main event will absorb so much taxpayers’ money, time and attention that no more will be allocated – and that other parts of the nation, quite rightly, will demand their share.

The cynic in me can’t help but suspect that the professional HS2 boosters are stuck: the heavy lifting is underway (with the attendant protests) and there’s now no turning back, no stopping, not between London and Birmingham. The next stage, to Liverpool and Manchester, that will also go ahead. On the graphic they like to use, that’s the left arm of the letter “Y”. The right arm, going to Leeds and then on to the North-East, that is appearing decidedly fragile.

So, already, there is talk of cutting down. Not only does this defeat the object, which was to open up the entire North (and Boris, you must look carefully at those seats that voted you in – they were in Yorkshire and the North-East, not just the North-West) but it must raise serious questions about the additional upgraded localised network’s chances.

Much is made of the economic benefits the high-speed service will bring. It will create jobs, indeed it is doing so – thousands of them, devoted to delivering HS2. While that provides a short-term lift to a sector devoid of large-scale projects, they are not long-term jobs, they do not provide careers for future generations.

According to the HS2 promotion industry they will also result. Will they? Take Crewe. The historic “railway town” is set to become that once more, as an HS2 “hub”. On the HS2 website you can click on any affected area and see how it will benefit. For Crewe, we’re told that HS2, “will create jobs and secure investment years before it arrives. The Constellation Partnership covers Cheshire and Staffordshire. It has ambitions to deliver 100,000 new homes and 120,000 new jobs by 2040, spurred on by HS2 connectivity. The HS2 Growth Strategy predicts that this growth will be worth £6.4 billion.”

For the town itself we’re promised: “The Crewe Masterplan is set to create a new commercial hub around the station, which includes 37,000 new jobs and an additional 7,000 new homes by 2043, reflecting Crewe’s strategic location on the HS2 network and wider UK rail network.”

These are big numbers, thrown out with little explanation. No detail is offered for where, exactly, those jobs are coming from or what sort of roles they will be. Neither are we told whether they will be genuinely “new” posts or people relocating from neighbouring centres.

They appear to have risen dramatically. In 2013 the local council produced a document, All Change for Crewe, which forecast 5,000 new homes and 20,000 jobs from HS2.

I chose Crewe at random. I could have picked anywhere in the region. At the bottom of the Crewe section, there is this declaration: “91 North West businesses have already delivered work on HS2.They are just some of nearly 2000 businesses across the country working on HS2.”

That says HS2 is indeed creating jobs, on HS2. It is going to districts where there is health inequality (look at the Covid figures), police stations and police officers on the beat belong to the past, social services are creaking, schools are crumbling and ill-equipped (again, look at the Covid experience) and school-leavers lack the IT and digital skills that employers seek.

It’s also joining a world that may have changed radically as a result of the last 12 months, where WFH or flexi-working are commonplace and many occasions that would previously have required travel will take place via Zoom. It’s also going to take so long to complete that in all likelihood other, more efficient modes of transport will have come along.

Post-pandemic, high-speed rail has an old-fashioned ring (as opposed to high-speed broadband, say). That was the conclusion of the Malaysian government in canning the planned high-speed line from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore. It was going to cost £12.5bn and cover the 217 miles in 90 minutes. Malaysia was already pausing, but then Covid hit and it’s been scrapped. One of the reasons as well was scepticism about the claim the line would create 111,000 jobs.

The question for our government is that if they could start again, would they still build HS2? They abandoned the Third Runway at Heathrow, another huge, prestige scheme. The difference there, was that work had not actually begun. Increasingly, HS2 is redolent of the “I’ve started so I’ll finish” catchphrase from Mastermind.