Mark Bostock has been proved totally right about HS2

It is hard to imagine a greater procurement disaster than HS2, the transformative high speed rail line between London and Scotland, currently being axed bit by bit, as the costs go through the roof.

Mark Bostock, a former Arup consultant who successfully led the construction of HS1 from St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel and a former client of ours, would have had a few things to say about it. Sadly he passed away in August but he has been proven totally right about HS2. In fact, it is the greatest vindication in UK transport policy since promoters of the Stockton & Darlington Railway said it would be better than relying on canals.

Mark led a proposal on behalf of Arup which would have seen HS2 go via a different route. It would link up with HS1 north of St Pancras. The route would have gone via a hub station connecting with Heathrow and the Great Western Railway near Iver. As now, the route would come into Old Oak Common, but never come into Euston which is simply too small. I can hear him saying now “They’ve got the alignment wrong, the most important decision in a railway. It is going to be a disaster.”

More haste, less speed

Mark and his associate Steve Costello also recommended the HS2 alignment follow the M40 corridor to minimise environmental impacts. He warned, correctly, that the target speed of 400kph was far too fast on such a small island and that 300kph (185mph) would do. HS2’s high design speed (since reduced) necessitates an arrow-straight route through the widest part of the Chilterns, excessive tunnelling and such high design-specification that the costs have escalated dramatically. The energy demands at such high speeds are also astronomical.

His other recommendations – born of his experience of HS1 – included that construction should have been started in the North, not the south, as this delivered the most economic benefits in the right sequence. Terminal stations should be avoided and instead hub through-stations connecting with the existing infrastructure preferred, as at Stratford (his idea with HS1, which helped make the 2012 Olympics possible). These stations deliver the most economic benefits. Terminal stations are gradually being phased out in Europe, including at Stuttgart and in Florence, at considerable expense.

Mark also said that HS2 should be delivered by a special purpose public private vehicle, like HS1 (which was built by London & Continental Railways put together by the investment bank SG Warburg) to ensure better value for money and to keep costs off the Treasury balance sheet. That was ignored too.

Initially, his thinking was adopted by both Labour and the Conservatives. But there was then an inexplicable U-Turn around the time Lord Adonis was Transport Minister. The rationale for HS2 became all about speed, based upon the utterly phony calculation that every minute off the journey time created £600m of economic value. But in terms of economic benefits, connectivity trumps speed.

Boris again

As a result, the Arup alignment was dropped and the Department for Transport pursued the current route, which has been an unmitigated disaster. We were never able to get to the bottom of why this was, but this decision occurred somewhere inside the Department for Transport, an incompetent organisation, and seemingly had something to do with David Cameron and Boris Johnson wanting to avoid Heathrow expansion.

Never mind that by linking Birmingham Airport and Heathrow with the Channel Tunnel via Mark’s HS2 route, the need for huge numbers of short haul flights would disappear.

We became involved with the company Mark set up, Heathrow Hub Ltd, subsequent to the HS2 proposal, when it had developed into a combined idea for HS2 and to expand Heathrow by extending the existing Northern Runway, at a fraction of the cost of the Third Runway which, we argued, was too costly, complicated, noisy and environmentally damaging ever to be built. This aspect was the idea of another great man, Jock Lowe, Concorde’s longest-serving pilot. Jock has also been proved right.

The Third Runway is an over-complicated idea which is a speciality of the British political class and its lackeys in consultancies, think-tanks and elsewhere. These “pro-cake and pro-cake” ideas are always promoted vigorously by clever people who essentially have no practical experience and no idea what they are talking about. At Boscobel, we prefer what Edmund Burke called “the wisdom of unlettered men” who get their hands dirty.

The author is chief executive and founder of Boscobel & Partners, an independent communications and political consultancy. 

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