Another meaty post. Someone please find out what being put in the tea this month!?

So the government have approved the plans for HS2, the high speed rail link to be built to connect London, Birmingham and (maybe) later Manchester and Leeds. The alleged cost is said to be £33bn with a payback over a 60 year period.

Business want HS2, as do the government, the rail industry and the construction industry. So would you if it safeguarded your salary, stock options and pension, reduced unemployment and potentially increased tax take.

Most of the local communities and the environmental groups don’t want it. They believe the environmental costs are too high and the business case doesn’t stack up. Even the Conservative Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is only lukewarm. Added to which governments don’t have a good track record of managing such big projects for the public good.

The Stop HS2 campaign have said “It’s a white elephant of monumental proportions and you could deliver more benefits to more people more quickly for less money by investing in the current rail infrastructure.”

Friends of the Earth have made a similar comment, although as one would expect in more strident terms: “We need to revolutionise travel away from roads and planes, but pumping £32bn into high-speed travel for the wealthy few while ordinary commuters suffer is not the answer. High-speed rail has a role to play in developing a greener, faster transport system, but current plans won’t do enough to cut emissions overall — ministers should prioritise spending on improving local train and bus services instead.”

The Department for Transport has said that 22.5 miles of the first phase (to Birmingham) would be enclosed in tunnels or green tunnels [essentially a deep cutting with a tube put in it, over which grass, trees and soil are placed] and another 56.5 miles of cuttings would significantly reduce “visual and noise impact”.
But the environmental impact will be immense. So there will be a tunnel under much of the Chilterns (and so there should be) as well as large swathes of the London section of the route (we can’t clear enough land to do otherwise). But cuttings and green tunnels do nothing for the environment. They may reduce noise and visual impact but that’s all they do. They still destroy the countryside (taking out swathes of land many times wider than the actual track) through which they are built, cutting through woods, fields, etc. and creating huge piles of spoil.

And that leaves aside the huge disruption that will be created. Disruption not just along the route itself, but to existing rail infrastructure like London’s Euston Station which will have to be largely rebuilt.

Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if the government invested the money in sorting out our current rail infrastructure as FoE suggest? Forget all this franchising and get the rail industry back in public hands where it belongs; re-integrate it and invest properly in the infrastructure to get the network running efficiently and to time. If managed independently and properly by someone like Richard Branson who isn’t going to take any old nonsense from anyone, and who has a track-record of managing corporate business, then we should see increased capacity and reduced fares because the whole enterprise is more efficient and provides the service that’s wanted.

I find it hard to believe that this would cost more, create fewer (local) jobs or bring fewer benefits. Network Rail believe that such investment in the existing infrastructure will cost as much as HS2 for little benefit. But they would, wouldn’t they. They need a huge corporate project to help justify their existence against a backdrop of falling rail performance.

There’s more to any society than testosterone-fuelled corporate bullies building their salaries, share options and pensions. It’s time, once again, to listen to the people on the ground who are going to be most affected. But I doubt it’ll happen, if only because those against this hare-brained scheme are split into some 70 groups — they too need to be integrated if they are to be effective at overturning this nonsense.

[And before anyone accuses me of NIMBYism, it isn’t. I don’t care that the route runs just a mile from my house; the mess and disruption can’t make this bit of west London much worse than it already is. I do, however, care about the impact on Perivale Wood, a piece of ancient preserved woodland which abuts the proposed route; but that’s a relatively minor consideration in the overall scheme of things.]