Is HS2 the flagship for our incompetent, unambitious nation?

 It will bring economic riches the like of which you have only dreamed about.

Oh no, actually it won't, sorry.

It will solve the massive problem of (lack of) capacity on our railways between London and the poor impoverished north.

Oh no, sorry again, it won't.

It will eliminate closures and upgrade works - for 14 years - on the West Coast main line.

Erm, sorry. That's not true either.

It's about world-class infrastructure, making Britain a world leader in transport.

What? You mean catching up with the French or Japanese railways of the 1980s by 2030?

Ah you spotted that did you? A tad awkward really. Still onwards and upwards. Or sideways. Whatever. (we need to do it because the EU says we must - but schtum ok? We don't want everyone to know that).

It's the biggest infrastructure project in Europe. You should be proud. It'll come in within budget and on time.

 Yeah right. It's gone up from £30 billion to £80 billion before a single sod has been turned. And this particular sod is not for turning (to coin a phrase). We'll have spent more than £3 billion on the project before we even lay a single yard of track?


Yes but it's important to plan.

And does your cost analysis include every landowner calling in a judicial review along the proposed line of the route?

Erm not as such.



And are you willing to lose an election because of this white elephant?

Now you're being ridiculous.





HS2 if you hadn't guessed. It's a big deal. A flagship project for the UK and one upon which many careers will be made or broken. The stakes are high.

It's a multi £billion pissing contest. And like most political pissing contests it will not make any real difference to you. Unless you live on the route of the proposed line of course. And if you do, the chances are that it will by-pass your tranquil duck pond (whether you have a duck house in it or not), and bring you no benefit whatsoever. In fact it will mean changes to the existing network that will make many places worse off in terms of connectivity into London - just moving the benefits of connectivity rather than enhancing the overall service for everyone.

Anyway there have been lots of 'facts' and some absolute bullshit put out by our EU-led  'establishment' in favour of HS2 - you can google what's out there as easily as I can so I'm not going to regurgitate the figures here. What you'll discover really depends upon whether your source has been paid to come up with positive or negative data. As with seemingly everything in our modern world, from climate change to advice on what to eat, it's about following the money. The BBC has more on the pros and cons here.

It feels to me like this is an EU-mandated project that our government feels compelled to undertake regardless of value for money or proven need. It's often described as a 'legacy' project for Dave, but I'm not sure that can be correct given the time-scales involved - he'll be long-gone by the time the first train rolls out of the station.

I like the idea (if this project is to go ahead) of reversing the schedule so that the northern sections are completed first and then joined up to London later. That might contribute to better connectivity and an uplift in economic performance for the north of the country.

However, one needs to remember (although this is not specifically stated anywhere in the literature) that this is really about feeding London's economic engine, rather than delivering enhanced prosperity to the north. And if London, one of the great world cities, is looking to harvest talent from further afield; from Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and beyond, what is the future chance of those great cities being able to stand on their own two feet as separate, distinct economic powers themselves?

 In 1985, as a mere slip of a lad, (obviously) I found myself in Fontainebleau and needing to get to Venice on the same day.  Romance wasn't quite dead in 'them' days. So I caught this newfangled thing called the TGV (Train Grande Vitesse). It was amazingly smart and sophisticated, all seats facing forward. Comfortable, clean, and very very fast. I expected to arrive in Italy during the Renaissance.

It did well over 200 mph, in comfort and quiet, the scenery was like a speeded-up stop motion film. It was fantastic.

In 1969 we built Concord; the world's first supersonic passenger plane. It could get you to New York in 4 hours instead of eight. It was the envy of the world and quite right too.

In that same year we (humans) put a man on the moon. Obviously if it had been Sandra Bullock instead of Neil Armstrong we'd probably have missed it but nonetheless we did.

In 1969.

So, 45 years' later our ambition is to put a man into Birmingham, from London, 20 minutes more quickly than he could make the same journey on a normal train since about 1971. But we can't do that just yet: It'll be another 15 years or so before that remarkable feat can be achieved. At a cost of £80 billion and counting.

India can send a vehicle to Mars, today, for £45 million. But there might be life on Mars.

The thing is, if we were planning a rail line that would make the journey from Birmingham to London take about 15 minutes. Leeds and Manchester about 30 minutes and Glasgow to London less than an hour, I'd be in favour of it. If our latest mega project meant that we would lead the world in transport technology - let's face it we're paying enough for that to be a realistic expectation - then most if not all of the counter-arguments would fall away. Particularly if the new system complimented the existing one, which works pretty well albeit in a slightly creaking way, rather than (technical term) fucking it up which seems to me to be the inevitable outcome of the current proposals.

I think HS2 in its current form, is a second rate, hugely expensive white elephant whose benefits will not match the hype and whose disruption and blight will not be offset for those who will suffer, because they won't be able to use the thing. 

 In the US there are (admittedly provisional and early stage) plans for HyperLoop - a technically advanced, futuristic new concept that could see travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco taking just 30 minutes - a distance that is very similar to that between London and Glasgow (400 miles). And the estimated cost of that project is $6billion. I realise that this is not proven technology, but we're spending half that amount just on planning for HS2.

 More on HyperLoop here.

Surely, if we want to 'future proof' our vital transport network, we should be looking at something like this that considers future technology and a massively better outcome than catching up with 50 year old existing technology? What happened to our ambition? Our 'aspiration'? Or are we accepting that we cannot do innovation and engineering excellence any more in the UK? 

What we're suggesting here, what we're claiming as a flagship project, is catching up with what the French were doing in the 1980s, by 2030. We're effectively paying enough for this to be a mega, game-changing, standard-setting, envelope-pushing, world-beating project that could put UK technology and engineering prowess back on the global map. And what we're getting is a TGV, 50 years too late.

How did our level of ambition, in this 'aspiration nation' fall so low?

Thanks for reading. And Slough.