Rail overcrowding (1 August 2012)
Using July 2012 Office of Rail Regulator (ORR) data on rail overcrowding, Bluespace Thinking Ltd have constructed a table to show priorities for investment based on destination and train operator. An image of the table is shown below, a readable copy and the notes are here. It shows that out of the top 53 priorities, HS2 comes in near the bottom of the table (at 39th/40th and 49/50th) and the new 5-year rail plans are also well down the table (at 17th, 30th, 35th and 42nd/43rd and 51st).
What a difference a new job makes (13 January 2012)
It feels like only yesterday when Justine Greening, a young MP, ambitious and eager to impress her superiors and constituents, made a name for herself fighting government proposals to build a third runway at Heathrow. Today, not quite three months into her first job as Secretary of State, her transformation from idealistic public servant to cynical politician seems complete.
Back before her ministerial career, Greening was apolectic over the decision to expand Heathrow against the interests of so many local residents, burnishing her activist credentials by buying a plot of land and threatening legal recourse to derail a government that refused to listen to the will of the people.
Greening then was ultimately successful, as will opponents to HS2 be once it too, lacking a business case and bereft of public support, finally runs out of steam. But it’s damning that, in refusing to base her judgement on HS2 on either common sense or popular opinion, she has proven so ready to betray the sense of democracy and fair play that her earlier career was built on.
Let’s look at the facts: the table below shows quite clearly the level of opposition to HS2 in the public consultation last year. The only question where both ‘for’ and ‘against’ camps enjoyed rough parity was when respondents were asked if they were generically in favour of high speed rail. And given that the government has admitted that 24% of all votes were automatically generated by the Yes to HS2 campaign, frankly it’s amazing that the pro-camp could not secure a majority even for this simple question.
Greening promised a rational look at the facts but she has ignored the will of the people and also the cold, hard logic that there are alternatives to HS2 which would deliver greater value and deal with Britain’s transport infrastructure needs more quickly and in a more environmentally friendly and cost effective way. In her own words, “If the Government will not listen in Parliament, then ministers will find they have to listen in the courts."
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Question |
Agree |
Disagree |
|
Q1. Do you agree that there is a strong case for enhancing the capacity and performance of Britain's inter-city rail network to support economic growth over the coming decades? |
21,630 |
23,462 |
|
Q2.Do you agree that a national high speed rail network from London to Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester (the Y network) would provide the best value for money solution (best balance of costs and benefits) for enhancing rail capacity and performance? |
16,365 |
31,789 |
|
Q3. Do you agree with the Government’s proposals for the phased roll-out of a national high speed rail network, and for links to Heathrow Airport and the High Speed 1 line to the Channel Tunnel? |
2,770 |
26,197 |
|
Q4. Do you agree with the principles and specification used by HS2 Ltd to underpin its proposals for new high speed rail lines and the route selection process HS2 Ltd undertook? |
3,136 |
28,455 |
|
Q5. Do you agree that the Government’s proposed route including the approach proposed for mitigating its impacts is the best option for a new high speed rail line between London and the West Midlands? |
2,784 |
28,163 |
|
Q6. Do you wish to comment on the Appraisal of Sustainability of the Government’s proposed route between London and the West Midlands that has been published to inform this consultation? |
772 |
14,170 |
|
Q7. Do you agree with the options set out to assist those whose properties lose a significant amount of value as a result of any new high speed line? |
3,197 |
16,027 |
For the full report, follow this link.
What will Justine Greening say about HS2? (22 November 2011)
If the new Secretary of State for Transport is to be consistent in her views on major transport infrastructure projects, when she announces her decision on HS2 in December here are her possible responses.
“Much of what I have said comes down to democracy. Ministers have said that we should not vote on such matters. … Many hon. Members feel that [HS2] has such profound consequences for the day-to-day lives of their constituents that they view it as similarly important. We have had a consultation, to which residents have responded overwhelmingly by saying that they do not want the plan to go ahead. Despite all those points, Ministers still seek to override people’s will. That is deeply worrying.”
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2009-01-28b.299.1&s=heathrow+speaker%3A11771#g341.3
“The Government are isolated on this issue, and Ministers must ask themselves what is more important—saving face and sticking with a bad decision, or having the courage to admit that this is wrong, and change course. It is time to listen to the [55,000] people, including my constituents, who responded with their grave concerns to the consultations.”
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2008-11-11c.641.0&s=heathrow+speaker%3A11771#g724.1
Sadly there is no guarantee that her response will be consistent with her previous statements.. Ten years ago the former Secretary of State of Transport, Philip Hammond, thought hybrid bills were undemocratic and inappropriate for a major transport project. But then that was concerning a railway to carry freight that was to run through his constituency and he was in opposition.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200001/cmhansrd/vo010306/halltext/10306h04.htm
Author: Jerry Marshall, AGAHST
Is HS2 the Coalition's Next U-Turn? (13 Oct 2011)
Posted: 13/10/11 on the Huffington Post UK
When it comes to managing the public finances, one would think that avoiding making commitments to spend £32 billion on a capital project with dubious and unproven economic and social benefits would rank quite highly in the current climate. Unfortunately, you'd be wrong, for this is exactly what the coalition government is trying to do with HS2, its high speed rail plan to link London with the North.
£32 billion. That's the equivalent of £1,200 for every household in Britain. Or £51 million for every constituency. In this Parliament alone, the government will spend £800 million on consultants, enough to pay the salaries of 19,000 police officers.
All this will make for an exciting debate on Thursday when the project comes before the House of Commons for the first time. And with neither the debt crisis nor Downing Street's aversion to supply-side economics showing any sign of abatement, it will be tempting to many to think that cracks may be appearing in the coalition's resolve and that another u-turn could be in the offing.
HS2 certainly bears similarities to other u-turns of the recent past in that where grassroots opposition has grown up in the absence of a proper national debate. HS2's consultation was dangerously amateurish, with vast swathes of information - such as the proposed route north from Birmingham to Leeds and Manchester and beyond - kept from the public. The New Economics Foundation described the DfT's consideration of alternative measures to HS2 as poor.
Like other coalition u-turns, the ability of HS2 to harm those that it seeks to help is also in evidence. Take the North-south divide. One big argument that proponents use is that it will address regional imbalances in our economy. But seven out of ten jobs - according to the DfT's own numbers - that are created will actually be in London and the Southeast. The experience of other countries even suggests that once a high speed rail line has been put in, more companies will re-locate to the capital.
Again, the likelihood that HS2 will deliver benefits to our economy is highly uncertain, something that was acknowledged by the DfT itself as recently as 2007. In its Eddington Transport Study, the department said: "Because the UK is already well connected, the key economic challenge is therefore to improve the performance of the existing network...large projects with speculative benefits and relying on untested technology, are unlikely to generate attractive returns."
And then there is the much-touted environmental premium that HS2 will deliver, giving the country a low-carbon infrastructure for a low-carbon age. Except that it probably won't. Or, to quote an IET & Royal Academy of Engineering Consultation submission from July "We cannot see any justification for the claim that HS2 as proposed will reduce emissions."
The last argument for HS2 that needs demolishing is the issue of capacity. Known by its supporters as the 'killer argument', the basic premise is that West Coast Main Line is about to run out of capacity unless a new line is built. Except it's bunkum. Capacity constraints as they are can easily be rectified by expanding the number of standard class coaches on the existing line, with relatively modest modifications to the infrastructure. HS2, on the other hand, won't be able to deliver any benefit for at least 15 years between London and Birmingham and a further seven for Leeds and Manchester. Even then, its impact will be questionable, as current DfT calculations are based on HS2 being able to run 18 trains per hour, something that has never been done on a high speed railway before.
All of which makes it clear that, for the coalition, HS2 remains a political project rather than a transport one. But even so, their lack of judgement seems surprising. Far from the patronising tag of nimby that gets applied to anyone who disagrees with them, our supporters transcend all political, income and regional divides, from the Taxpayers Alliance and Adam Smith Institute to the Green Party and the New Economic Foundation. We are also passionately pro-rail, as our manifesto demonstrates. Let's hope the government sees sense before it is too late.
Click here to view the original article.
New advert launched: High Speed White Elephant Threatens Bobbies on Beat (28 September 2011)
As part of its campaign against the Government’s plan for a high speed rail line, HS2 just launched a hard-hitting new advert illustrating how investment in policing could be protected by cancelling the £33bn project.
The advert (below) contrasts the choice between keeping police officers in work or funding a new rail line that few people will use, and was unveiled at the start of the labour party conference in Liverpool on Sunday 25th September 2011.
It highlights that the money being spent on HS2 in this Parliament alone – before construction has even been given the go-ahead – amounts to £800m. That sum by itself is enough to pay the wages of 19,000 police officers.
To download the advert please click here.
Greengauge 21 is effectively part of Network Rail (28 Feb 2011)
High Speed rail: Comment on Fast Forward - the Greengauge 21 note of 16th Sept 2009.
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Greengauge 21 is effectively part of Network Rail. At any rate it draws much of its funding from that source. It was founded by in 2006 by Jim Steer after he had completed three years with the Strategic Rail Authority when he was in charge of all strategic planning.
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The Fast Forward passenger forecast of 590,000 passengers per day by 2055 looks wildly optimistic. It exceeds the 500,000 crushed surface rail passengers who enter central London in the morning peak period (7 am to 10 am) (Transport Statistics Great Britain). The trains carrying those passengers require at least 25 inbound tracks. See Transport Fact Sheet 1 and Londons Rail Network and the pictures therein.
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The capital cost of the proposals is set to £68 billion at 2008 prices. If repaid at the Treasury discount rate of 3.5% over 30 years £3.7 billion per year would be required. Hence if, as with nearly all rail systems, this one does not cover its operating costs the drain on the taxpayer will amount to close to £4 billion annually or to over £150 per year for every household in the land. Possibly that should be doubled to allow for maintenance costs.
That at a time when half of us use a train of any sort (let alone a high speed one) less than once a year and when the better off travel 5 times as far annually by rail as do the poor.
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The carbon argument flaunted by rail enthusiasts should be summarily ignored. The diagram below is copied from the White Paper Delivering a Sustainable railway. The fact that the Committee did not blink suggests that it had no idea what the diagram means, namely that the emissions from rail or domestic air are a vanishingly small proportion of the nation's emissions as a whole. Consequently the transfer of a few passengers from one mode to the other is likely to have an even more vanishingly small effect.
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Secondly, it is far from certain that rail has the lower carbon emissions. The sums depend critically on the seat occupancies and the emissions from the generating industry that are assumed. As of today, if a large scale increase in electricity demand extended the life of coal fired power stations then probably the plane should be represented as emitting less than the high-speed train. High Speed Rail Complaint and Transport Fact Sheet 5b
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Worse still, most UK emission data relates to the tailpipe values. If those are to be converted to whole of life values then the value for rail should be increased by 155% compared with 31% for air, ref. Mikhail V Chester1 and Arpad Horvath. See: http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/4/2/024008/ . (In contrast to the 155% Greengauge 21 suggests only 25%).
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The economic analysis for this project covers 60 years. Probably most of us will be dead before the supposed benefits exceed the costs. Probably they never will, see Nata Refresh Consultation
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Fast Forward calls on the French experience. However, the data provided by the SNCF should be treated with scepticism. For example Professor Rémy Prud'homme of University Paris XII provided a short paper dated 17.11.2000 entitled Tales from the SNCF. He pointed out that, whereas the authorities and media claimed that the SNCF was returning to profit, the hidden subsidy amounted to nearly 1% of GDP. The professor is highly critical of the schemes used to hide the subsidy believing that it made sensible debate about the railways impossible. French Railways
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Why are we being encouraged to spend tens of billions of pounds on high-speed rail when half of all rail journeys are less than 20 miles long and when 90% are less than 80 miles long?
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As for railway propaganda, consider this. Industry bigwigs told the Transport Committee of the House of Common that every day more people die on the roads than passengers in a year on the railways. That statement (a) exaggerated in favour of rail by a factor of 18 by ignoring usage and (b) compares passengers killed as a result of a train crashing with all those killed on the road network including pedestrians, cyclists and people on motorbikes. In contrast we found that the deaths per passenger-mile by rail, excluding suicides and suspected suicides, were higher than those on the motorway and trunk road system. Transport Fact Sheet 2
We comment, if accountants behaved as has the railway lobby over this issue then those accountants would soon be in prison. Similarly in all other vectors - the difference between the railway myth and reality is so large as to beggar belief.
- Against that background why should we believe a word that the railway lobby says?
Consultation starts today (28 Feb 2011)
A consultation into plans for the controversial £30 billion HS2 high-speed rail project was officially being launched by the Government today.Greengauge 21 claims disputed (20 Feb 2011)
HS2 WILL NOT HAVE THE BENEFITS ON OTHER ROUTES THAT GREENGAUGE 21 CLAIM - http://bit.ly/f8vTbf