Rebrand and relief

Much of HS2 phase 2b could support intra-northern journeys like Sheffield to York. Politicians could just rebrand it as Northern Powerhouse Rail and still get capacity relief at key hubs, which is the main priority, according to rail editor Nick Kingsley.

But how could there be ‘capacity relief at key hubs’? In phase 2b of HS2, high speed trains from London would run into the existing stations at Sheffield and York.

For HS2 trains to run between the existing stations at Sheffield and York, they would have to use the existing two-track line through Meadowhall. Furthermore, to re-join the HS2 line, they would need a new junction, which is not included in the £55.7 billion HS2 budget.

The ascent of man

Following Eleni Courea’s Observer story about Northern MPs telling Labour leaders to change their mind on HS2, the shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald and the Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham both made statements repeating the party line (i.e., ‘We back HS2’, ‘We back Crossrail for the North / Northern powerhouse rail’, ‘It’s not a case of either or’).

Labour politicians nowadays use the term ‘Crossrail for the North‘ instead of ‘Northern powerhouse rail’, because the term ‘Northern powerhouse’ is seen as being associated with George Osborne.

However, Mr Burnham’s words were “The North needs HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail“. His statement also served as an inadvertent reminder of how much transport thinking and expenditure in the North is dominated by the wants of Manchester airport, over the needs of everywhere else.

Even the city of Manchester itself is in thrall to ‘MAN’, as is plain to see from the design of the Ordsall chord, and the use of vast quantities of public cash to build a poorly designed tram line out to the airport.

Gareth and the Beeston massive

According to NCHSR lecturer Gareth Dennis, when Midlands Connect ‘do their work’ to allow a fast (up to 125mph [200 km/h]) shuttle between Derby, HS2 Toton, and Nottingham, the rail journey time between Birmingham and Nottingham will be 30 minutes, and places like Long Eaton and Beeston ‘will gain massively’ from ‘taking away fast services’.

Eh? If Midlands Connect wanted a “125mph shuttle” between Toton and Nottingham, the chances are those shuttles would have have to go through Beeston station, etc, without stopping. So much for, er, ‘taking away fast services’ and ‘freeing up capacity’.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to argue in favour of HS2

Several senior Labour MPs have told the Observer that the huge sum of money earmarked for the HS2 railway would be better spent on other schemes, the newspaper reported.

[Northern MPs tell Labour: change your mind on HS2, Eleni Courea, The Observer, 27 Oct 2018][…]

Lisa Nandy, the Labour MP for Wigan, said: “It’s becoming increasingly difficult to argue in favour of HS2 in my constituency.”
[…]
Karl Turner, the shadow transport minister responsible for shipping, aviation and road safety, speaking in his capacity as MP for Hull East, said[…] “investing in existing rail networks in the region offers a better deal”.
[…]
Ian Mearns, MP for Gateshead, said: “Twenty years ago, there was a train that travelled from Newcastle to London [along the east coast mainline] in 160 minutes. With HS2 we will be spending another £53bn 40 years later, and by going on that route people could gain just 20 minutes.” Mearns said that this showed HS2 was “little more than a vanity project”.
[…]
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, said in 2014 that HS2 represented a “poor deal for most of the region’s taxpayers”.

Jo Platt, MP for Leigh, said that HS2 would run through her constituency “without offering any connectivity”, while Emma Hardy, MP for Hull West, said that Crossrail for the North would “make a huge difference, while being far less disruptive than HS2”.

Meanwhile Sir Kevin Barron, the MP for Rother Valley, who has supported the project thus far, said that he was being forced to rethink because of plans to build the eastern leg of HS2 along the M18 motorway.

“It is the most senseless thing I’ve ever seen,” Barron said.

Terminating the HS2 scheme would not just benefit the north. The cancellation dividend would allow a wide range of infrastructure improvements across the country, such as electrification of the Great Western main line from Newbury to Plymouth, an RER-type system for Birmingham, and step-free access for a vastly increased number of stations nationwide.

According to a September 2018 poll by ComRes, three in five British adults think that HS2 is poor value for money, and 85% think the money should be spent on improving the capacity of existing railways instead of building it.

Five things you might not know about Rotherham

#1

The Chapel of Our Lady stands at the middle of the medieval bridge that served as the main road into the town until the start of the twentieth century.

#2

Masborough was the main railway station for Rotherham from 1840 up to 1987, when most trains were re-routed via the reactivated Rotherham Central. From Masborough to the town centre directly is a ~20 minute walk.

#3

In January 2018 thirteen of the sixteen Ansaldo Midland Metro T69 trams were sold to Booth’s of Rotherham, for recycling.

#4

The current metro mayor of Liverpool has a surname which is a homophone, and near-homograph, of Rotherham. A fear of words which sound the same is called homophonophobia, a fear of words which are almost spelt the same is called quasihomographobia, and a fear of foreign words which sound the same is called xenohomophonophobia.*

#5

The launch of Britain’s first ‘trial’ tramtrain service, from Sheffield to Rotherham Parkgate, on 25 October 2018 was marred by a collision between a Stadler Supertram and a truck.

---

* = Fun fact

Parkway is the right way, says John Armitt

Infrastructure is for the public, not engineers. But “the public” don’t know what’s best for them, as evidenced by their rejection of an ‘Ashford parkway’ high speed station, their dislike of HS2, and their support for rail renationalisation (apparently).

[Sir John Armitt: “Infrastructure is not for engineers. It’s by engineers, for the public”, Sebastian Whale, The House magazine, 18th October 2018]

“Infrastructure is not for engineers. It’s by engineers, for the public,” he explains. The public pays for the projects, he adds, but generally speaking “they’re not treated as seriously as a stakeholder or the rest of the industry”. This failure to earn public buy-in on projects must be addressed, he argues, which in turn would make politicians’ lives easier.

[JA:] “It shouldn’t be the government ministers, it should be the profession, it should be the industry. Engineers should accept this is very much part of their role, to get out there and not hide behind their computer,” he says.
[…]
Armitt also suggests there should be a change in approach when it comes to city centre regeneration. Citing the example of the redeveloped Birmingham New Street Station, he asks whether the money would have been better placed being put into a new station on the edge of the city.

He experienced this first hand with High Speed 1, when local people called for a train station in central Ashford through which the Eurostar would pass, as opposed to one on the outskirts. “Fine, that’s what they got. But it added several hundred million pounds to the cost of the project,” he says.

Mr Armitt was engaged by the Labour party to conduct an ‘infrastructure review‘, but disagrees with its flagship policy of rail renationalisation (which is supported, it seems, by a majority of Conservative voters).

[The House magazine]

The Labour party has been clear of its intentions to nationalise rail, water and parts of the energy sector. Armitt, who is speaking more in a personal capacity, is sceptical about taking these industries back into public ownership.

The first challenge, he says, is finding the money to “pay a fair price”. Despite changing ownership, the “people running those businesses are essentially going to be the same”, he says. “Again, I think the issue here is we’re more than happy to trust Marks and Spencer and Safeway and Tesco with the provision of the thing most fundamental to us, which is food. Why can’t we create an environment in which we’re equally trusting of private sector companies to provide us with those key utilities?” he asks.

HS2 is not about Leeds rail capacity

Members of Leeds city council’s executive committee have claimed the main reason for HS2 is to increase capacity on the rail network, the Yorkshire Post reported.

[HS2 ‘about capacity, not speed’ say Leeds council chiefs, Richard Beecham, Yorkshire Post, 17 October 2018]

The council’s portfolio holder for regeneration, transport and planning, Richard Lewis, said: “In 2011, (then-transport secretary) Philip Hammond talked about the network and how it would create better links. “I feel frustrated that the debate has since become a narrow one about high speed technology. It’s about rail capacity and that is what is important for this city.”

The idea that HS2 is about ‘Leeds rail capacity’, ‘West Yorkshire rail capacity’, or ‘solving rail gridlock’, is nonsensical. Rail capacity across northern England is restricted by short trains, substandard signalling, and poor track layouts. Building HS2 would address none of these issues.

Most transparent shortcomings

According to West Midlands mayor Andy Street’s “Renewal Plan“, he aims, or aimed, to be the ‘most transparent mayor’ in Britain.

But at the time of writing, the “Mayor’s Expenses” page on the website of the West Midlands Combined Authority gives no information about mayoral expenditure. Nor does there seem to be any diary of Andy’s past or future meetings, etc, on the site.

Unfortunately, these transparency shortcomings extend well beyond the mayor’s office, to the Combined Authority itself.

HS2 benchmarking mysteries

For a variety of reasons, Britain’s HS2 high-speed rail line ‘will cost taxpayers 25 per cent more than similar schemes in other countries’, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report, focused on phase 2 of the project, that has been kept secret from Lord Berkeley and the public for the past two years (source: Financial Times, 18 October).

[From the FT article, by Jim Pickard and Gill Plimmer]

HS2 will have 25 stations — far more than equivalent schemes abroad — and they are more likely to be in city centres.

Moreover, the 10-year hiatus between the UK’s first high-speed line and HS2 meant that the UK did not have the “base, industry and knowledge”, according to one person who has seen the report, to deliver the project easily.

The FT story is a bit baffling.

According to HS2 Ltd’s David Higgins, HS2 was expected to cost 15 per cent more than HS1 (which itself was far more expensive than other high speed lines).

£24 billion is not enough

Transport for the North ‘today released its latest research into the boost Northern powerhouse rail could give local economies’, the Liverpool Echo reported.

[Liverpool Echo, 17 Oct 2018]

[Tim Wood, programme director at Transport for the North,] said the National Infrastructure Commission had positively assessed the plans.

He said: £24bn is their estimate [of the cost of Northern powerhouse rail]. We know it will cost a little bit more than that.