West Coast a-gigo

The case for the HS2 railway has always depended on wishful thinking, misrepresentation, and garbage assumptions. Upholding this decade-old tradition, the government made much of a claim in the October 2023 ‘Network North’ command paper (CP946) that the de-scoped HS2 phase one could enable West Coast corridor capacity to ‘almost double from 134,000 to 250,000 seats per day’, as if this would be some kind of valuable achievement.

Curiously, at the time of writing, the government has declined freedom of information requests to explain the basis of the calculation ‘West Coast Main Line & HS2 Phase 1’ in Figure 10 of the Network North paper.

In December 2023 the editor of ‘Rail Engineer’ magazine, David Shirres, stated the ‘250,000 seats’ claim was ‘not credible’ as it was ‘equivalent to eighteen 589-seat Pendolino trains each hour, running 24 hours per day’.

But in April 2024, Mr Shirres published an assumptions table that he himself had created, showing a one-way ‘WCML passengers per hour, With HS2 phase 1 – Minimum’ of 129,192 [daily]. Which represents a two-way capacity of 258,384, or 8,384 more than Mr Shirres said was ‘not credible’. For some reason, he assumed that the DfT used a 14-hour day in their mysterious capacity reckoning, but they haven’t said.

By the time of his April 2024 article, Mr Shirres had realised that 11-car Pendolinos had been upgraded to have more than 589 seats, but perhaps not that there are insufficient 11-car Pendolinos in existence to run the ‘average hourly service’ posited in his table.

What Mr Shirres seems to share with DfT is a love of ‘garbage in, garbage out’ factoids. The fact is, the rather pointless ‘250,000 intercity seats a day’ metric could be easily achieved without even building one yard of HS2, or extending a single existing platform.

A decade of official HS2 scrutiny

The High Speed Two programme, “after the cancellation of its latter stages to run only from London to the West Midlands (Phase 1), will offer very poor value for money for the taxpayer”, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) stated in a report published on 7 February. It is “the latest addition to over a decade of scrutiny raising concerns around the management of HS2”.

[…] The Government has accepted that delivering only Phase 1 will not be value for money, as its total costs significantly outweigh its benefits. The Department for Transport (DfT) told the PAC it was still better to complete Phase 1 – a calculation made by excluding the £23 bn spent to date, and including as a benefit of the project avoiding approximately £11 bn of remediation costs from cancelling entirely. The PAC has been left with little assurance over the calculations, and calls for a clear summation of Phase 1’s benefits.

The report raises questions as to the many as-yet unknown ramifications of the decision to cancel HS2’s Northern leg. […]

House of Commons | Committee of Public Accounts | HS2 and Euston | 07 Feb 2024

“The decision to cancel HS2’s Northern leg was a watershed moment that raises urgent and unanswered questions, laid out in our report. What happens now to the Phase 2 land, some of which has been compulsorily purchased? Can we seriously be actively working towards a situation where our high-speed trains are forced to run slower than existing ones when they hit older track? Most importantly, how can the Government now ensure that HS2 deliver the best possible value for the taxpayer?

HS2 is the biggest ticket item by value on the Government’s books for infrastructure projects. As such, it was crying out for a steady hand at the tiller from the start. But, here we are after over a decade of our warnings on HS2’s management and spiralling costs – locked into the costly completion of a curtailed rump of a project with many unanswered questions and risks still attached to delivery of even this curtailed project.”

Dame Meg Hillier MP, Chair of PAC

Having read the report, one might well ask what the ‘decade of scrutiny’ of HS2 by the PAC, Transport Select Committee, and Parliament, has actually achieved. How much value is there in observations like “Can we seriously be actively working towards a situation where our high-speed trains are forced to run slower than existing ones when they hit older track”?

The planning specifications for HS2 trains have been known for years, it has always been intended they would be running on existing track (for half the distance to Scotland for example), and it has always been planned that HS2 trainsets would be 200 metres long (meaning capacity would be lower to Liverpool, for example). There is nothing new or revelatory about this.

With PAC’s statement that HS2 would offer very poor value for money (VfM) for the taxpayer “after the cancellation of its latter stages to run only from London to the West Midlands” came the implication that building the full scheme would increase the VfM. However, any evidence for this remains conspicuous by its absence.

The [in]efficacy of current public audit and scrutiny processes came up in an article titled ‘Why large-scale public transport projects go off the rails’ by Professor Stephen Glaister (Prospect, 14 Feb 2024).

[…] [Lord Berkeley]’s 2020 report into HS2 cited a 2016 letter from then-Secretary of State for Transport Patrick McLoughlin to George Osborne, which admits that HS2 could not be kept within budget but insists this must be kept secret from parliament. Yet, as late as July 2019, transport minister Nusrat Ghani reassured parliament that “there is only one budget for HS2, and it is £55.7bn [set in 2015]”. Not many people noticed that this statement refers to the “budget” rather than the cost estimate. […]

Why large-scale public transport projects go off the rails | Stephen Glaister | Prospect | February 14, 2024

All in all, the efficacy of scrutiny and audit processes appears to be on a downwards trajectory.

[…] A problem for a government is to be able to debate a proposal at a technical and political level in an open way and subject to independent scrutiny, and feel able to modify or abandon a proposal if necessary, without exposing itself to damaging accusations of making a “U-­turn”. 

[…] Both the [London Underground Public Private Partnership] and HS2 were interesting ideas and worthy of investigation when first proposed. However, over time, evidence and analysis threw doubt on the schemes. Meanwhile, governments had made early political commitments and were determined to push them through in defiance of emerging evidence of increasing cost, longer gestation and construction times, and reducing value for public money. […]

Why large-scale public transport projects go off the rails | Stephen Glaister | Prospect | February 14, 2024

Further down the range

The Department for Transport has provided some tidbits about the computed benefit-cost of HS2 phase one continuation (the ‘8 trains per hour’ version). Their calculation was done in 2015 prices, yet “the cost range underpinning the estimates is £45 – £54 bn in 2019 prices”.

On the disaggregation of costs and benefits underlying the findings of the sub-unity (significantly below 1.0) BCR range estimate capturing the total costs of phase one, the Department stated:

‘A high level assessment was made of the impact of including sunk costs back into the net cost to Government figures, noting that this is not standard Green Book practice which advocates the exclusion of sunk costs. The estimated benefits and revenues used did not change and are as above.

The cost range underlying the findings of the sub-unity BCR includes estimates of sunk costs of £23 bn (in 2019 prices and a portion of which could be recovered through land and property re-sales) as set out by the Permanent Secretary at the Public Accounts Committee, deflated to 2015 prices.

Termination costs are not relevant to this calculation as the assessment is not informing a decision to continue spending versus an alternative counterfactual.’

Department for Transport | December 2023

Down on the range

Following ‘further assurance’, Department for Transport officials have identified the benefit-cost range for continuing with the ‘8 trains per hour’ version of phase 1 of HS2 as 1.1 to 1.8, rather than 1.2 to 1.8.

Huw safeguards Northern mega-boondoggle

Officials are working to formally lift HS2 phase 2a safeguarding ‘within weeks’ and phase 2b safeguarding ‘will be amended by summer 2024, to allow for any safeguarding needed for Northern Powerhouse Rail’, according to the November 2023 6-monthly report to Parliament.

Range against the machine

Taking an estimated range for the total costs of phase 1 of HS2 and assessing them against the estimated
total benefits (i.e. including sunk costs and excluding remediation costs) would result in a benefit-cost range significantly below 1 and represent poor Value for Money. So stated Bernadette Kelly, permanent secretary of the Department for Transport, in a letter to the ‘chair’ of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee on 4 October.

The updated summary accounting officer assessment of continuing investment in HS2 phase one was published on 5 October.

An ‘affordable and deliverable’ HS2 Euston does not exist

In an oddly titled written statement to Parliament on 9 March, transport secretary Mark Harper MP announced a ‘rephasing’ of parts of the High Speed Two project, and certain road schemes, mainly for reasons of ‘affordability’. The HS2 rephasing was described as meaning delays to phase two and the Euston to Old Oak section of phase one, but not any other part of it.

Although not described as such in the written statement, the Guardian’s Gwyn Topham reported that “Active travel budgets, including cycling schemes in cities, will also be slashed for the next two years to a total of about £100m, compared with £850m in the last three years”. This suggests that the active travel kitty has been raided as part of attempts to plug the hole in the HS2 phase one budget.

In the case of the London HS2 terminus, there was an additional reason for delay. Mr Harper reported: “We will […] take the time to ensure we have an affordable and deliverable station design, delivering Euston alongside high-speed infrastructure to Manchester”.

There it is: a ministerial admission that, ten years in, an affordable and deliverable HS2 Euston design still does not exist.

On 14 March, The Guardian reported that “An internal Department for Transport briefing on the HS2 project has admitted delays to the high-speed railway will increase costs, appearing to undermine ministers’ claims”.

The [leaked] document says the Manchester leg may not be completed until 2041, with “Euston delivered alongside high-speed infrastructure to Manchester”. Construction at Euston will not be continued “for the next two years … with the site made safe and maintained until construction works continue”. It says design teams on the site will be demobilised.

The Guardian | 14 March 2023

The shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh tweeted that the ‘leaked document blows apart Conservative claims that delaying HS2 will save taxpayers’ money’. However, it is not known where the government claimed that rephasing (i.e., delay) would save money. (If anyone knows, please leave a comment below.)

Surely what Louise Haigh and the rest of the Labour Party should be asking is, ‘What is the point of spending (at least) £100 million a week, every week, on a project with no clear purpose, for the next sixteen to twenty years?’

But they are not asking that. In fact, Labour want to ‘restore the cuts made to HS2, and build Northern Powerhouse Rail in full’. How many extra years of spending £100 million a week, every week, would that involve?

HS2 chairman denies it is a global laughing stock

The new chairman of HS2 Ltd (and board member for the last year), Sir Jon Thompson, has ‘seen interest in HS2’s expertise from around the world grow’, with ‘visitors from Japan now looking to Britain thanks to HS2’. The cost per mile is higher than in France because “we choose tunnelling over the demolition of whole communities and swathes of countryside to protect people, wildlife and our precious green spaces.”

As the first new railway to be built in over a century that binds Britain’s North, Midlands and the South together, it shares the same vision of Victorian pioneers who first built our railways. HS2 is at heart an economic project. All we are building – the stations, tracks, tunnels, bridges, trains – and the speeds they will travel at – will help drive growth, rebalance the economy together and unite the country both physically and economically. 

I concede, it is a lot of money. Though spread over 30 years, it is a more modest annual budget. But why is it more expensive to build in Britain than in say China?

Here we do not ride roughshod over the environment, over planning law, over local authorities and local people. We have some of the strictest planning and environmental legislation in the world.

Is HS2 more expensive per mile than high-speed rail in Spain? Yes. Because unlike in Spain, HS2 will deliver people direct to the heart of city centres in some of the most expensive land and property areas in the world. Is it more expensive per mile than in France? Yes. Because we choose tunnelling over the demolition of whole communities and swathes of countryside to protect people, wildlife and our precious green spaces.

No, HS2 has not made Britain a global laughing stock | By Sir Jon Thompson, chairman of HS2 | 09 February 2023 | Telegraph online

Not to be outdone in the surreality stakes, The Guardian’s transport correspondent Gwyn Topham has claimed the cost of HS2 is ‘not a ridiculous amount’, and ‘politics rather than construction’ has caused the delays in building it.

The project was first put forward in 2009, less than a year after the economic crash. It took three years for it to be greenlit by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in 2012. What ensued in the following decade was a tedious, incessant back and forth between those involved in the project, the government more broadly and the public. By 2016, it was already three years behind schedule. Boris Johnson’s government launched a review in 2019 about whether the project should even go ahead. Six months later the review was published, and found that the costs had escalated even more, with projections that the railway would cost £106bn in total – more than double the initial budget.

Construction did not actually begin until autumn 2020. And to top it all off, despite all the painstaking planning that took place, in 2021 the then transport minister, Grant Shapps, announced that the eastern leg of HS2 to Leeds would be scrapped. At this point, the whole thing looked increasingly shambolic, weighing down a government that did not even seem to really support it.

“Fundamentally, I’d say it’s the politics rather than the construction that has caused the delays,” says Gwyn. “Nothing’s really gone wrong with it from a construction point of view, but, for 10 years, they’ve been saying we’re going to build this and it constantly keeps getting knocked back.”

Billions over budget, years overdue – no one knows what will happen to HS2 | Nico Omer | The Guardian | 09 Feb 2023

Brewing up double

The High Speed Two rail project, which is consuming about £109 million each and every week, faces “further delays” and “more cuts”, under two initiatives dubbed “Project Silverlight” and “Operation Blue Diamond” according to reports yesterday in the Financial Times, Telegraph online and Guardian online.

As well as cancelling sections of track, the government was said to be looking at “cutting the number of trains from 18 to 10 an hour and reducing the trains’ maximum speeds”. This might suggest a belated effort to make HS2 more like other high speed lines. On 1 February, the Beleben blog noted “what distinguishes it [HS2] from other high speed railways is the planned combination of very high speeds and high intensity of operation”. 

[…] Government officials said both reviews would run until the summer with no final decisions made before then. […]

The transport department’s capital budget is facing a shortfall of £5bn by 2027/28 after chancellor Jeremy Hunt only committed to maintain capital spending “in cash terms” after 2025, resulting in a big real-terms cut with inflation running at a record high. […]

In a bid to cut costs further, the government shelved a 140 km stretch of the eastern leg from East Midlands Parkway to Leeds two years ago. The latest cost-cutting initiative is now examining scrapping the remaining 60 km stretch of the eastern leg.

Another potential cut to the scope of the project is the Handsacre Link, which would connect HS2 to the existing West Coast main line, allowing high-speed trains to serve Stafford and Stoke-on-Trent.

HS2 faces more delays and cuts as UK government seeks to rein in costs | Jim Pickard and Gill Plimmer | FT | 7 Feb 2023

With HS2 being a flagship project, it is not surprising that the government’s quest for savings would focus on the Midlands and North, rather than the ‘prestigious’ ten-platform Euston terminus. Last month, chancellor Jeremy Hunt said he did not see “any conceivable circumstances” in which the railway would not eventually run to Euston (after a period in which the six-HS2-platform station at Old Oak Common would act as a temporary terminus, until Euston was ready). It might be worth looking into how Euston and Old Oak Common have been presented in HS2 lobbying.

For example, on 31 January, Adam Tyndall of BusinessLDN (London First) claimed “Making Old Oak Common the permanent terminus for HS2 would require a complete redesign of the station (not to mention adding pressure to the Elizabeth Line [Crossrail 1] which is already carrying 75 per cent more passengers than was forecast). And it would leave a literal hole in the ground at Euston.”

Actually, if the eastern stump to East Midlands Parkway were cancelled, HS2’s existing planned layout at Old Oak Common could work as the permanent terminus, with the track east of the station used as a sort of headshunt. If some departures were formed of single 200-metre units, as is planned, one platform could be used to dispatch two trainsets, in quick succession.

Mr Tyndall also said HS2 ‘needs to be a simple, intuitive connection for those without the time or inclination to decode the quirks of the transport network’, suggesting travellers would be too feeble-minded to reach Old Oak Common. (If that were true, how did people manage to get to Stratford for the 2012 Olympics?)

Given the lengthy delays in prospect, Old Oak’s séjour as HS2 terminus could turn out to be protracted, giving people plenty of practice in travelling there. Euston is likely to be a building site for a long time, regardless of whether HS2 reaches it or not. If HS2 were curtailed at Old Oak, the Euston site would likely increase in value, and the ‘hole in the ground’ get filled in quicker.

Some of the enormous savings from not building HS2 into Euston could be used to make Old Oak into a ‘Stratford of the west’, with much better local public transport connectivity.

If Old Oak were the permanent terminus, the capacity of Crossrail 1 would be sufficient to move travellers to central London, and destinations like Oxford Street and Canary Wharf would be reachable in a time comparable with Euston HS2.

High speed rail trail fail

On the same day that the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt ‘reconfirmed’ his commitment to HS2, George Eaton of the New Statesman tweeted ‘how the UK trails behind Europe’ for high speed rail. According to the New Statesman graphic embedded in his tweet, 0.7% of the UK’s rail network is high-speed, compared with 1.2% in Poland, 2.9% in the Netherlands, 4% in Germany, 5.1% in Austria, 5.5% in Italy, 7.9% in Sweden, 10% in France, 18.9% in Finland, and 22.2% in Spain.

The linked story, by ‘data journalist’ Aisha Majid, turned out to feature the graphic as the New Statesman ‘Chart of the Day’ for 18 November 2021. Apparently, the data sources were the International Union of Railways and the European Commission (EC), but there was no sight of, or link to, any dataset.

At the time of writing, Eurostat describes high-speed rail as “a rail passenger service running at much higher speeds than normal passenger trains.”

The network of the trans-European high-speed rail system includes:

• specially built high-speed lines equipped for speeds generally equal to or greater than 250 km/h;
• specially upgraded high-speed lines equipped for speeds of the order of 200 km/h;
• specially upgraded high-speed lines which have special features as a result of topographical, relief or town-planning constraints, on which the speed must be adapted to each case.

Eurostat

It should be apparent that the New Statesman chart is not consistent with the European definition of high speed rail which it claims to be based on. If the UK proportion of high-speed track is “0.7%” as claimed, then how can Finland’s proportion of high-speed track be “18.9%”? The story and the chart suggest that Aisha Majid and the New Statesman are more than a little confused.

It might actually be possible to collate accurate data, including the length of “specially upgraded high-speed lines equipped for speeds of the order of 200 km/h”, to create an accurate league table of ‘percentage of high speed rail’. But before that, one might want to question the value of this metric as an indicator of the capability or modernity of a rail system. For example, if a railway authority closed down some branch lines instead of running (say) one train a day on them, that would increase its ‘percentage of high speed rail’, which, taking the viewpoint of the New Statesman, would mean it was now ‘trailing behind less’.