HS2 will fail without joined-up thinking and a long-term plan
In the second of a two-part look at HS2, GARETH DENNIS considers the biggest threat that the project faces
A version of this article also appeared in Issue 860 (29 August 2018) of RAIL magazine.
There’s a storm brewing.
I’ve already talked about how High Speed 2 represents a vital step-change in capacity for the network. By moving high speed trains onto their own dedicated lines, a huge amount of space is freed for more high density passenger services and, just as critically, more freight.
However, as I also alluded to, this story is simply not being told. Even more dangerously, not enough is being done to realise the potential of this step-change in the halls of government. If neither of these are rectified, there is a very strong chance that HS2 will fail.
I spend an unhealthy amount of time challenging untruths about HS2 on Twitter, but the noisiest voices on that platform aren’t the ones HS2 needs to worry about… Much of the public at large are rightly confused about what the new railway is for and what impact it will have on them. Those in the public eye who support the line often make the wrong arguments in favour of it, and those who oppose it don’t remotely understand its purpose.
Yet HS2 Ltd and, more importantly, their masters at the Department for Transport are convinced that keeping their heads down and fielding as few questions as possible is the best course of action. They could learn something from one of Nigel Harris’ recent editorials:
“‘No comment’ is the most dangerous comment… You can neither set nor control the agenda when you refuse to even engage… You merely hand the microphone to your critics, who then don’t even have to shout you down.”
The lack of any viable positive narrative means that, when the inevitable challenges of a major engineering project arise, public opinion may be strained to breaking point, and (the considerable cross-party support that the project currently benefits from notwithstanding) politicians might find themselves looking down the barrel of heightened discontent. Given the potential upheaval following March 2019 [at the time of publication, the UK’s supposed departure date from the EU], this could be made ever-more acute.
How do politicians justify spending what on the face of it appears to be a large sum of money (it isn’t really) on something the public don’t believe they’ll benefit from? The uncomfortable reality is that, no matter how far the scheme has passed through the parliamentary approval process, it could still be descoped. Rather than losing face by cancelling the scheme, it would likely end up being quietly curtailed and there are no prizes for guessing which end of the line would suffer the chop: everything north of Birmingham. This would be no less than a disaster for the railway and the country at large.
So what should be done to sell the purpose of HS2 to the British public?
Network Rail has been increasingly showing its A-game in terms of social media outreach, and HS2 Ltd could learn a thing or two from them on positively engaging the public about railway infrastructure and operations, but the reality is that there isn’t much more HS2’s developers can say.
Because government has stuck the project into an arm’s length organisation focussed on HS2 alone, it is beyond the scope of HS2 Ltd to make observations about the massive benefits that high speed rail will bring to the existing network, or indeed what work is required to realise them.
At the same time, the Department for Transport continues to expend great efforts to dodge making any form of long-term plan for the railway.
We have seen this over and over again with stop-start electrification (detailed by many previous issues of RAIL) and half-baked capacity improvements in the north (without new lines and platforms through Manchester Piccadilly, the Ordsall Chord causes more problems than it solves). The lack of a long-term strategic vision of what the railway should look like is highly wasteful and, looking at the recent levelling of ridership growth, the increase in transport emissions and air quality-related deaths, potentially catastrophic.
This is no less true in the case of planning for a future where the segregation of long distance, high speed services means that the existing network must function very differently.
A joined-up approach from the DfT, HS2 and the current railway industry would have allowed a far better communication to the public of what HS2 can really deliver. Yet a joined-up approach is probably the single greatest incapability of our industry and its controlling powers in Great Minster House. The result is that the HS2 sales pitch is still all about fast trains between a few cities, which not only misrepresents HS2’s positive impact on the network but hopelessly fails to make the case to the British public.
I do believe that an arms-length organisation like HS2 Ltd is the correct approach to deliver the new railway. This has been shown to work very successfully with Crossrail.
However, Transport for London has gone to great efforts to plan for how the Elizabeth Line will tie into the future layout of London’s transport system. Indeed, the Mayor of London released the Mayor’s Transport Strategy document in March 2018, describing how the capital’s railway (as part of a sustainable transport ecosystem) should be developed into the middle of this century.
HS2 will have a transformative impact on the British rail network, and to maximise this we need to re-arrange the existing network accordingly. The introduction of ultra-low emissions zones in cities over the next decade will also remove the last-mile benefits of HGV haulage exposing the weakness of that mode versus rail freight (see my piece in RAIL844). Infrastructure upgrades take time and to accommodate these shifting patterns of train movements we need to be planning for the alteration and upgrade of the existing railway now.
The value of a long-term plan is far-reaching… The supply chain can prepare itself for delivering projects by building the right sort of skills and capabilities. The workforce can be sustainably grown and developed. The reliance on insecure contract staff can be reduced, which improves staff safety and well-being. Rolling programmes of infrastructure improvements can be undertaken, rather than massive route upgrades that have been shown to fail time and time again. Lessons can be learnt, and new developments applied, rather than being forgotten because there is a five or ten year gap between similar schemes. Perhaps poignantly given recent events, train operators can more accurately predict service patterns, usage and income over a longer timescale, improving the quality and resilience of bid proposals. All of this represents improved value for tax and fare payers.
The other benefit of such a plan is that the public can comment on it, be involved in its development, and understand when their local services will see improvements (and what these will look like). As Philip Haigh described in RAIL858, openness and transparency are great ways of engaging and uniting people both within and outside of the rail industry.
Instead, we are left with talk of fast journey times and uninspiring economic assessments. By turning the debate over the need for HS2 into a battle of the business cases rather than explaining the network-wide transformation that HS2 can deliver, the public (and indeed the commentariat) have been left behind with shrugged shoulders.
This is scary, not just because the clogged railway is creaking at the seams but because, at a time when productivity continues to fall thanks to a lack of investment in skills and infrastructure, HS2 is vital for the United Kingdom as a whole.
The DfT must get their act together and publish a plan for the future, incorporating projects ranging from new lines and electrification to level crossing closures and station refurbishments. If they don’t, and HS2 does not succeed as a result, then this summer’s rail chaos will become an uncomfortably regular occurrence.
