HS2: The Top 10 Myths Debunked!

Hello and welcome to episode two of the Green Signals Railway podcast with me Nigel Harris and me Richard Bowker. I’m at home in in Lincolnshire and Richard is likewise in the Peak. Our trailer last week was us sat together at Richard’s to do that to iron out the technicalities but normally you’ll see us like this. Anyway, thanks ever so much for your kind words about the trailer that we did last week which went down incredibly well. So well in fact it figured as number 49 in Spotify’s top 50 news broadcasts and then went up to 47 the day after so we’re we’re delighted about that. One particular tweet that we we really like was from Hugh Carr who tweeted to say our trailer gave a better explanation of HS2 and its benefits in 5 minutes than five weeks of everybody else. So we were really pleased about that. No pressure! Indeed, no pressure but it’s exactly the service that we want to try to provide isn’t it Richard? Absolutely, yeah. So we’ll endeavour to do even better Hugh – thanks for that. And I’m delighted to say that Green Signals is now live on Spotify, Apple podcasts, Amazon podcasts, Podbean and plenty of others and we’ve posted our RSS feed on our Twitter account at @Greensignallers if you use an aggregator to access your podcasts. And I have no idea what any of that meant but Richard has sorted it all out. Don’t forget to like, follow, subscribe and do leave us a review if you like what you hear. Do be a Green Signaller yourself – it will really help us build up an audience and deliver so much more of what we and you hopefully want to see. Also delighted to say our YouTube channel is also live. Richard has been very busy and you can find that at @greensignals in the search box and you can watch the podcast as well they go out as an audio file to start with but you can actually see us as well which will be a joy for all of you I am sure. Please do subscribe to our Channel as well. And finally, finally, I have no idea how Richard has found time to sleep or be a family man but he’s also setup www.greensignals.org where you can sign up to our newsletter and be the first to hear about new shows and events.

So what have we got for you this week? Well HS2 continues to dominate the railway headlines and discussion, but we had we had quite a bit of a discussion about what we did – do we talk about the decision itself, well, that’s that’s been done. Do we talk about what it means? Well there’s a lot of that and we’ll probably come to that in more detail because the impacts for various places along the Route are very significant and have not been discussed yet, but what we decided to do in the end was to give a rundown on what we see as the top 10 myths about HS2 because my goodness we’ve heard plenty of them over the last few few days and weeks so that’s what we’re going to do. But before we get into that Richard, the section of our script which we affectionately called blather and that’s not referring to your hi octane economist contributions – well, what we’ve been doing in the last week I mean well we’ve been doing a lot of this I mean, I said you have spent a lot of time setting up all this and good on you for that – thanks very much – but I understand I hear on the lineside that you’ve also been reconnecting with your inner train spotter? Oh I have, I have – I had a fantastic weekend last weekend – I went up to Bury to the East Lancashire Railway where the Class 40 Preservation Society had their members day. They’re a fantastic group you know they do it all for nothing they do it for the love of it preserving these fantastic bits of equipment. I’m very honoured to be the President of the of the Society but it was just a nice day out and it always strikes me just how much people do put of their own time for no reward just because they really love it. That’s right – Sorry, I’m just sniggering here, I had no idea Mr President…. Yeah, thank you. That’s okay – forget it, that’s the one and only time I’m ever going to call you that but you make a good point about that dedication; it’s the same across the the steam sector and has been since the Talyllyn got going in in 1951. And I’m sure I heard a little factoid from the Heritage Railway Association a while ago that if you put them all together, all our heritage railways of all the gauges, that it’s about 400 miles. Now that that’s as long as the West Coast main line. Extraordinary. All done by people who do it for love and to keep it alive, and maybe this is one thing we might look at some point in a future Green Signals. Wth all the stuff about coal it’s going to be very difficult to maybe keep some steam engines going. But there you go – that’s another story for another day.

So let’s get into the guts of HS and the myths. You’re really well qualified to do this Richard given your Economist background and your stuff at the SRA, the West Coast Mainline, you slept, ate and breathed all this stuff or for a very long time. How about this one then let’s start with Myth number one. Just about every news story I’ve seen printed or broadcast over the last few weeks has in the intro headline or the the news anchor comments said the word the costs have spiralled out of control, they’ve even tripled. Have they? OK, well the first thing I think we should say with this is you know when we talk about myths there’s an element of this that is our opinion and we’ve obviously done quite a bit of research but you know equally we accept there’s lots of different views around HS2 and it would be foolish of us to to think otherwise really. So, actually, back to your point earlier – if anybody’s got any comments or challenges or wants to check facts or whatever do let us know you know and there’s a place on the website where you can send us an email or you can tweet to us or something and we’ll we’ll come back on that so just bear that in mind there’s not there’s no one right answer however let’s deal with a cost point. Much has been made about the original cost being around 20 billion pounds. The problem is that was in sort of 2011 / 2012 and almost everything’s different now. So things have come into the scope, gone out of the scope; bits of the Railway have been sort of chopped off – we’re not going to Yorkshire anymore – inflation’s been there trains weren’t in the original cost originally then they are so actually comparing apples and apples is jolly difficult, right, and so we’ve been thinking about whether there is a credible starting point where you can say actually THAT number is a reasonable number. I’m going to say something potentially slightly controversial and say actually the 20.5 billion, it’s irrelevant really. What’s interesting is the point at which the government signed off the full business case for HS2. Good point. Well that was April 2020 so there’ll be some people going “oh, you can’t ignore everything that happened before!” Well, you’ve got to start somewhere – you’ve got to put a a kind of stake in the ground and we’re going to put the stake in the ground at April 2020 because at that point the government said “we believe”. We are committed. We want to do this and the benefits justify the costs okay so that’s why that’s such an important point. At that point the cost of Phase 1 (that’s the bit from London to Birmingham) HS2 said “we think £35 billion” and the Government and HS2 together said “yeah well actually we’re going to add five billion of contingency that you can manage and we’re going to have another five billion that we are going to keep in the Government’s pocket. And that was the government? And that was the government. So that’s in 2019 prices – that’s very important from an inflation point of view. So phase 1 at that point – £35 (Bn) to £45 (Bn) depending on how you dealt with the contingency. In June 2023, oh and sorry, I should say the rest of the project – Phase 2 which is the bit from Birmingham to Crewe and then Crewe to Manchester, another £26 or so billion at that time – so around £71 (Bn) if I take the 45 and add the 26 right? So £71 billion.

So really anything prior to that I’m not sure adds any value. Talking about in June 2023 that’s only three four months ago Hugh Merriman the Minister said – put his six-monthly report into Parliament – and said that Euston was an issue and Euston’s costs were (although at that point of course they’d effectively delayed it anyway) but he also pointed out that HS2 hadn’t used any – sorry – it had used about 30% of its contingency and the Government hadn’t used ANY of its contingency. So when you read the June 23 report you don’t get a sense of things you know doubling, tripling, whatever. You get a sense of broadly what it was expected to be in June 20 – in April 2020 when the business case was done. So no spiralling at all at that point? No but the reason, sorry the reason why that story has come about is is is two factors – one is inflation okay so we know that after April 2020 when the business case was published inflation really shot up and we know that, that’s obviously a pandemic related thing and it has got very very high, so there is an inflationary factor to take account of and that will push the numbers up but that’s fundamentally really a problem for cash. So the Government will have to find more cash because of inflation and the cost of government borrowing is very high at the moment so that’s not good news for the government but the development agreement between HS2 and the government says that when it comes to excessive inflation that’s a risk that the government take, so you can hardly beat HS2 up over that. There have been some cost increases and and I think we’ve said many times this is not an apologist podcast for HS2 – they have done things wrong, there’s been mistakes made and so on and so forth right but if you look at the underlying costs that have gone up, the only time we then get any notification they’ve gone up again from Huw Merriman’s paper was in the Network North document when it kind of slips out the the £45 (Bn) is now looking like it could be around £54 billion right? That’s not great and we need to understand why that is, but when you look at that all in the round is it fair to say that costs have spiralled out of control? Well if we take April, that 2020 position as the Baseline and kind of put inflation to one side because that’s a government risk I don’t think that is fair. It’s created a slightly misleading picture because anything prior to April 2020 I just don’t think is terribly relevant for a comparative basis. And as I suppose further reinforcement to the fact that the Prime Minister was delighted as recently as March 28th 2023 Rishi Sunak said we remain completely committed to HS2 – it is a significant investment in our national infrastructure. It’s very odd isn’t it? I mean they and we talk about inflation it’s not like in April in March / April 23 they didn’t know that inflation was high at that point so it it is it has been a very, very significant U-turn.

Right, shall we go on to myth two? I think we should. I think we should! HS2 has always been about business people getting to London 20 minutes quicker but we don’t need to now because of Zoom well. I do think this is almost the greatest myth of all right. HS2 has never been just about speed it’s actually been fundamentally about capacity about creating more capacity so that we can get the fast stuff off the main lines onto HS2 thus freeing up the main lines to be able to do other stuff with which at the moment you know at key points – and not congested everywhere but where it matters it is congested right – so that’s always been the objective it’s always been about creating space and I do get a little bit kind of cross with this one because it’s ‘Oh, that’s a recent narrative, that’s a a recent change – No it’s not. Back in 2002 when we were at the SRA and Atkins, we were doing the original studies on this, it was about capacity then right we’ve always known that the West Coast Route Modernization was something of a sticking plaster. It was quite a good one, but it nonetheless it didn’t lead to a major major change so it’s never really been about speed – but if you’re building a new Railway line you might as well build a big one sorry might as well build a fast one. Well exactly – you build to the limits of your technology don’t you? So two points there if you’re building a new road now you don’t build a B- Road or an unclassified Road you build a double carriageway or you build a Motorway and on the subject of motorways that thinking applied in the 1950s didn’t it you know we took the fast stuff off the congested A roads and built the motorway network so the principle was well understood here, and around Europe with regard to high speed rail, France, Germany Spain, Italy I think have all followed this course to build segregated Railways to carry the high speed stuff and then use the existing lines for something else so it’s not as if we’re doing something different we’re doing something different now by not following that policy. Well, yeah absolutely, I would agree with that. There’s another interesting thing that to your point about Zoom everybody uses Zoom ow. When the network North was announced, when HS2 was canceled and and the government talked about Network North, on the day of the of the Conservative Party Conference on the Today programme Nick Robinson asked Grant Shapps and said well, what’s changed? And he said “in a word, Coronavirus!” okay, that was Grant Shapps answer to that. I’ve got some slightly challenging news though for Mr Shapps – Covid has not killed demand for rail right, I really do think that is deeply misleading. Yes it has changed the mix right so it’s you know we know that there’s more Leisure traffic at the moment and commuting traffic has taken a bit of a hit but, here you go, commuting traffic is mainly a London and the southeast phenomena in terms of volume. The West Coast has never really been a commuting Railway – maybe a little bit sort of south of Rugby, Milton Keynes, but fundamentally it’s a Leisure, business and Freight Corridor right so that’s misleading and I would argue that what’s happened with Covid is a blip. Now it’s a big blip okay let’s not be let’s not mince our words. It’s a big blip but I don’t think you can assume on the back of 18 months to two years of data that that’s it for the next 50 years. Why do I think that? Well, as much of a impact on the railway in the last two years has been pretty poor reliability on West Coast. Strikes you know we’ve had constant strikes that removes, that definitely dampens you know the desire to travel if you don’t know or things are disrupted so to basically say for the next 50 – 100 years we’re going to make this massive decision that six months ago was great on the back of Covid I mean that just seems to me unbelievably short-term thinking. Well absolutely, and of course the regional impacts (we said we’ll get into this in a separate green signals at some point) but just reminding ourselves at what we have now lost; regional connectivity has taken a real hit hasn’t it and if you look at what was possible with HS2 – Birmingham to Manchester – 88 Minutes currently 41 minutes massive massive Improvement. Durham to Birmingham currently 159 minutes would have been 103. There’s countless countless examples like that that a metropolitan Prada wearing Southerner just doesn’t understand does he that those Regional connectivity benefits have been trashed for good and to try and talk about leveling up is an insult to people in the North in those circumstances. Those two examples used are brilliant right because they’re not they’re not just about speed benefits although speed benefits are huge the Birmingham to Manchester one is one of the reasons I think why Andy Burnham and Andy Street get so cross about the northern leg because they wanted HS2 as much as to get it faster but also to get everything off those really congested corridors between New Street and Wolverhampton and up to Stafford and then Crewe and then that awful section through Stockport so they could run more local Services more Regional services and now they can’t, you know, and that is a great example of why HS2 was fundamentally about capacity AND speed. And yet the Prime Minister said it was about connecting far distant cities for people to travel a bit faster – absolute BS. In fact, we’ve got a new acronym for the railway here an awful lot of what Rishi has said has been BS so let us henceforth refer to these as RSBS and that’s a classic bit of RSBS.

So are we on to myth 3 or have you more to say? We are but just in case people are thinking this is going to last forever the these are the biggest ones at the front, the longest – we’re not going to be sat here for the rest of the day! All right myth three. The cost benefit case is now worse such that we get less back in benefits than we spend to build it? This one has come about I think not least because of the document that was circulating that the Policy Exchange produced that we understand was a significant part of the decision to cancel HS2 north of Birmingham in which it suggested the BCR – the benefit cost ratio, and it is what it says – is now, has now dropped to the point where it could be 0.9 i.e. you get back less than you put in and so this is a very important myth. But to really understand this…. Just before you go on there, just so you know complete understanding for non-economists like me, so that means for every pound you spent you’d only get back 90 pence? Yeah and I think a lot of people do get a bit confused about benefit cost ratio. It’s not just about cash, so it’s not just about cash coming in and cash going out, it’s all benefits including the socioeconomic benefits okay, so if you get back less than the money you’re spending that that wouldn’t be that wouldn’t necessarily be very good. Okay right, so sorry to interrupt. No it’s a really key point this and I’m afraid to understand this one we probably need to think a little bit about how benefits are calculated, if we can maybe go off on…… Ah right. I’m a huge fan of Billy Connolly and anybody who watches, anybody who watches the Big Yin’s routines, he’s telling a story that’s very linear and then he’ll go off at a great tangent about something else which is hysterical and totally non-related and at some point he’ll say ‘anyway back to the railway station’ or whatever it was he was talking about in the first place so this is this is one of our Billy Connolly moments where you go off at a tangent is it Richard? Well, possibly although I’m flattered to have been compared to um one of our greatest ever comedians. I don’t know whether that’s a good thing – I think it’s a compliment so thank you Nigel. It is, so on with your economist’s blather! So to really understand this whole benefit cost thing you’ve got to understand how benefits are calculated for these projects right? And the good news is that projects, transport projects in the UK are all appraised basically the same way okay. Now when they get to the size and complexity of HS2 it’s a lot more complex but fundamentally it’s the same methodology. So how do we do it? Well the way to think about it is like one of those you know like those Gateaux, those multi-layered cakes and you start with the base layer – the base layer is what underpins everything. User benefits are, for these projects and we calculate those using an economic theory called consumer surplus and it’s really easy. If I get something that I would have been prepared to pay 20 quid for but I can actually get it for 15 quid that five difference is consumer surplus – it’s my Surplus. Now with transport projects we flip that round a bit and say if my journey currently takes me 30 minutes and we can invest in the railway and it take 20 minutes that 10 minutes is my consumer surplus and that’s worth something to me, okay, that has a value. And so over the years the department for transport and their economists have developed tables if you like of assessments for how much value time has and it’s different for whether it’s business trips or Leisure trips. It’s gets very complex and people listening will just have to take our word for this. You know the department I mean they put a lot of effort into this – these are approved models they’re peer-reviewed – really we’ll just accept it – we have to just accept it okay, but there is a way of valuing time so with a project like HS2, massively complex demand model, lots of lots of moving parts, inter connections, you can be guaranteed that the value of time calculation is very complicated but they worked it out and that’s what underpins the the project in terms of that layer one. Layer two is then other well established impacts that you can quantify which are both user and non-user so they might be changes to crowding, some noise benefits, reduction in accidents, air quality that kind of stuff. All adds up? All adds up and that gives you your base and now every project would be done the same way. This is where it gets a bit more complicated when we get to the next layer. Value of time assumes that the market i.e. the economy in the regions where you’re running your project is kind of works perfectly and as a result of you doing your project there isn’t any kind of massive shift. Clearly with HS2 that’s not the case. There will be some big changes – that’s kind of leveling up really you know, so what we look at is ways in which we can quantify additional benefits that will be transmitted to the local and regional economies by doing the project and we call those wider economic benefits. And they kind of break into two parts they’re called static and dynamic. The static ones are where land use doesn’t really change – I mean I am simplifying this but this kind of gives you the broad idea. Dynamic ones are where land use does change okay.

So when the Department of Transport did the April 2020 business case which the government signed off okay let’s be clear, all those traditional benefits the layer one and two in my cake as value of Time Savings, they were all in, they were all calculated. And the static wider economic benefits – what economists call level one and level two benefits – they were in as well. However the department did NOT include the dynamic wider economic benefits – the level three, they are called level three benefits and they include: higher foreign investment into the UK. OK. So the UK becomes more attractive for investors because our transport is better around these important centres. They did not include what we call Dynamic clustering. That’s a fancy way of saying something very obvious which is that businesses form clusters and move to be around very well connected nodes. We’ve seen that happen in Birmingham and we would have seen that happen in Manchester. We saw it at Kings Cross didn’t we? We saw it at King Cross. Where those benefits were 20 times more than they’d kind of budgeted for and I just was thinking about that HSBC moved to birmingham on the basis of HS2 didn’t it? And Google put their headquarters at King’s cross and there’s the Crick Institute and all that kind of stuff. So you know you’re right, so that so there are kind of changes in land use. And then there’s labour market changes, structural changes and so workers will potentially move to a new location to get a job which is higher paid and better because the transport in and out of it is now better. OK. So those level three benefits they were not included in the business case and neither was released capacity so we know that the point about HS2 was it enabled all the fast stuff to go on the fast line and you know all that kind of argument again, the additional Services you can run whether they’re local Regional or Freight they have an economic value and that was not factored in. Now the department, in fairness to the department and to hs2 it didn’t kind of mislead anybody. They said “we have not included level three benefits and we have not included release capacity because we actually don’t know what services we’re going to run.’ So at least they said that but they were not included and you know they are a big number.

That’s extraordinary Richard. I understand and we must be fair to the department in that respect that they said they are there but we aren’t including them because they can’t be worked out yet or whatever. What I find extraordinary is they haven’t said that. They haven’t said there is a considerable benefit here we will get too later. I mean can we put some sort of value on that or is there some sort of, I don’t know, metaphor. We often hear News broadcasters talking about the equivalent of how many Olympic swimming pools or double decker buses or football pitches to give us an idea of the scale. I mean is there nothing we can do to give idiots like me a sense of scale of what you’re talking about Richard? It is hard and that’s why the department said it’s hard you know. In the in the business case for phase 2B which is the bit that goes from Crewe to Manchester which was published in 2022 there was an estimate – there was a range of estimates – for what it might mean at Manchester alone and we’re looking at you know potentially up to six or seven billion pounds in present value so a big number and that’s only level three, that doesn’t include released capacity. So my view in this is gut instinct is it’s a very big number like you know Everest is a a massive mountain and K2 is pretty massive as well. Okay K2 is a bit smaller but they’re both huge so I think that hopefully that gives people an idea this is a this is a big number potentially. Seriously, we’re saying we don’t know whether it’s K2 or Everest but it’s huge and it’s not been included or even alluded to that is extraordinary.

Well I certainly think… Disgraceful… I certainly think it is it is misleading to say we’re not doing the project now because it’s BCR’s dropped to 0.9 and not say at the same time ‘though of course we accept all this other stuff is not included. What the policy exchange document does it talks about..you can see where the Writer is coming from he talks about the Absurd Exaggeration of benefits he clearly doesn’t, you know the writer doesn’t really buy into this. So for instance, this is a quote from that policy exchange document says “it is difficult to see how improvements to some of these long-distance Journeys will be transformational in the way claimed (there will be effects on local services but these are limited).” No! I think he’s just misunderstood the point of HS2. I think the word willfully should be inserted in front of misunderstood and to return to your baking analogy and the the Gateaux well you know you don’t say gatoh do you well in that case I think we’re hearing an awful lot of Bolloh here. Well there’s one final point on this. In the original business case the Chairman of hs2 made clear that actually that he thought that the not all the benefits have been included I mean he said that then. And the business case did contain a number of sensitivities. So for example just to give you one example if you change the appraisal time frame of the project from 60 years which was what was in the original case to 100 years which you could argue is fine because that’s what we’re building it for and you you know tweak a couple of other assumptions the benefit cost ratio really does go up a lot so and that’s not including level three benefits or released capacity. This is a very complex story and I think those who wish to knock HS2 have been quite selective in that they’ve basically talked about the downsides and not talked about all the other stuff. And that’s the document on which Rishy Sunak based his decision to can it? Well I understand it was certainly one influential document. Yeah okay, well let’s just leave that that astonishing idea that somewhere between K2 and Everest in terms of hard financial benefits have not been included in the HS2 BCR.

Let us go on to myth four. But we can free up the money say from canceling HS2 and use it on other things. Well not easily….and he did say, he did say I guarantee that every penny of that 35 billion will be spent on transport projects across the north. Across the north? That includes Plymouth and Littlehampton? Well not easily we can’t. The money for HS2 was always going to be borrowed in the future and justified the borrowing would be justified on the benefit stream it created. So when you actually read the small print of the Network North document and you read what the permanent secretary said quite rightly actually in her accounting officer letter it said all these projects will still have to have business cases (Scrutiny?) Yeah, they’ll still have to be assessed they’ll still have to be funded. And yet he said already that every penny will be spent on these 35 billion pounds on so it’s more RSBS then isn’t it well he then said subsequently didn’t he? Well certainly ministers have said it’s kind of an illustrative list of what could be done. I mean honestly, the Network North document, I don’t really put much Credence on it now. I don’t think many people do it’s all for the future. Isn’t that once that’ been rumbled that some of the stuff in there was you know ridiculous like we’re going to build a Tramway to Manchester Airport and we’re going to build Net two and that sort of thing where they opened years ago and stuff started disappearing off the website I understand by the day as these ridiculous things were illuminated. Well the Leamside Line disappeared the next day didn’t it, and something in Bristol. I mean it’s not, as we said on our last episode, the Network North document really is not a very coherent well-considered document. It feels like something that was done in a rush. Making a strong bid for understatement of the Year there Richard. So Networth North document useless, unravelled to the point where it has no credibility so shall we move on? Indeed.

Right, myth five. Investing in the existing network is better value for money. Let’s put a few extra carriages in there and lengthen a few platforms and upgrade the signaling so we can run more trains. We don’t need this hs2 thing. Well this one’s relatively easy in short because investing in the existing Network can be good value for money but it’s not better value for money than HS2 if you take the view as I do that HS2 answered a specific question around significant capacity constraints and Regional connectivity and leveling up. So with the greatest respect to the people that live in Stoke on Trent and Leek which is one of the projects that’s in the Network North document reopening that line is not going to address the HS2 issue of capacity, in fact arguably it’s going to make it worse at Stoke on Trent so it just simply, it does you’re comparing apples and pears, right? It’s not that one is better than the other – they’re answering two profoundly different questions. Like Barrow in Furness to Carlisle which the Prime Minister referred to as the Energy Coast Line – never heard that before. And I’m sure that’ll be a good thing to do but it doesn’t it doesn’t answer the question that HS2 was answering. Absolutely brilliant for the good people of Millom, Foxfield and Aspatria and places like that up the coast but it doesn’t do much for alleviating congestion on the busiest mixed traffic main line in Europe. Quite. Which is the West Coast. Quite.

Right myth six let’s build Euston – I used to go to transport select committees and there was some MPs Greg Smith in particular who whatever the question was he said well if this is needed just let the private sector build it. So why can’t the private sector build Euston? Well they probably, I mean private finance probably can be used at Euston. It’s potentially an oversite development, there there are property implications for it. I do think there’s a point to make here though about how we’ve ended up at this point. I mean originally the idea was to build a station – that’s radical – it is complicated and it has got expensive and again you know not defending HS2 but as a result of the Oakervee review that was decided to create a separate vehicle called Euston Partnerships which was very much like a property-led thing as well and what happened with that is that every stakeholder and his mate sort of got involved and said well, we’ll have that! and one example of that – four of them – well indeed and a good example being Network Rail who sort of said well we can sort out the existing station as part of this and you know my reaction to that is no! No that’s your problem go and sort out your existing station on your own we need to keep the project very focused. So it kind of lost its way then so now we’re sort of you know everybody wants to make it simpler again and that’s and be property-led. My reaction to that is okay but if HS2 does not go to Euston we have got a massive problem right? If it finishes at Old Oak Common that genuinely is a disaster. So by all means let’s look at private finance but NOT if it’s going to slow up getting Euston built. I mean that is one area where cost really did spiral and why because of the government insisting on the commercial development which jacked up the cost massively you know. To repeat your point we’re not apologists for HS2 here – they’ve got plenty wrong but to saddle them all with the all these ills is is just ridiculous okay. So there’s another myth.

Let’s move on to myth number seven. Contestants are you all ready and waiting because here you are. I heard the Prime Minister say this – look trains with hs2 on the side will still run to Manchester but they’ll just go on the existing Network north of Birmingham with no negative consequences at all. Sounds like a myth to me. Yeah well this, it is true to say that will go to Manchester train with a sort of sticker on the side that says HS2 because it will go on HS2 to Lichfield and come back on the existing network that’s where it joins the West Coast main line – in the middle of a field I understand – yeah well Handsacre Junction is it’s it is yeah it’s in a large field near Lichfield. But do you remember when the Eurostar service started from Paris and you know you came through Paris and through northern France on a very high speed line then you came through the tunnel and then you got to sort of the UK side and then it was oh you know everything sort of slowed up a bit and it was a little bit embarrassing sort of trundling through Paddock Wood on your way to to Waterloo and the transformation that then came when we opened up highspeed one. It’ll be a bit the same and that’s the problem and there will be negative consequences as there is not the capacity to run additional for example Manchester to London trains. So there’s currently three per hour and I can’t see how there won’t be still three per hour when HS2 is open. Yes they’ll be a bit quicker because for part of the journey they use HS2 but there are negative consequences because now nothing will be going down the existing West Coast Main Line from Manchester so quite a few stations actually lose some service. Freight really suffers badly – suffers because there isn’t the capacity to put any more freight services on. A real problem is because we’re not doing HS2 in Manchester Picadilly station which was going to have its dedicated platforms and long platforms to enable us to have 400 metre long trains is now not happening so the trains will only be 200 metres long. So yeah there will be trains to Manchester but the negative consequences are significant because there’s no more capacity. That’s a hugely important point isn’t it because the HS2 trains to Manchester were going to be two 550 seat units coupled together into running into a quarter mile platform so by putting them into Picadilly halving the capacity of the HS2 trains it also means that the HS2 trains will be running on the same railway as the pendos they were supposed to replay place on the on the dedicated route and because they are not Pendolinos they’ll be limited to 110 mph surely because they don’t tilt. So it is just catastrophic so it’s a myth to say oh they’ll still go to Manchester anyway with no negative consequences. Yeah this speed one’s interesting. I don’t know the detail of that I mean you’re you’re absolutely right the HS2 trains don’t tilt. I think there’s been some sort of further thinking around that but certainly if it were if they were to be restricted to 110 miles hour that that would have that would have implications yeah definitely. So another myth from the Prime Minister. More RSBS.

Let us move on to myth 8. We are motoring now having got those two heavyweight ones out the way up front. HS2 is a disaster for the environment with 108 ancient Woodlands destroyed. Well I looked into I looked into a guy called Phil Sturgeon who’s the co-founder of project uh Protect Earth said about this who’s clearly very passionate environmentalist and he explains the story like this. He said the 108 ancient Woodlands destroyed story started when the Wildlife Trust wrote a report suggesting 108 ancient Woodlands would risk loss or significant impact. Bear in mind there are over 50, I think there’s over 52,000 ancient woodlands in England in the whole of England right so we’re talking about 108. Then the Woodland Trust reported this is 108 ancient woodlands significantly threatened and threatened means goes vaguely near it does not mean destroyed. But then I understand the RSPB they mixed up threatened and destroyed and it all became 108 ancient woodlands destroyed which wasn’t true right, but that line gathered unstoppable momentum. Some very well-known people threw their weight behind that campaign but from that moment on it’s “108 ancient Woodlands destroyed”. In fact uh it’s not it’s far fewer than that in terms of loss. Have we got a number? Yeah well the ancient woodland impact of phase one is certainly according to Phil Sturgeon 20.8 hectares or put another way 0.006% of our ancient woodland in return for which we get a hugely important piece of critical green infrastructure. So you can see it’s almost like one of those things where you know you line up all the kids at school and one starts saying something and they tell their mate they tell their mate, they tell their mate and by the time it gets to the end of the line it’s something completely different and that has happened here. And it’s a shame because if I think this is one of the things that’s turned quite a lot of people against HS2 actually it’s the most low impact way of building a high-capacity corridor compared to a road. Motorwway? For sure. I mean just to go off on one of my own Billy Connolly moments it makes me really angry people who’ve read what I’ve read written over the years in Rail and elsewhere will have heard me rail against news editors not doing their jobs and actually if news editors had done their jobs we wouldn’t be doing this today. Because a decent news editor in briefing a correspondent to do a story on on TV, radio or on paper would have got the journalist and said look these are the issues these are you need to look at and you need to go to him to talk to that I mean I’ll just if you don’t mind give my own news editor John Lanigan a mention on the Westmoreland Gazette when I joined there in 1979 because John was a brilliant news editor – I didn’t always feel it at the time when he was giving me a tongue lashing about something. But John would do just this you know he’d say right you’re going to the policy and resources committee it’s going to be as boring as anything but you need to listen to him, watch out for what he says, and the big issue is that. That’s what you need to look at so by the time you hit the keyboard you knew all this stuff and it’s just not done these days and because you know the transport correspondent who does know them is in is in retreat there’s not very very few Paul Clifton and Tom Edwards now. So news editors do your jobs. Right, rant over. Back to the main narrative.

Myth nine this is a good one. I’ve always liked this one because this gets massive traction. Doesn’t it, well it cost 10 times more to build a high speed line here than it does everywhere else. Yeah Jeremy Hunt, I heard. Yeah he did indeed. He said I need to understand why it cost 10 times more. Pay attention Jeremy. Well it is more expensive rightum but there are I think there are a myriad of reasons for this one of them will be HS2 Contracting strategy so again you know we’re not apologizing for them. I heard Rob Holden who was the HS1 – he was in very heavily involved in HS1 at the beginning – I think he made a comment (I think I’m attributing it to the right person so forgive give me Rob if it was someone else but it’s still a great Point) that we’ve kind of it’s been a bit engineering led rather than needs Led and there will be a good chunk of that so let’s not forget that. However we’re also not used to building these kind of railways in the UK. The only thing of note we’ve built in the last sort of 25 years is Highspeed one. Prior to that it was the Selby coalfield – on the East Coast – yeah that’s 40 years ago right so we’re not used to and I’m not counting the Elizabeth line by the way talking about sort of main line railway but nonetheless we just don’t do it very often whereas France, Japan you know they’ve had a programme a rolling programme – absolutely so the French have been doing this since like the mid-70s and they just keep adding a bit and adding a bit and doing more so they build up a huge body of knowledge and understanding and then they apply that – and the men and machines and the equipment and the companies to to do it – exactly right. Unlike electrification here. Where we also should have a rolling programme, I do think that’s right. Back to Rob Holden again. One thing that I know he did say was that he’s not been consulted on HS2. Nnow that’s crazy that that is really one man who’s built a high-speed Railway and they didn’t even say have you got a view on this Rob yeah and you would always ask, I would always ask Rob because hehe definitely knows you know he’s kind of very sort of sensible quite dour character, he’s a Man City fan – right, measured – well he’s a Man City fan so he knows what the pit of despair looks like in the past. I mean but not to not to ask somebody like that that that doesn’t make sense. On that subject Richard I might just chip in again I heard Sir John Armitt interviewed former chief executive of network rail former chief executive of costain I think lifetime civil engineer now chairman of the national infrastructure commission interviewed on on I think it was either Today Programme or PM and on on the decision to trash HS2 to Manchester and he was asked were you consulted on this Sir John and he paused and said “I was not.” I mean it it again we go back to the fact it had all the feelings of a a rushed policy and political decision rather than necessarily something um more considered. But back to the cost of doing these things so the French and the Japanese and the Spanish you know they have these rolling programmes.

Having said that it is harder in the UK right um our post industrial landscape particularly uh in our urban areas tends to be very constrained if you go and look at French, I mean Paris is a good example. If you go and look at the lines coming into Paris there’s lot there is quite a lot of space not least of which they didn’t go through a program of selling off all their kind of un unused Railway lands whereas we’ve kind of been a little bit more proactive about that so it’s you they’ve got they do tend to have more space and that we have less. It costs more money. If you look at the approach to Euston to Birmingham to Manchester then you do not need to you don’t need me to explain that anymore – it’s on viaducts in a lot of cases – a lot of it elevated and just really really tight. Then there is our actual landscape outside of the Cities you know. It is probably easier to build a railway through southern France and southern Spain than it is through the home counties and that’s part of the reason why we’ve ended up putting 10 miles of HS2 in the Chilterns in a tunnel which is hugely expensive to do. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have done that by the way but it’s it’s a kind of apples and pears point again so let’s be aware of it. Your point about space Richard, I was lucky about 10 years ago to be taken to the south of France and and we had a helicopter flight over an entire 80 mile cut off high speed cut off and what struck me was that very point – space with all the construction sites. I wrote about it at the time in Rail and said you got the feel that they had they even had public viewing areas for goodness sake um that they had plenty of Elbow Room which you don’t have in the UK which means it is more expensive to do. It’s absolutely right and actually the point about the stations as well that you you made earlier is ke in the UK we’ve in our kind of cost per kilometer we’ve included Ed all the costs so in the cost of hs2 um you know the headline cost that we talked about right at the top of the program – all the stations are in our costs all the Rolling Stock are in our costs and I think I’m right in saying that in European projects they tend not to do that. They treat them as all as individual and separate mega projects which means that the actual cost per kilometer of the the trackway if you like is lower as a result. So I’m not saying that it isn’t more expensive and part of that cost is because of the way we have done it however you can’t just say it’s 10 times more so therefore aren’t we useless and not understand the reasons that we’re talking about very different bases of calculation and different environmental social and economic um circumstances.

Well I do get very angry about this so I would expect frankly the chancellor of the exchequer to understand all this and not to be going on live TV saying I need to understand why it’s 10 times more well it isn’t but it’s more expensive for these reasons. You would expect him to know that and then you’ve got the news editors not doing their job in challenging either so you’ve got the ignorant leaving the leading the ignorant who then put this BS out there on which people are making decisions for a hundred years for you know your children their children’s children. It is outrageous. We should expect better frankly. You should certainly expect that those who do know have briefed their political leaders effectively and it it does it feels that somewhere in this for whatever reason the the facts have kind of become lost. You made a good point earlier about hastily put together. The more you look at this the more you get the feeling that the Network North thing was and and this whole for political reason was cobbled together over a mini bar in a hotel room in the Midland Hotel the night before the event and I’m simplifying and exaggerating there by the way there we go.

Right myth 10. Apparently I am told HS2 is the worst infrastructure project in 50 years. Yeah and this is comes again I think from you know the comments around the briefing that the Prime Minister got about the benefits and about the costs and hopefully we’ve shown thrown a bit of light in the programme as to why what it may first appear is not what it necessarily is. It’s not perfect, costs have gone up but awful lot of benefits haven’t been included. A lot of factors need to be taken into account and the harsh reality is that the decision that’s been taken to cancel it has we do not know how we’re going to deliver the transformational shift in the capacity we need now we’re going to have to come up with another very you know very big proposal because we’ve lost this one so I think canceling it was the worst decision in 50 years. Absolutely right.

Well that’s our 10 myths. Let me just cycle through the things that stand out to me before we we sign off. So one, costs have gone up um but any estimate before 2020 is irrelevant it’s actually according to their own comments pretty much give or take there or thereabouts the budget 54 billion from 45 billion. it’s certainly not 180 billion which some people have been claiming and it’s nowhere near even a 100 billion which is which is common which is common so the costs have not spiraled out of control that is BS. It was never about getting anywhere quicker it’s always about critically needed capacity which you’ve just said. Covid has not changed demand forever and to make a year decision on 18 months of data is madness, Mr Shapps but we all knew that didn’t we. The full business case in 2020 did not include K2 sized or Everest sized wider benefits and that is just outrageous. Rishi’s promised to use every penny of the 35 billion on alternative projects he was not authorized to make because as Bernadette Kelly at the DFT has made very clear every one of those projects will have to go through the same scrutiny so so there’s no guarantee of that at all. Investing in the existing Network I don’t need to tell you about the heartache of West Coast route mod it seems like the only thing we’ve guaranteed ourselves here is West Coast route mod 2 with knobs on which is going to be even more of a nightmare a Hollywood sequel. Private Finance can have a role at Euston but it can’t build the project I understand that the private Finance would also be expected to drill the tunnels to get there well that’s never going to happen. Yes HS2 trains will run to Manchester but be half the length, slower speed and congest the railway that they were meant to ease the congestion on. We have not destroyed 108 ancient woodlands and it’s certainly not the greatest deforestation since World War I which I saw somewhere and it only impacts 0.005% or whatever of our total ancient Woodland. Yes it costs more to build a high-speed Railway in the UK but it’s certainly not 10 times as much and you know they throw in trains and stations, we don’t. We’ve got, you know less capacity, less capacity less space to uh to work in and no HS2 was not the worst infrastructure project in five years – the decision to axe it I agree with you totally Richard is the worst governmental decision I think I’ve come across in a long time and I think that’s about it.

It’s not been a particularly edifying discussion but but we thought it was important to get those truths out there and lay those myths. So our listeners do feel free to listen to this again if you want jot down any good points so that when you come across the usual gobby people in pubs, linesides and everywhere else telling you why it was, telling you one of those myths, you’ve got the counters there.Feel free to use them feel free to let us know what you think about this and about anything else and about the railway as a whole if there’s a discussion you think that me and Rich should have then please let us know. We want everybody to be a green signaler who knows we might come up with a green signaler badge like a blue peter badge for those who excellent for those who really help out but look thanks ever so much for listening – we hope you’ve enjoyed it we did enjoy the research and Richard has done a massive amount digging up information from government documents which I’m sure in many cases they would have preferred not to have been dug up. Do like follow subscribe and leave us a review and with that it’s time to go and put the kettle on and make a cup of real coffee I think the ground stuff not the instant and we’ll start working on episode three so thanks for being with us and do come back next week so for me and Richard it’s goodbye. Goodbye.