Response to Phillip Hammond and others on HS2 capacity 4

Matthew Sinclair Campaign

There have been a number of responses to our research note on the impact of HS2 on capacity. Chris Stokes has looked at the purported rebuttals and find that none of them credibly challenge our findings.

Theresa Villiers promised a Parliamentary debate yesterday that no services would be cut as a result of the development of HS2. But that’s not what their own consultation documents say. Those documents report that “we have also assumed an adjusted service pattern on the WCML,with the withdrawal and adjustment of some long distance services… In addition we can reasonably assume that there would be a reduction in long distance services on the Midland and East Coast Main Lines as the new high speed services were introduced”. Significant savings in operating costs as a result of these service reductions are included in the overall business case for the full network, at a total Net Present Value of £3.1 billion. So have Ministers just committed to not making any service cuts? If so, the Benefit Cost Ratio for the scheme is heading even further down the drain.

I’m told I’ve got the capacity to Manchester wrong. But again, this came from HS2′s own documentation (The Economic case for HS2, Page 59 ), which sets out that Manchester will have three trains an hour, no more capacity than now, but carrying about three times as many people. A modern version of feeding the five thousand?. So we must assume their own consultation material is “flawed” and “spurious”?

It’s true that HS2 potentially delivers more capacity for commuters from Milton Keynes and Northampton, who are travelling in grossly overcrowded trains now. But the 90% increase in capacity Hammond promises for Milton Keynes won’t happen until 2026 at the earliest. Buried in the HS2 documentation on potential alternatives, DfT have costed a flyover south of Milton Keynes at £243m which would enable the peak service to be doubled (i.e. an 100% increase) in just five years time. That means commuters won’t be waiting on steadily more overcrowded trains for fifteen years and offers much better value for money than the £750m earmarked in the spending review just to develop the plans for HS2.

None of the claims made today are incompatible with our report. But as we pointed out building HS2 instead of getting better use out of existing lines will mean more overcrowding and waits of years or decades for new capacity that some routes need now. It will mean less capacity on the key routes that we highlighted in our original note.

On another issue, Philip Hammond was challenged by the Guardian on modal shift from air to HS2. His answer was “we’re not just going to Birmingham. We’re going to Manchester and Leeds”. But rail already has 85% of the Manchester – London air/rail market, and there are no flights from Leeds to London. In fact, Manchester is the only city served by HS2 with a London air service. So how will the link take traffic out of the air?

Matthew Sinclair

Matthew is Director of the TaxPayers' Alliance, author of Let Them Eat Carbon and editor of How to Cut Public Spending (and still win an election)

Follow @mjhsinclair

mr considered opinion

on the last point, because if the WCML chokes due to growth figures (which have been underestimated the last 15 years) and overcrowding air travel becomes more attractive again and rail modal share drops. Plus it is the airline market to Scotland he is mainly on about, the whole route knocks an hour of Scotland journey times.

second point, of course much intercity traffic will be withdrawn off the WCML that’s the point, to free up capacity for commuting and freight which has been squeezed out by the Virgin high frequency timetable that you used as evidence for the number of seats currently available to Manchester.

I hope as you did an audit into the Railtrack WCML upgrade that cost £9bill? if you did you would know that capacity upgrades of existing highly utilised lines is poor value for money.
S N Barnes

Some judicious restoration of connections at Rugby and Bletchley , and enhanced routes via Kenilworth/Solihull with the Evergreen 3+ option delivering a Berne gauge corridor to Birmingham should permit a 7-day railway that can flip between GC and LNW for work to then delivwer an LMW route that takes ‘bi-level ‘ trains – unlocking passenger capacity without extending platforms.

In the past couple of weeks we have seen the potential value of restoring and enhancing the short connecting links with the lines to Watford falling over massively for long periods.

Te passenger numbers are fantasia – and the example of under-filled HA1 domestic services (and the extended overall journey times from many places in Kent (and the near empty car parks at Ebbsfleet) suggest that some modeling parameters are not quite right.

Existing Jouney times from the GG21 tables also seem a tad inflated – the NCL-BRI trip is 15 minutes faster in Table 51 and this includes a further 15 minute wait between trains at New St with its time consuming route via Birmingham, Doncater and stopping between York and Newcastle. The 35 minute claim for GLQ-EDB is little better than the 38 minute non-stop delivered by the Swindon DMU’s and jointed track with 1970′s signalling, and with 3 stops we manage GLQ to Haymarket in 40 minutes now.

Deliver faster and at less cost by making the current network function properly with a long term strategic delivery of capacity by gauge enhancement built in to every minor project and infrastructure renewal.
Anonymous

Brussels has probably told them that we MUST have it so they will carry on regardless and put it in place…….
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