Why I changed my mind about HS2
Full disclosure: I love trains. I always have. I’m lucky enough to live close enough to HS1 to have been able to travel easily across the Channel. I once took my son in a carrier to meet family in Paris. I caught the first train in and the last train out. It was cheap, maybe less than £20, and we returned exhausted, having toured the Musee d’Orsay and the Louvre. Even before that and like many others, I also spent a lot of my youth travelling around Europe by train. The double deckers; the restaurant cars; the incredible views. There was something a bit magical about being transported there. Cities separated by two sets of doors. Long before I found my home in the Green Party, I was choosing rail over road whenever I had the opportunity.
Despite all this love for rail though, I wasn’t sure how I felt about HS2. I’d seen some worrying things in the media and people I respected weren’t sure about it at all. Was it being done irresponsibly? It did seem astonishingly expensive. When I had talked to the railway workers on strike in Harrogate, they called HS2 a vanity project and wished that money was being spent on maintaining and upgrading the existing systems. It didn’t surprise me, sadly, to hear that they felt money was being stripped out of the railways. That seemed to be a running theme with our current government. Was it even possible to build new lines while maintaining the existing ones? I thought of railways in Europe and beyond and thought, yes, maybe.
So it was, that I went into the Greens4HS2 Panel with an open mind, but rather cautious and a little sceptical.
A Zoom call and an avalanche of facts later and I was convinced by their arguments. Emma and Adam spoke so passionately and convincingly about why we needed to support high speed rail. They acknowledged the potential damage to the environment but balanced it with the potential gain of fewer cars on the road. They gave me what I needed to make what was – I felt – an informed decision. Of course we were worried about the effect building HS2 might have on the environment. As responsible Greens who cared about more than shareholder dividends, or what the ‘market could take’, and as a party who included these landscapes in the tapestry of wealth, there is no doubt that if this was being built under a Green government, that we would be taking every possible care that it was being done in the least damaging way possible. They pointed out that much of HS2 had already been built. Campaigns against building it along certain routes were now redundant. It had happened. They were able to reassure me that the company building HS2 did care about the environment and had been taking steps to reduce the impact on local wildlife and ancient forest.
Learning that building HS2 in full would open up so much extra capacity in the north and in Wales was what clinched it for me. Effectively three new lines for the price of one. Suddenly, the price tag was becoming more reasonable. Segregated railways would also solve the ‘mixed traffic problem’, leading to faster and more reliable journeys on all lines, but all of these benefits would only come if it was built in full. I thought, if we’re going to do this costly and ambitious thing, then let’s do it properly and well so that it makes a real and tangible change that will improve people’s lives, not just leave something half-baked and stunted. The north deserves this investment too. It isn’t fair to just build fast lines in the South East. Money spent on infrastructure that will mean families have the opportunity to travel cheaply and with a vastly smaller carbon footprint, is money wisely spent.
In the 80s there was opposition here in Kent to HS1, but now it is one of the things we are most proud of. I know that the drivers like me, picking their children up from their grandparents and crawling home on the smoggy, dirty M2 – 6 lanes wide and sprawling across what was once a beautiful estuary – watch the sleek, slim Eurostar speed by with envy. Surrounded by green and almost silent, it exists in harmony with nature, not opposed to it. Will our grandchildren feel the same way about HS2? Will they be able to travel cheaply and easily to Europe and beyond? Will they be able to make that choice not to take a plane? I hope so.
Greens4HS2 have a motion coming to Spring Conference and we are asking the party to support fully funding Northern Powerhouse Rail and HS2. This would reverse the Tory cuts to public transport investment in the north of England. If, like I was, you’re not sure how you feel about HS2, I would urge you to check out the Greens4HS2 website, or talk to a member at conference and to support our motion when it comes to a vote.
PS. We hope you enjoyed this article. Bright Green has got big plans for the future to publish many more articles like this. You can help make that happen. Please donate to Bright Green now donate to Bright Green now.
Image credit: Les Chatfield – Creative Commons
I thought the point of high-speed rail was to replace short-haul air travel but all the arguments in this article seem to be about economic impact. Homeowners are being forced out of their homes by the compulsory purchase orders and for what? A saving of 20 minutes’ journey time. Give me a better reason to support this scheme.
If HS2 was intended to benefit or level up the North, such a claim might be more credible if it had started in the North and linked Northern towns, east-west. Secondly, high-speed equals high power requirement when a Climate Emergency demands the urgent reduction of the need for power. Thirdly, the Wildlife Trusts’ report gives the lie to the environmental concerns of HS2 Ltd. Others more qualified have far more and serious objections.
Totally agree with Meg. The main reason for HS2 is to unlock capacity on the existing railway by separating fast intercity services from local and regional services – making space for more of the latter. Without more track capacity the railways can’t take the numbers of people we NEED to transfer from road and air. Yet, the head of Network Rail has said that we can’t upgrade the existing railways to achieve that without upto 30 years of rail replacement buses every weekend – which clearly isn’t viable if we are trying to encourage people onto the railway and fight climate change! This is why HS2 is essential, in my view as a pragmatic Green…
Yes, building HS2 will cause damage to the environment. But there isn’t a construction project in the UK right now, and quite possibly the world, that isn’t doing more to mitigate the effects of construction. Everything from creating new biodiverse habitats along the route from using (for the first time) electric vehicles and cranes on site is being done, and done with real passion.
I disagree that HS2 is expensive. It’s looking like roughly £100bn . That may sound a lot to you and me but this will be for infrastructure that lasts 100 years. The Department for Work and Pensions (£245bn 2022) spends that in less than half a year, the NHS (£145bn) in about two-thirds of a year. HS2 is money well spent that will reduce car use and carbon emissions for generations to come. Even if the cost doubles, it will still be cheap for the benefits it brings through clean and efficient transport, freeing up capacity for local and freight journeys on our existing lines.
You sound as though you work for HS2 Alex…or Skanska, Mace, Vinci etc…to suggest ”it’s looking like £100b” is simply ridiculous… Sir David Higgins told Parliament it was on time and on budget at £39b in 2016.
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/hs2-eastern-leg-to-midlands-could-be-scrapped-and-project-delayed-to-cut-costs-07-02-2023/?tkn=1
It won’t reduce car use. It is isn’t Green. The repayments and accumulated interests costs mean it will lose money forever. Few businesses will switch supplies from lorry to rail ( and you will need lorries at both ends with longer journeys ) . It’s a horrendous misallocation of scarce resources ie money is better spent elsewhere. It doesn’t connect directly to Eurostar. The TIME saving concept is FALSE . IF it is therefore only about capacity then freight doesn’t need to be HIGH speed does it? ( and could save massive destruction to the environment )
I have watched of the video and some of the statements made and echoed here have to be rebutted: “the potential gain of fewer cars on the road”. The DfT has examined the potential impact of HS2 on car traffic and concluded that effect was so trivial it wasn’t worth updating their forecasts of road use.
“much of HS2 had already been built” This is demonstrably false. A large section of PH1 between London and Birmingham is under construction, but even if the whole of PH1 was already built it would still not be even half of what is planned. No ground has been broken North of Birmingham (apart from surveying work)
“building HS2 in full would open up so much extra capacity in the north and in Wales” Nowhere is this capacity quantified, so to say “so much extra” will be created is based on nothing more than a hunch. It may be nil. Even the Oakervee Report which the Government used to justify proceeding with HS2 complained the work to analyse what extra capacity means simply hasn’t been done, nor do the policies exist to create that capacity. On Wales itself no extra capacity is created and claims to the contrary are based on nothing more than a hope that New Street will be less congested so therefore more trains into Wales might be provided. It is the “could be, might be” hope of trickle down effects, nothing more and the long history of broken promises made on rail investment tells you all you need to know about hoping for improvements. Much of what is said about capacity in the Midlands is based on a brochure produced by the lobbyists Midland Connect who when they were FOI’d on their numbers admitted they couldn’t say how they had arrived at their figures. Typical of the smoke and mirrors and superficially attractive claims made supporters of the scheme that collapse when you put them to the test.
“families have the opportunity to travel cheaply” Long distance rail passengers are *very* heavily skewed to the top 20% of earners – it is about 6x more likely that your fellow passenger is from the top 20% income baracket than the bottom 20%. HS2 is regressive, which seems a weird thing for the Green Party to support.
You have to ask why does every major green/environmental NGO in the UK oppose HS2 and why does no green/environmental NGO support it? What do Greens4HS2 know that all these other groups don’t? The answer may come in the source of many of Emma’s slides – Permanent Engineering which is one man who happens to work for the one of the biggest contractors on the scheme. Follow the money………
@Mike haville
I’m not Meg but I would say a £200bn-£250bn price tag is reasonable considering this infrastructure will last us for at least the next 150 years. There is no rail service in the world that is frequent, reliable and functioning without high speed rail. One reason why the budget is blowing up without no track being laid is also because of constant reductions and changes in scope. Google the £100 million wasted on the 11 platform design for Euston station… the Tories in their utter incompetence changed it to a 10 platform design leading to all the previous design plans being thrown out. As we speak the Tories are continuing to do the same thing of chopping and changing on the Eastern leg and Western leg.
I love how eloquently Meg outlines the argument here, and the approach to listening to and responding to the evidence.
We need to use every tool in the toolbox to tackle the climate emergency, and investing in public transport at every level, where emissions have basically been flat for 30 years, making it the highest emitting sector, is really important.
HS2 adds to the climate emergency!
The embedded carbon in all of the construction means that it creates more CO2 than it saves even by HS2 Ltd own figures. At best it will take 120 years of operation before it breaks even.
If you are Green you should be opposing every metre of concrete that is being laid across the countryside.
Meg says “Suddenly, the price tag was becoming more reasonable” – but what price tag is reasonable £15bn / £36bn / £56bn / £72bn / £88bn / £106bn / £128bn / £155bn?
At present phase 1 which had a new budget of £46bn, has in the words of Chair Jon Thompson, “blown it’s budget” & HS2 contingency & 50% chance of blowing its DfT contingency & this is with AT LEAST 10 years to go before phase 1 completion. It ate that £10bn plus contingency in less than a year.
So what is the actual price tag that Meg would say is reasonable.