The Saturday Essay HS2 is the only option for Britain’s railways The high-speed rail project comes with huge economic and practical benefits, but politicians have failed miserably at explaining them, Jon Stone argues -- * Part of the proposed route for the HS2 high speed rail scheme includes the Birmingham and Fazeley viaduct ( HS2/PA ) The arguments against HS2 are simple, and superficially attractive: why are we spending £55bn on a high-speed line between London and the north, when commuters outside the southeast are cramming onto unreliable, expensive, and infrequent old trains? -- general public. The government has failed to make the case for HS2. So allow me to make it here, because it’s actually a very good idea. -- Those concerns about overcrowded, creaking commuter trains are real: but they cannot be solved without HS2, or something extremely similar. The problem is that explaining why is quite complicated, so politicians haven’t really tried. Some people seem to think HS2 is about “knocking 35 minutes off London to Birmingham”. It isn’t. Yes, it will dramatically reduce journey times: the whole project will cut London-Manchester from two hours to -- Birmingham to Nottingham, which currently takes over an hour, falls to an almost ridiculous 19 minutes. One misconception is that these will be special “high-speed” premium services with higher ticket prices for rich passengers. That isn’t true – these will be the ordinary journey times between those cities, integrated into the existing network. -- Read more * Could Crossrail delays mean the end for HS2? But speed is not the main point of the new line. The objective is -- Britain’s railways were largely built in the Victorian era, for a different kind of travel. Today, the same lines carry a mix of express intercity trains – the kind which HS2 will take – and stopping local and commuter services, the kind people use to get to work, or pop to a neighbouring town. -- AP The engineering thinking behind HS2 is to take those express services off the older mainlines, leaving them for stopping local and commuter services. When trains are all travelling at roughly the same speed on a -- are smaller. HS2 will take express trains off the West Coast Main Line that links London with Birmingham and the cities of the northwest; the Midland Main Line that links London with the East Midlands and Sheffield; and -- Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts by email Update newsletter preferences Protests against HS2 have been fierce every since the project was open to a public consultation in 2010 (Getty) -- sense: these existing lines are already good for slow trains, and they go into the centres of towns and cities, which have since expanded around them. A new high-speed line for expresses can make use of engineering advances since the 19th century to speed up journeys, and doesn’t have to go into as many built up areas as a local line would, where the need for tunnelling and demolitions would make it more expensive and disruptive. And making a line high-speed doesn’t actually cost that much more, either, if you’re building one anyway. But the key point is that local services benefit, despite the new line being for express trains. HS2 will also bring other direct benefits to cities and towns that aren’t London. Northern Powerhouse Rail (stupid name) is the government’s plan to connect up the cities of the north of England with high-speed rail. It’s currently in development, but the plan, as put together by northern councils, relies on vast sections of HS2 track. Liverpool to Manchester; Sheffield to Leeds and towards York and Newcastle – these bits of NPR will use parts of HS2. The government arguably made a huge mistake by starting planning on the NPR scheme so late, leaving people wondering why they were prioritising journeys to London – but with Labour and the Conservatives both committed to the project, it is likely to happen. HS2 and better connections between non-London cities aren’t an either/or: the two projects are intrinsically linked. If HS2 is scrapped, who knows when a government will next be brave enough to try a major rail project again. Rail minister Andrew Jones says HS2 will be key part of strategy to fix capacity problems for trains -- the floor. The number of passengers using the route doubled between 1997 and 2005, and it is well on its way to doubling again. The huge capacity increase that HS2 brings is a response to that. It’s understandable that people are sceptical of a project that has -- biggest problems they see with the railways. That said, some criticisms are red herrings. Take the environmental impact: over the 140 miles of HS2 line, 29 hectares of ancient woodland will be felled. Sounds bad? But for comparison, a single 2.5-mile road scheme, widening the A21 in Kent and Sussex (not even a new road!), will take down nine hectares, around a third of HS2’s phase 1 total. Extinction Rebellion are barking up the wrong tree on this one; far more road schemes will be needed if we can’t shift traffic to more efficient rail, and that means building more capacity. High-speed rail has also proven the greenest way to get people off short-haul flights, dominating routes like London-Paris or Madrid-Barcelona, where polluting planes would otherwise be king. Long -- * Why does Britain keep making a mess of its biggest projects? * Lords report recommends HS2 rethink as costs spiral ‘out of control’ * HS2 accused of poor planning and ‘unacceptable’ damage to wildlife * Extinction Rebellion activists camp out in trees to protest HS2 * ‘Thousands’ of trees die on HS2 route for lack of water Any large project will be disruptive, but compared to the other options, HS2 is actually pretty good. Consider one much-touted alternative: upgrading the West Coast Main Line with an extra pair of tracks for more capacity. There are several thousands houses built facing onto the line, and you’re going to need to knock them down to put a railway there. And it won’t be high-speed, it’ll be more expensive to do it, and it’ll be massively disruptive – not just for people losing their homes, but passengers who would face about a decade -- already benefited from a major upgrade programme ending in 2005; it took a decade of disruption and cost over £10bn in today’s money, provided only a fraction of the benefits of HS2, and is already full. Plans to upgrade it further were abandoned because they weren’t seen as practical, and planning for a new line that became HS2 is a direct result of that process. Will HS2 suffer from cost overruns? Probably. Delays? You bet. Infrastructure projects are rarely delivered on time anywhere in the world, not least in western democracies with little things like rule of -- nobody cares: you probably don’t even remember that the Channel Tunnel or Jubilee Line extension were fiascos in their time; nobody would get rid of them now. HS2 will be the same. It won’t solve every problem with the UK’s rail network, but it is a necessary part of solving a hell of a lot of them. If it gets scrapped, in 10 years’ time people -- sit on the floor of an overcrowded train. More about HS2 | high-speed trains | Commuter travel | Northern Powerhouse Rail | Planes Trains and Autobahns | Show{{#moreThan3_total}} {{value_total}} {{/moreThan3_total}} comments -- (BUTTON) Created with Sketch. HS2 is the only option for Britain’s railways 1/2 Part of the proposed route for the HS2 high speed rail scheme includes the Birmingham and Fazeley viaduct HS2/PA 2/2 Protests against HS2 have been fierce every since the project was open to a public consultation in 2010 Getty Images