HS2 : the Top 10 Myths explained!

In our brand new episode on Green Signals, we dive deep into HS2 and debunk the Top 10 myths. To jump straight to each myth, check out the timings in the list below.

Contents of Video

0:00 – Music & Intro and welcome
02:34 – What’s coming up on this week’s show
03:35 – Mr President and the Class Forty Preservation Society
04:55 – 400 miles of heritage railways in the UK
05:30 – No. 1 – Costs have spiralled out of control
12:42 – No. 2 – HS2 has always been about getting to London a bit quicker!
18:49 – No. 3 – Falling benefits mean we get back less than we are spending
31:22 – No. 4 – We can easily divert money saved from HS2 to other projects
33:34 – No. 5 – Investing in the existing network is better value anyway
35:10 – No. 6 – Private Finance will sort out Euston station
37:20 – No. 7 – HS2 trains will still go to Manchester with no negative impact
40:35 – No. 8 – HS2 destroys 108 Ancient Woodlands
44:13 – No. 9 – It costs 10x as much to build in the UK than rest of world
51:30 – No. 10 – HS2 is the worst infrastructure decision for 50 years!
52:36 – Summary of the 10 myths
55:30 – Closing remarks

We also chat briefly about the role volunteers play in keeping the heritage rail sector alive in the UK – and Richard (aka Mr President!) tells Nigel about his recent day out with the Class 40 Preservation Society.

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 [Music] goodbye