HS2 definitely not a “History Defining Moment”

On Monday (9 Jan), the pro-HS2 campaign will continue by attempting to call a decision in favour a ‘History Defining Moment’.

This is of course nonsense. It is not history to build one more high speed rail line when we already have more than most of our competitors. The EU designates the West Coast, East Coast and Great Western lines as high speed and they could be faster still. They are artificially limited to 125mph because of old fashioned signalling. In 2009, we were only behind Japan and France in miles of HSR.

The only thing that is new is an over specified speed, entirely inappropriate to our closely packed together main cities.

The IEA has already raised concerned that HSR will be a Great Government Disaster.

A few years ago the IEA published an excellent report Government foul ups going back to the R101. Many relate to transport and HS2 carried all the same hallmark of disaster.

HS2 suffers from over optimistic forecasts, focusing on prestige rather than practicality and ignoring the business case. There are strong similarities with Concorde: a sleek and sexy way for a few mainly rich people to get from A to B faster at massive cost to the taxpayer and environment.