HS2: hanging in the balance
It was a “torrid” week for HS2, said Michael Savage in The Observer. An official review, leaked in draft form to the FT, found that the final cost of the 345-mile high-speed rail link between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds could amount to as much as £106bn – almost double the current budget of £56bn, and more than three times the original estimate of £32.7bn. At the same time, a National Audit Office report suggested that the line’s first phase, from London to Birmingham, might not open until 2036, more than a decade later than planned. It criticised the Department for Transport and the governmentowned HS2 Ltd for underestimating the project’s complexity – prompting ever-louder calls from critics, including dozens of Tory MPs, to scrap the idea and invest in upgrading other services instead.
Boris Johnson is expected to make a decision on HS2’s future in the coming weeks. Either way, he faces a “dilemma”, said Christian Wolmar in The Guardian. Various arguments have been put forward in support of the project, since it was initiated by a Labour government more than a decade ago. But none has provided a “clear rationale” for spending such huge sums. Over the years, the business case has been “wrecked” by “out of control” spending, while “widespread desecration” of rural areas – along with HS2’s admission that the line “will not reduce carbon emissions” – means the environmental case does not “hold up either”. But pulling out now would incur costs of £12bn – and the PM’s decision is made more difficult by the fact that his recent election victory was based on a surge in support for the Tories in areas of the Midlands and the North that would most benefit from a high-speed line. Having promised not to take his new-found voters for granted, can he really afford now simply to “ditch HS2 and cover his tracks with some piffle about supporting our friends in the North” in other ways?
It’s true that the case for HS2 has “never been properly made”, said Chris Blackhurst in The Independent. But as someone who travels often from London to the North, it’s clear to me that “it has to happen”. With demand for rail doubling in the past 20 years alone, an efficient service capable of transporting 85 million people a year between the country’s four largest urban areas is a “no-brainer”. It would join up communities, free up capacity on other routes, and consign “at least the physical North-South divide” to the past. Yes, it would come at a cost. But if we want to “bring the country into the 21st century”, it is a price we will have to pay.