An artists impression of the planned Curzon Street Station in central Birmingham Grimshaw Architects/Press Association Images

In one of the most comprehensive critiques of HS2 since its conception, a report from the left-leaning think tank New Economics Foundation (NEF) calls for the high-speed rail link to be scrapped and the money used to improve existing services.

The report’s key finding is that HS2 will not, as has been advertised, relieve inequality between the north and the south of England. Instead, it will significantly exacerbate it.


The figures provide a regional breakdown of passenger benefits, largely measured in saved journey and waiting time. Forty per cent of these benefits will flow to London, despite the capital making up less than 25 per cent of the UK’s economy. London transport spending already stands at a ratio of about four to one compared to the north. “In spite of all of the rhetoric about rebalancing, it's not going to happen,” says the report’s author, Andrew Pendleton.

A key argument made in the report is that the UK’s existing rail network needs significant investment as a whole. As stated in the report: “it is not a choice between HS2 or nothing, but a question of strategically purposeful investment everywhere”. The NEF makes multiple recommendations for an alternative use of the funds spent on HS2. It proposes a “rail investment fund” of £55.2 billion to be spent over the next ten years, which would address the north-south divide. Recommendations include reopening the Woodhead line to provide another connection between Sheffield and Manchester; creating a Bradford Crossrail to create faster links between Cumbria and the north-west and Yorkshire and the Midlands; and the electrification of much of the core north of England network, as well as the Midland and Great Western lines.

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Britain's suitability for a high-speed rail network has been questioned since the project’s outset. Three years before then transport secretary Andrew Adonis’s decision to greenlight HS2 in 2009, a comprehensive report into links between transport and the UK’s economic productivity argued that the government should focus on improving existing rail networks, rather than “high-speed rail networks that would not significantly change the level of economic connectivity between most parts of the UK”. Despite this, and despite a leaked document from the government's Infrastructure and Projects Authority revealing that HS2 would overshoot its £56 billion budget by as much as 60 per cent, the project still commands support from the government and the rail industry.

Most crowding, Pendleton says, occurs on trains travelling at commuter distances, rather than at the long distance journeys HS2 is geared towards. Almost 70 per cent of rail journeys in 2016 and 2017 took place in London and the south-east, whereas eight per cent were long distance. “These long distance trains are actually at about half full across the day,” says Pendleton. For instance, a train coming out of London Euston – like a service that goes out to Birmingham or onwards to Crewe or Liverpool – may be overcrowded, but, according to Pendleton, the majority of passengers will be commuting and get off at Milton Keynes. Another reason HS2 is unsuitable, says Pendleton, is that the UK is a relatively small space with small distances between dense population areas. “So, arguably, it's the wrong kind of approach to have that kind of high-speed spinal network.”


Not everyone agrees. A Department for Transport spokesperson said the claim that HS2 will increase the north-south divide was “utterly false” and that the project represented a “massive investment” in the north and Midlands.

Anson Jack, professor of international railway benchmarking at the Birmingham Centre for Rail Research and Education, echoes the government's criticism. “Saying it is better to spend the money on upgrading existing railways is nonsense, as no upgrade would get close to delivering the capacity to move people and to relieve other routes that HS2 does.” Jack argues that joining the big three non-London cities will disperse economic wellbeing to the benefit of those living in the north and Midlands. “If the detractors were to look at Japan and the economic and social benefits that have accrued to places like Kyoto, Fukuoka and Hiroshima from being connected to the main cities of Tokyo and Osaka, or to look at the connectedness that is being created between all of China’s main cities through investment in high speed rail, they would want more of this, not less.”

For Pendleton, HS2 was conceived under the influence of a misguided, top-down economic model. He calls it “trickle down transport” – the idea that if you pour money into an expensive development project the communities in need will indirectly benefit. But Pendleton argues that intercity trains and high-speed rail tend to be used by wealthy people: HS2’s cost-benefit hinges on a half to two-thirds of the passengers being business travellers. “This isn't a rail line for everyone. It's a rail line for relatively rich people, mostly living in London.” He says that we should focus investment on areas that have been historically neglected, like the north of England. “If we haven't learned this lesson through Brexit, I don't know when we will learn it”.

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Most critically, the problem with HS2 is that it will likely suck investment away from already underfunded rail networks. Pendleton cites last year's cancellation of electrifying the Midland Main Line as an example. “If you’re not on HS2 or you are not served well by the services that will connect with HS2, then it may make your travel worse.”

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