EHS0077/EAC/14-15

High Speed UK—Written evidence

 

Executive Summary

  1. This response is made by Quentin Macdonald and Colin Elliff of High Speed UK, based in York.  We are both career railway engineers, having respectively over 50 and 30 years’ experience in the industry.  We are deeply concerned at the huge deficiencies of the HS2 proposals, from a number of viewpoints particularly capital and operating cost, connectivity gain (or lack of it), operational performance and environmental impact.  These concerns have led us to develop HSUK which is a complete alternative to HS2.

 

  1. We have answered the Select Committees questions by undertaking a rigorous comparison between High Speed UK on the one hand, and HS2 + HS3 on the other hand.   These comparisons cover the following issues with the corresponding results appended:
    1. Capital Cost – HS2 + HS3 £60B vs HSUK £40B
    2. Connectivity – HSUK 10 times better than HS2 and 7 times better than HS2 + HS3
    3. Journey time reductions – HSUK improves 488 journeys out of a basket of 528 journeys giving them an average journey time reduction of 40%.  HS2 + HS3 improves just 68 of the same 528 journeys but makes 171 worse than today.  The journey time savings are difficult to quantify in the absence of an HS2 timetable.
    4. Network capacity – HSUK has double the capacity of HS2 on the core London ‘stem’.
    5. Operational efficiency – HSUK connects to the existing network 55 times compared with 4 times for HS2.  HS2’s main fleet is captive to HS2 new build.
    6. CO2 reductions through modal shift, primarily from road to rail – HSUK saves 600 Million tonnes of CO2; HS2 saves none.
    7. Environmental impact – HS2 damages the Chilterns badly as well as many other features of the countryside like ancient woodlands.  HSUK avoids these problems entirely.

 

  1. The superior performance of HSUK against all these criteria shows clearly that HS2 has failed to pass these ‘acid tests’ and should be rejected as the favoured solution to the call for investment in high speed rail.

 

  1. We have asked the Select Committee to call for an enquiry to verify the HSUK claims.  Then, if the HSUK claims are shown to be justified, to recommend a way to proceed to deliver to the UK the properly integrated High Speed rail system that it needs and deserves.

 

Introduction

  1. This response is made by Quentin Macdonald and Colin Elliff of High Speed UK, based in York.  We are both career railway engineers, having respectively over 50 and 30 years’ experience in the industry.  We are deeply concerned at the huge deficiencies of the HS2 proposals, from a number of viewpoints particularly capital and operating cost, connectivity gain (or lack of it), operational performance and environmental impact.  These concerns have led us to develop HSUK which is a complete alternative to HS2.

The Design Principles of High Speed UK (USUK)

  1. Our proposals are contained on 350 sheets of mapping at 1:25,000 scale, covering almost 1,000km of new railway all the way from London to Glasgow.  At 1:25,000 all roads, rivers, railways and buildings are correctly shown to scale.  In the horizontal plane, straight sections, circular curves and transitions have been accurately designed so that the maximum speed at any given point is known as well as the land and property take.  Vertical curvature has also been calculated throughout.

 

  1. As a result it has been possible to develop a draft timetable which demonstrates that HSUK has a vastly superior performance in almost every conceivable respect when compared with HS2.

 

  1. For HSUK we have chosen a maximum speed of 360 km/h (224 mph).  HS2 has selected a design speed of 400 km/h (249 mph).  The lower speed of HSUK helps to minimises wear and tear in daily operation and makes very little practical difference to journey times as will be shown later.

 

  1. However the use of 360 km/h as the maximum design speed means that the minimum radius of curvature can be reduced from 7,100m (HS2) to 5,700m (HSUK).  This makes it easier to fit HSUK sympathetically into the landscape than is possible for HS2.

 

  1. Two sample sheets of the 350 sheets of mapping are shown at Annexe A.  These show that the use of 5,700m radius curves allows HSUK to follow the M1 closely where significant noise pollution already exists.

 

  1. Like HS2, HSUK proposes to use Euston as its London terminus.  Unlike HS2, HSUK does not propose to construct lengthy tunnels out to Old Oak Common and far beyond to Ruislip.  HS2 travels a total distance of 22.3km (13.9 miles) in tunnel from the Euston Portal to the West Ruislip Portal.

 

  1. Instead HSUK tunnels directly and deeply under Primrose Hill and the Hampstead Ridge for 2.4km (1.5 miles) just 11% of the distance tunnelled by HS2.  HSUK surfaces next to the Midland Main Line at West Hampstead station.  From there it is straightforward to build alongside the Midland Main Line and then pick up the alignment of the M1 just 8.9km (5.5 miles) from Euston and construct the HSUK tracks alongside it.

 

  1. The requirement for HS2 to serve Heathrow has been one of the driving forces for the creation of Old Oak Common station which has exerted a huge ‘gravitational pull’ upon the alignment of HS2, drawing it away from established intercity corridors and taking it instead into the more environmentally sensitive Chilterns and the rural areas of Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.  In addition to the major local environmental impacts, the following adverse effects apply to HS2.

 

 

9.1.                 Major communities along the M1/M6 corridor e.g. Luton/Dunstable (pop. 239,000), Milton Keynes (pop. 230,000), Northampton (pop. 213,000), Coventry (pop. 317,000), and Leicester (pop. 330,000) have been bypassed by HS2, and have been left with worsened intercity connections.

9.2.                 There is then no practicable option but to configure the proposed national high speed ‘network’ as the ‘Y’ of HS2.  This is a highly inefficient design, offering poor interregional connectivity and requiring excessive length of new construction when compared with the alternative very efficient ‘spine and spur’ of HSUK.

9.3.                 A controversial and heavily-tunnelled route through the Chilterns AONB costing many billions of pounds more is required by HS2 which will take longer to build than the more favourable M1 corridor route.

9.4.                 There is no practical possibility of establishing the necessary 4-track route from London to the Midlands via the Chilterns and as a consequence, the 2-track HS2 simply will not have enough train paths per hour to provide high speed services to all cities currently connected to the intercity network.

9.5.                 The 2-track HS2 also lacks the capacity to offer a significant number of direct regional services to Heathrow.  Under current projections for HS2 services1, most regional cities will not have direct services to Heathrow.

9.6.                 HS2 will be a high speed trunk route with minimal opportunity for connection to the existing network and will therefore be highly vulnerable to disruption.

 

  1. All the adverse effects listed above are an inevitable consequence of the Government’s specification (set out in the core remit for the HS2 project) for an interchange station at Old Oak Common.  With Old Oak Common treated as a non-negotiable requirement from the very start, this effectively compelled an exit route from London along the Central Line corridor via Ruislip.  There is then no alternative but to pass through the Chiltern AONB on the onward route to the north.  It also prevents fair and balanced consideration of alternative routes, most specifically the highly advantageous M1 corridor adopted by HSUK.

 

  1. HSUK will be developed primarily as an intercity network, following the M1 corridor on its exit route from London.  This is not only the least damaging route; it is also the most geographically favourable.  It can serve directly major population centres such as Luton & Dunstable (pop. 239,000), Milton Keynes (pop. 230,000) and Northampton (pop. 213,000), and it offers the ‘line of best fit’ to the primary conurbations in the East and West Midlands, Yorkshire and the North West.

 

  1. This is also an established historical fact, as is demonstrated not only by the route of the M1 (1959), but also by that of the London and Birmingham Railway (1838) (now the West Coast Main Line), the Grand Union Canal (1790) and Watling Street (Roman Britain).

 

 

1 Table 23, pp91-92, HS2 Regional Economic Impacts, DfT 2013 lists 2 direct regional services per hour from Heathrow.  These are intended to operate from a new high speed terminus at Heathrow (for which no proposals have yet been put forward) and will serve Manchester Piccadilly, and Birmingham Interchange/East Midlands Interchange/Meadowhall/Leeds New Lane (thus failing to serve the regional hubs at Birmingham New Street, Nottingham Midland, Leeds City Station, and thereby failing to achieve wider access to the respective conurbations).  For all other journeys, a change at Old Oak Common will be necessary.

  1. HSUK has abandoned the ‘straitjacket’ and the cost of Old Oak Common and, instead, has provided:

 

13.1.            An underground ‘London Interconnector’ linking King’s Cross/ St.Pancras, Euston, Tottenham Court Road (for Crossrail) and Waterloo;

13.2.            Direct hourly regional rail services to Heathrow and Gatwick airports without going into London,

 

The Overall HSUK Proposal

  1. A one page overview of the HSUK route design is included as Annex B.  The equivalent diagram for HS2 is Annex C.

 

  1. Full details of the HSUK proposals can be found on our website www.highspeeduk.co.uk.

 

Concern for the Environment

  1. This principle of following the M1 and other existing road and/or rail transport corridors has been followed as far as possible throughout the design all the way from London to Glasgow in order to minimise environmental damage.

 

  1. Apart from the basic principle of keeping all the noise pollution together in one place, this design has another major advantage for the Chilterns compared with HS2.  Luton and Dunstable lie in a gap in the Chiltern Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty with the M1 running between them.  HSUK follows the west side of the M1 to a point near Farley Hill where it tunnels northwards for almost 5km (3 miles) under the built up area around Leagrave, re-emerging in open country next to the west side of the M1, just north of the Dunstable built-up area.  HSUK is not built in the Chiltern AONB and therefore completely avoids any damage to it.

 

  1. One of HSUK’s crucial advantages over HS2 & HS3 combined is its integral high speed trans-Pennine link which delivers four major benefits for the North:

 

18.1.        HSUK connects Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield directly together, giving Yorkshire and the North-West a new east-west rail spine considerably increasing rail capacity and line speeds across the North.  These benefits extend along the HSUK north-south spine to the East Midlands and to the North-East and Scotland.

18.2.        The same tracks carry high speed services from Yorkshire and the North-West to London thereby reducing the overall amount of new construction needed.

18.3.        The old Great Central route through Longdendale will become the new trans-Pennine spine with the old Woodhead tunnels enlarged to Channel Tunnel dimensions as part of HSUK.

18.4.        This will allow, as a separate add-on project, the creation of a Swiss style M1 to M60 lorry shuttle with an accompanying lorry ban on several of the trans-Pennine Roads e.g. the A628 Woodhead Pass, the A57 Snake Pass and the A623 Peak Forest Road.

  1. The 2008 Climate Change Act requires Government to set an annual carbon budget to ensure that the UK follows a path which will reduce its CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050.

 

19.1.        As will be shown later, HSUK has 10 times better connectivity than HS2. This far superior connectivity is forecast to create a very significant modal shift from cars and trucks to trains.  In turn, that modal shift leads to a very significant forecast reduction in CO2 emissions.

19.2.        HSUK is forecasting a reduction of CO2 emissions by 600 million tonnes over 40 years making a 6% contribution to the overall 80% emissions reduction target.

19.3.        The ‘carbon neutral’ performance predicted for HS2 will make no contribution to CO2 reduction and is completely contrary to the spirit (if not the letter) of current climate change legislation.

19.4.        It is unthinkable that Government is proposing to spend upwards of £60 billion of taxpayers’ money on a transport scheme which contributes nothing to CO2 reduction while an alternative scheme which does, is simply being ignored.

19.5.        Whatever happened to joined-up-government?

 

  1. MAGIC is a web site managed by Natural England in partnership with DEFRA, English Heritage, Environment Agency, Forestry Commission and Marine Management Organisation.  The web site records every feature of the environment from battle sites and ancient monuments to SSSIs and ancient woodland, land and marine habitats as well as many, many other features of the countryside which must be of concern to responsible railway designers.  HSUK has made full use of this web site to ensure that environmental damage has been kept to the absolute minimum.

 

The Select Committee’s Questions

  1. Having given the Select Committee an initial introduction to HSUK, we decided to answer the Select Committee’s questions by giving an HS2 answer and then an HSUK answer so that the Select Committee can see just how much better HSUK actually is.

 

  1. Our work in developing HSUK dates from as far back as 2006 and we have been following HS2 progress throughout that time.  This has given us a unique perspective from which to make informed comment upon the Government’s HS2 proposals and we will be pleased to contribute further to the Select Committee’s Inquiry.

 

  1. We have answered the Select Committee’s Questions in the order set and numbered them accordingly.  We have also included concluding statements in respect of Policy for Rail Links to Heathrow (Additional Comment 1), Connections to High Speed 1 (HS1) (Additional Comment 2), and Public Policy (Additional Comment 3).

 

Question 1 – Is there an economic case for HS2?

  1. It is crucial to distinguish between the principle of high speed rail development, and the actuality of the Government’s HS2 proposals.  With HS2 presented to Parliament as the single ‘do something’ option, support for the principle of high speed rail development has seamlessly developed into support for the specifics of HS2.  We believe that the Government must do much more than simply demonstrate that there is an economic case for HS2.  We believe that this paper will show that there is a far better economic case for HSUK than for HS2.

 

  1. We are fully supportive of the Government’s aim, to improve the connectivity and capacity of the national transport system to deliver economic growth.  We believe that the intervention of new, higher speed railways is by far the best strategy to achieve that goal.  A better-connected and higher capacity rail system is vital not only to stimulate economic activity, but also to enable the step-change modal shift from road and air to rail that is essential to achieve reductions in transport CO2 emissions in compliance with the 2008 Climate Change Act.

 

  1. However, we are concerned that HS2 as proposed by the Government will not deliver the basic connectivity necessary to realise the predicted economic gains.  The majority of HS2’s stations are remote from existing stations (often requiring a walking transfer) and there is minimal connection between HS2 and the existing main lines as currently, only 4 connections are proposed at the time of completing this submission (14-09-14).

 

  1. HS2 is offered as a stand-alone railway effectively segregated from the existing national network.  The distance between the rails, the track gauge, is the same for HS2 as for the rest of the UK network (1,435mm or 4’8½”); so that is not the problem.  This segregation is the inevitable result of proposing to use trains built to continental loading gauge, UIC-C gauge, e.g. French TGVs, which are ‘fatter’ than trains built to the UK loading gauge e.g. Eurostars.  To run onto the existing intercity network, HS2 will need some trains built to the UK loading gauge which they refer to as “Classic Compatible”.  This means that the main fleet of High Speed trains built for HS2 will be captive on the HS2 new build lines.

 

  1. HSUK on the other hand will create a new build high speed spine railway fully integrated with the current inter-city rail network.  The integration is achieved through the provision of no less than 55 connections to the existing network.  It is proposed that all the trains built for the HSUK services will be built to the UK loading gauge, a modern Eurostar design, allowing any train to go anywhere off the new high speed line that is electrified at 25kV.

 

  1. The HSUK concept is that trains will run from all the existing city centre railway stations where there are existing local transport links with no need to reshape the local transport infrastructure.  It will then depend on the required stopping pattern as to which route a train will take.  For some journeys the whole journey will be on the new HSUK infrastructure.  For other journeys HSUK will be used in part and for a few others the train will just use the existing infrastructure.

 

  1. This approach gives the ideal railway to operate because as travel patterns and demand change over the years new services can be provided and old ones revised without any constraint because there are not enough trains of one size or another.

 

 

Cost Comparison

  1. HSUK does everything that HS2 plus HS3 can possibly do so it is right to compare the cost of HSUK with HS2+HS3.

 

  1. We have taken the price tag for HS2 from London to Newcastle and Glasgow including Green Book contingency allowances as £50 Billion.  That figure may be low because we do not have any figures from HS2 on the cost of reaching Scotland and have had to make some assumptions.  As explained earlier we have assumed that HS3 will cost £10 Billion giving a total of £60 Billion for   HS2 +HS3.

 

  1. We do not question the estimated cost of HS2 as their team will have all the skills for getting it right.  We on the other hand do not have the people available to do an estimate for HSUK so we have had to approach this in a different way.  We have taken a number of factors of HS2 like route length, length of tunnels, ease of build etc. and reduced that to unit costs which give the correct HS2 answer when applied to HS2 metrics.  We can then apply these figures to HSUK metrics to give a reasoned comparison.

 

  1. We find that whereas, HS2 + HS3 will cost £60 Billion to build the whole railway from London to Glasgow and Newcastle, HSUK will only cost £40 Billion to achieve a far better level of service to the same places.

 

  1. There are 3 principal reasons for this:

35.1.             HSUK follows existing transport corridors and generally less severe topography on the eastern side of the country making construction easier and more accessible and therefore cheaper.

35.2.             The HSUK new build route is 280km shorter than HS2.

35.3.             HSUK requires 150km less tunnel than HS2.

 

Connectivity Compared

  1. Connectivity is a word much thrown around in the discussions concerning HS2.  To aid understanding we offer the HSUK view of the word.

 

  1. HSUK suggests that the highest standard of connectivity is achieved when one only has a very short journey to the first railway station and one catches a single train to ones’ destination station and then has only a short trip to one’s final destination.  It cannot happen everywhere of course but with thoughtful infrastructure design and the creation of an imaginative timetable it is possible to make a very significant improvement to the quality and overall speed of the journeys which will be available in future.  This is precisely what HSUK has done.

 

  1. So, in the comparison of the connectivity of HS2 and HSUK we have taken the simple view that if a journey from A to B has been speeded up by the intervention of high speed rail, even if there is a change of trains involved, then connectivity has been improved.  Connectivity has got worse if the journey is slower or less frequent.  There is also a 3rd category of ‘No Change’
  2. We looked at every possible journey between 33 places to start from and the same 33 places as destinations and found that there are 528 possible different journeys discounting the return journey in every case.

 

  1. The places selected were: Aberdeen, Birmingham, Bradford, Chester, Coventry, Darlington, Derby, Doncaster, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Heathrow Huddersfield, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Luton, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, Northampton, Nottingham, Oxford, Perth, Peterborough, Preston, Sheffield, Stoke, Walsall, Warrington, Wolverhampton and York.  This was felt to be representative of the principal services on offer from either HS2 or HSUK.

 

  1. Each journey was then ranked as Improved or Not Improved or Made Worse.  The results are startling.  We have kept HS2 and HS3 separate and then added them together to make a comparison with HSUK.

 

 

  1. It is the result of that study that gives us the confidence to say that HSUK’s connectivity is 10 times better than HS2 and 7 times better than HS2+HS3.  The crucial point is that HSUK does everything that HS2+HS3 does and does it better and for £20billion less.

 

  1. We ask, but get no answers, why should any Government want to invest upwards of £60 billion in HS2 which makes no difference to 289 of the 528 journeys, makes 171 journeys worse and improves a paltry 68 journeys.  It makes no economic sense whatsoever, when for £20 billion less one can have a scheme which makes no difference to 40 journeys, makes none worse and improves 488 journeys out of 528.

 

  1. The average journey time reduction for those 488 journeys is 40% when compared with today’s timetable.  It is also worth saying that some of the HSUK journeys which are not speeded up are journeys such as Peterborough to Doncaster which already has direct services on the East Coast Mainline averaging 98mph point to point.

 

  1. This lack of HS2 connectivity places huge limitations on the performance of HS2 as a national transport system.  It can provide direct benefit to relatively few intercity journeys, and most of the population will remain reliant on the existing rail network where intercity services are proposed to be reduced2.  Without the necessary integration, HS2 cannot deliver the forecast economic benefits.  HS2’s lack of connectivity is also the root cause of its failure to achieve significant reductions in transport CO2 emissions3.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 Table 23, pp91-92, HS2 Regional Economic Impacts, DfT 2013

3 Table 2.5, p53, High Speed Rail, DfT Command Paper, 2010

 

 

  1. Government proposes to spend in excess of £60 billion to build HS2 and HS3.  We believe that three overlapping groups of people, the public at large, the taxpayers and those directly affected by the construction and subsequent operation of the railway would reasonably expect that the new high speed railway as proposed by the government is the best concept and the best design producing the best results that can be achieved for the money spent.

 

  1. Our analysis shows that HS2 is a very poor design which no government should be supporting because it is possible to spend £20 billion less and achieve so much more with far less environmental damage.  The HSUK design shows how this can be done.

 

  1. The case for full integration between high speed and existing networks is fully proved by HSUK’s vastly superior performance.  Across its full national scope, HSUK directly serves all existing regional hub stations (e.g. Birmingham New Street, Manchester Piccadilly and Leeds City), is connected to the existing network at 55 locations, and through these links extends to all secondary cities served by the existing network (most of which will be bypassed by HS2.

 

Journey Time Comparisons

  1. There have been various criticisms levelled at HSUK one of which is that with a top speed of only 360km/h then journeys are bound to be slower.

 

  1. There has also been uninformed criticism that HSUK cannot possibly match HS2’s headline timings on journeys like London to Birmingham, Manchester or Glasgow because of its ‘Spine and Spur’ configuration.

 

  1. HSUK decided to put this to the test, knowing that we have developed a timetable and HS2 has not, which meant a lot of work for HSUK.  The lack of an HS2 timetable was confirmed to us last October by Professor Andrew McNaughton who is Technical Director of HS2 Ltd. at a conference at Huddersfield University.  As a result, we have had to assess the HS2 times for them and they are welcome to look at our results and, if we have got it wrong, explain to us why.

 

  1. So with that caveat about the HS2 timings we set about comparing journey times between the same places for both designs.

 

  1. We decided to calculate the journey times from London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds to 11 places, namely London, Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Heathrow.  We felt that this was a broad enough sweep of places to make a fair comparison.
  2. After discounting return journeys and duplicates to avoid double counting that gives 33 possible journeys.  The results are given in the table below and clearly show that HSUK significantly outperforms HS2.

 

  1. Of particular note in the table above is that 11 of the 33 journeys are simply not improved in any way by the HS2 intervention and the HSUK improvement can therefore only be measured by comparing the HSUK time with the existing timetable.

 

  1. The other notable effect is the difference to Nottingham where HSUK serves the existing Nottingham station but the remote Toton station (aka East Midlands Interchange) takes its toll on the achievable journey time.

 

Conclusion to Question 1

  1. In short there would seem to be a strong economic case for not building HS2 but doing something more enlightened like HSUK which has been designed from the outset to improve significantly the rail services across the UK.

 

Question 2 – Should the Strategic Case for HS2 published in October 2013 by the Department for Transport and analysis from HS2 Ltd have taken account of any other factors in making an economic case for the project?  Is the expected range of the benefit cost ratio (BCR) persuasive?

 

  1. HS2 has claimed a BCR of just over 2.0; in the range of 2.1 to 2.3 we believe.  There has been much adverse comment about this low value though we will not comment further on whether that figure is high enough to justify the proposed expenditure.  HSUK on the other hand offers something like 10 times better connectivity which we believe will give rise to significantly better patronage than on HS2.  As a result the value of £Benefit is expected to rise significantly because there will be many more quicker and far more convenient services on offer.  On the cost side, the value of £Cost is expected to be some £20 billion lower.  Taken together these two changes might be expected to improve the value of the BCR by a factor of 1.5 to 2.5 putting the HSUK BCR into the range of say 3.5 to 5.5.  This would be likely to turn High Speed Rail from being a marginal investment in HS2, as many see it at present time, into a transformational project, HSUK, which is truly bankable.  We leave it to the economists who specialise in these matters to do the detailed analysis including the Net Present Value calculations which will be needed to come up with a reliable figure for HSUK’s BCR.

 

  1. We are concerned that the analysis undertaken by the DfT and HS2 Ltd makes no structured assessment of how the intervention of high speed rail might optimise connectivity and therefore the economic and environmental benefit.  It appears to have been assumed that building a new high speed line will act like a magnet and that new local transport infrastructure will appear automatically like magic to improve connectivity and that new local business will likewise pop up like mushrooms.  The cost of this is not of course included in the HS2 costings as far as we know and therefore seems unlikely to have been included in the BCR calculations.  We cannot see that any account has been taken of the adverse effects either of providing disconnected terminus stations (e.g. in Birmingham and Leeds) or of bypassing secondary cities e.g. Milton Keynes (pop. 230,000), Coventry (pop. 317,000), Stoke (pop. 249,000), Leicester (pop. 330,000), Derby (pop. 249,000), and Wakefield District (pop. 326,000).  That is 1.7 million people who will not benefit from HS2 because of the lack of an imaginative design.  As such, we believe that HS2 will achieve little overall connectivity benefit and hence the projected benefit cost ratio seems suspect.

 

  1. HS2 also appears to have no concept of what constitutes an ideal intercity network in which connectivity is optimised.  When designing HSUK, we have developed our national network with the guiding principle that all primary cities plus the national hub airport at Heathrow should be directly interlinked with intercity quality trains operating at hourly or better frequencies and accessing the existing regional hub stations where all the local connecting trains, busses and taxis are already located.

 

  1. HSUK meets this standard for 15 key UK centres – London, Heathrow, Milton Keynes, Birmingham, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Darlington (for Teesside [pop.377,000]), Newcastle (for Tyneside [pop. 775,000]), Edinburgh and Glasgow.  For all other principal UK centres that are currently connected to the intercity network, HSUK also offers major benefits in terms of improved journey times and greater availability of direct journeys, with no requirement to change trains.

 

Question 3 – What are the likely economic benefits of HS2 to the Midlands, to the North of England and to Scotland?   Do they also depend on complementary action by governments, local authorities and Local Enterprise Partnerships, for example measures to attract investment and skilled workers?

 

  1. The isolation of HS2 from the existing rail network means that, as described above, it cannot deliver the improvements in connectivity essential to deliver economic growth to any region in the UK.  There appears to have been an assumption that others e.g. local passenger transport authorities and Network Rail, will implement the necessary developments to local transport networks (both road and rail) to integrate local communities with HS2.  We do not believe that the costs for these works are included in the HS2 costs which means that there is a hidden element of the costing which should be clearly revealed.  One example of this effect will suffice.

 

  1. HS2 has planned an ‘East Midlands Interchange’ in the salubrious surroundings of the freight yard at Toton with Toton diesel locomotive maintenance depot nearby.  This is intended to supersede Leicester, Nottingham and Derby as the region’s primary intercity hub station.  It will need to be a new build station located on a freight-only line currently having no passenger services of any kind to interconnect with.  All the local transport links will have to be provided from scratch.  Meanwhile, just 6 miles away, a multi-million pound modernisation of Nottingham station has recently been completed providing full integration, with the ever expanding Nottingham Express Transit (NET); their excellent new tram system.  This has been done by building a bridge over the top of the railway station to integrate the two new tram lines to the south of the city with the existing lines to the north and also connecting directly with the existing rail services, both long distance and local from Nottingham station.  HSUK has not let that kind of excellent opportunity slip and the HSUK network and timetable has been designed to ensure that Nottingham station is directly served by HSUK.

 

  1. From our perspective, experienced in railway engineering and railway operations, we would comment that it is rarely possible to retrofit integration onto a fundamentally segregated line like HS2.  Integration can only be achieved if it is planned into the system from the start.  In the case of the East Midlands, High Speed UK’s alternative strategy of full integration will make the centrally-located stations at Leicester, Nottingham and Derby into key transport hubs in an enhanced national rail network.  Journey times and availability of direct services will be hugely improved, offering far greater benefits for the region than HS2 possibly can at their disconnected ‘East Midlands Interchange’.  Similar examples can be provided for other UK regional centres.

 

Question 4 – Might some parts of the UK suffer economic disadvantage from HS2?

 

  1. There is a clear priority, dictated by the existing distribution of population, for developing high speed rail in a northward direction from London, rather than westward.  As such, major cities such as Bristol and Cardiff might appear to be disadvantaged.  Their rail connections to London are being addressed by means of the Great Western Main Line Electrification already in progress.  However, these cities and their services to surrounding regions particularly further north will suffer far greater direct disadvantage through HS2’s proposed terminal ‘solution’ in Birmingham. 
  2. Here, it is proposed to operate high speed interregional services from the new Curzon Street terminus station to Northern and Scottish cities, while trains from Cardiff and Bristol will continue to arrive at the existing New Street station.  Passengers wishing to make a through journey using high speed services will be forced to make a walking transfer between the two stations.  This is hugely regressive, and threatens the basic integrity of the national rail network for which New Street is effectively the hub.

 

  1. By contrast, under the integrated High Speed UK proposals, Birmingham New Street will remain the intercity/high speed hub for the West Midlands, with high speed cross country services extending from the high speed trunk route in the East Midlands via Derby and Birmingham New Street to Cardiff, Bristol, and other south-western centres.

 

  1. As already noted, HS2 has been designed to bypass many major regional centres including Coventry, Stoke, Leicester and Derby.  With these cities also likely to see reductions in intercity services on the existing main lines4, it seems clear that they will be positively disadvantaged by the advent of HS2.  Any benefits achieved by HS2 would appear to be highly localised around the new high speed stations, and there is a likelihood of ‘zero sum gain’ by which the economic gains around the new stations are matched by losses in the disconnected surrounding cities.

 

  1. Although it would be possible for more connections to be provided between HS2 and the existing network enabling these bypassed cities to be served, HS2 only has 2 tracks between Birmingham and London.  This 2-track stem of HS2 simply cannot provide sufficient train paths per hour to carry services to all regional cities currently served by the intercity network.  This will lead inevitably to a 2-tier 2-speed Britain in which HS2 will serve only the ‘primary’ cities, while most ‘secondary’ cities will remain reliant on the existing network on which intercity services are projected to be reduced.

 

  1. This problem is completely avoided by HSUK’s full integration with the existing network, and because its design has 4 tracks all the way from Euston at least to Leicester and, subject to further traffic studies, probably to Killamarsh Junctions just south of Sheffield.  This gives HSUK double the number of train paths per hour on the southern stem of the route and is what allows intercity services to be enhanced by using HSUK as necessary to improve services to all cities currently served by the national intercity network.

 

  1. It is a matter of huge concern that the economic and transport analysis underpinning the HS2 proposals appears to have neglected these fundamental issues of lost connectivity simply accepting that HS2 will favour a few cities by serving them and ignoring many more by bypassing them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 Table 23, pp91-92, HS2 Regional Economic Impacts, DfT 2013

Question 5 – Is London likely to be a main economic beneficiary of HS2?

 

  1. The HS2 ‘Y’ is designed to focus directly upon London.  The HS2 map in Annex C gives the simple impression that HS2 has just been designed to be a high speed conduit to London and nothing else.  To a lesser extent Birmingham will have services to other places.  But how about making a journey from Manchester to Newcastle?  Not on HS2 you won’t though HS3 may help to address that.  It therefore seems inevitable that any economic gains will be concentrated in London.  Hence HS2 seems more likely to reinforce the North-South Divide, rather than to redress it.  It is also of great concern, that the Government has recently decided to omit any link to HS1 from the HS2 Bill.  That will serve to continue the current isolation of regional economies from Continental markets except by air.  This issue is addressed later in the paper.

 

  1. These deficiencies have arisen from an apparent belief that faster links to London are all that is required to stimulate the regional economies.  This is quite wrong, although the belated ‘HS3’ initiative may mean that Government has seen a little of the light.  The reality is that rail links within the regions and between the regions are in greatest need of improvement, along with better connections to international aviation particularly to Heathrow and Gatwick as well as future direct rail links to the Continent via HS1.  HSUK has been designed to meet all of these requirements.

 

 

Question 6 – How might the expected benefits of HS2 to the national economy be realised?

 

  1. The economic benefits of HS2 will only be realised if it is entirely reconfigured to achieve the integration with the existing network that is necessary to improve national connectivity in a balanced and symmetrical manner across the country.  Despite several hundreds of millions having already been spent on HS2 it will be simpler and cheaper to ditch HS2 in favour of the HSUK design.  This shows that 10 times better connectivity can be achieved by HSUK than HS2 by using the correct design philosophy.  HS2 cannot benefit the national economy because it does not have the connectivity required.

 

Question 7 – How should HS2 be operated?  As a franchise in competition with West and East Coast Main Lines?

 

  1. Much of HS2’s suboptimal performance gives rise to a suspicion that it has been configured as an isolated and disconnected ‘system’ to conform with an assumed franchise model that it would be let as a single franchise and run in isolation.  The problem is that this kind of design is not the high speed enhancement needed by the existing network.  The ‘franchising’ tail really should not be allowed to wag the ‘enhanced network’ dog and yet that is what appears to be happening.

 

  1. It is vital that one or more franchising models are developed for high speed rail that harmonise fully with optimum functioning of the national rail network.  One straightforward option could be to appoint no train service operator but allow existing franchise holders, using high speed trains, to bid to enhance their existing services.  This model would suit HSUK very well.

 

Question 8 – Should travellers expect to pay higher fares on HS2 than on other lines?

 

  1. We see no reason why travellers should not pay an appropriate premium for improved train services.  But we see it as more important that high speed rail is developed in such a way that travellers are presented with a genuine choice – either to pay a higher fare for a higher-speed journey, or a lower fare for a slower journey along the existing lines.  But under HS2, that choice will rarely exist. 

 

  1. For instance, as already noted, cities such as Coventry (pop. 317,000) and Stoke (pop. 249,000) will be bypassed by HS2, and will be left reliant on slower and less frequent intercity services on the existing network.  Unless travellers make a circuitous journey to the nearest high speed station (Coventry residents to Birmingham Interchange or Stoke residents to Crewe Hub), they will be unable to access HS2 and in making these diversions, they will lose most if not all of the projected time savings.  This is not a good prospect for cities of their size and economic importance.

 

  1. Under the fully integrated HSUK design both Coventry and Stoke will have direct access to high speed services giving another 566,000 people ready access to an improved national network.

 

Question 9 – Does the prospect of HS3 affect the economic case for HS2?

 

  1. We understand the recently announced HS3 to be a projected high speed link between Manchester and Leeds, extending westwards towards Liverpool and north and eastwards towards Newcastle and Hull.  It was said to be exploiting the existing infrastructure though which particular line was not specified.  At the present time the details are few and the costs appear to be a guess though we have seen the figure of £10 billion put on it and have used that figure in the absence of anything better.  When the HS2 project was launched in 2009/10 any prospect of a trans-Pennine link was rejected in favour of developing the existing trans-Pennine routes as part of the Northern Hub initiative5.  However, as people living east of the Pennines were only too well aware, the much trumpeted Northern Hub would do absolutely nothing for them so this change of heart by Government is to be welcomed.

 

  1. As a consequence of initially rejecting a trans-Pennine link, HS2 has been developed as a highly London-centric ‘Y’, with no account taken of the need for commensurate connectivity giving improvements across the Pennines.  Clearly nobody in Whitehall has ever tried a weekday evening rush hour train from Huddersfield to Leeds which rivals any crush loading London has to offer.  We at HSUK know both well.  In particular, terminus stations are proposed at both Leeds and Manchester which are wholly incompatible with any future high speed trans-Pennine link.  Such a link must logically be a through route from Liverpool to Newcastle/Hull, without reversal at either Manchester or Leeds.  That is simply not possible with the HS2 proposals.

 

 

5 Item 4.31, p74, High Speed Rail, DfT Command Paper, 2010

 

  1. It must be stressed that there is no inherent merit in the ‘Y’ of HS2.  This constitutes a highly inefficient solution, in that it requires long arms to extend northwards to either side of the Pennines with separate spurs to access each major city, yet offers very little in the way of interregional connectivity (most importantly, no trans-Pennine link to connect the primary northern communities of Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield).  By contrast, High Speed UK, using the very efficient ‘spine and spur’ design, achieves much greater connectivity for a significantly shorter route length and therefore cost.

 

  1. In all cases, the fully integrated and holistically planned High Speed UK vastly outperforms HS2 + HS3.  This demonstrates clearly that HS2 should have been planned from the start as an integrated national network.  Failure to do so has rendered the current HS2 proposals unfit for purpose and, in terms of the Inquiry of the Select Committee, ineffective as a means of generating national economic growth.  The Government’s ‘HS3’ initiative is welcome as an acknowledgement of the importance of trans-Pennine links, but it cannot remedy the fundamental deficiencies of HS2.

 

  1. It should be emphasised that almost at the inception of HS2 in 2009, the Government’s advisors at HS2 Ltd were advised of the alternative HSUK concept (then entitled High Speed North).  This message has been consistently repeated, in the form of consultation responses and other engagement.  Yet the Government has persistently refused to engage with the HSUK alternative, and continues to ignore it as it presses ahead with the hugely sub-optimal HS2.

 

Additional Comment 1 – Interaction between HS2 and Aviation Policy

 

  1. One of HS2’s primary aims has always been to improve rail links to Heathrow.  This has been a response to widely-shared concerns at the adverse economic impact of the very poor rail links to Heathrow from most regional cities generally involving a Tube journey upon arrival at most London Terminal stations.

 

  1. We share these concerns, and we believe that high speed rail must be developed in such a way as to provide radically improved links from the UK regions to international aviation.  But we are concerned that the requirement to achieve a ‘high speed’ connection to Heathrow has had a hugely adverse effect upon HS2’s performance as an intercity railway, capable of improving national connectivity and providing much needed extra capacity.

 

HS2 Links to Heathrow

 

  1. The HS2 strategy for serving Heathrow appears to have two parts.  Firstly there is a proposal to operate 2 direct regional services per hour from a new High Speed terminus at Heathrow for which no details have been published.  They will serve Manchester Piccadilly, Birmingham Interchange, East Midlands Interchange, Sheffield Meadowhall and Leeds New Lane thereby failing to serve vast swathes of the country.  If that is not convenient then prospective passengers have the alternative option of catching a train on HS2 which stops at Old Oak Common and changing onto a Heathrow train there.

 

  1. The damaging and costly effect of taking the line to Old Oak Common has been noted earlier and once again there is a ‘tail and dog’ effect in action.  The tail of ‘Old Oak Common to Heathrow connections’ has been allowed to distort the dog of ‘proper HS2 connectivity’.

 

  1. In all of the outputs of the HS2 project, there appears to have been no recognition of the clear fact that, however desirable the outcome of improved regional connections to Heathrow might be, they have had the undesirable effect of seriously compromising HS2’s efficiency as a national intercity network which must remain its core purpose.  With HS2 unable to optimise national intercity connectivity, it cannot constitute an effective intervention capable of generating economic growth, or driving necessary major reductions in CO2 emissions.

 

HSUK Links to Heathrow

 

  1. HSUK has adopted a radically different strategy to resolve the separate aims of a) improving UK intercity connectivity and b) improving regional access to the UK’s hub airport Heathrow as well as to Gatwick.

 

  1. Rail access to Heathrow will be improved through the development of the existing Heathrow Express system which currently starts at Paddington (though soon to have trains from Crossrail) and, after calling at Heathrow Central for Terminals 1, 2 & 3, terminates either at Terminal 4 or at Terminal 5.

 

  1. At the moment Heathrow Express only has an easterly connection into central London.  HSUK has a separate strategy for improving overall access to Heathrow called ‘Compass Point’6 which would extend the Heathrow Express services to the north, south, and west.  For the immediate purpose of HSUK it is only the northern extension which is included in the HSUK costs.  The northern arm is partly new build railway running parallel to the Hayes by-pass but mostly upgrading existing lines to get access to HSUK at Cricklewood and in particular a new station on ThamesLink referred to here as Brent Cross.

 

  1. The proposed Compass Point system would function primarily as a regional system, intersecting with all main lines radiating from London, at Woking (SWML), Reading (GWML), Ruislip (Chiltern), Watford Junction (WCML), Brent Cross (MML) and Stevenage (ECML).  This will allow passengers from Heathrow to connect to main line intercity services, and will effectively place most regional centres a single change of trains from the national aviation hub at Heathrow.

 

 

 

 

6 The concept of the Compass Point network was originally advanced in the paper Rails Around London – In Search of the Railway M25 by Colin Elliff, published by the Institution of Civil Engineers May 2001.

 

 

  1. Compass Point will also intersect with High Speed UK at Brent Cross.  This will allow high speed services from the UK regions to follow the circumferential route of the Northern Orbital Arm (mostly along existing lines) to directly access the Central Terminal Area and Terminal 5 at Heathrow.  The fundamental routeing efficiency of High Speed UK – whereby several cities are located on a single line of route – allows all primary regional centres to be served with just 4 separate trains.  This has two highly beneficial effects; firstly, the trains will be well filled, and secondly, relatively few ‘paths’ on the high speed line will be consumed by airport services.

 

  1. High Speed UK thus offers an unprecedented opportunity, for the regional hinterlands of the UK to be efficiently connected to the national hub airport by hourly direct trains.  This is effectively optimised ‘hub and spoke’ aviation – but with the spokes comprising frequent and comprehensive train services, rather than feeder flights operating at irregular frequency and offering patchy national coverage.

 

Heathrow + Gatwick = Heathwick

 

  1. There is no reason why rail services from the regions should terminate at Heathrow.  Gatwick is located only 45km from Heathrow, less than 15 minutes away by high speed train.  Providing a dedicated High Speed rail route between Heathrow and Gatwick will permit the two airports to function as a virtual single airport with ‘airside’ to ‘airside’ shuttle trains operating to transfer transit passengers, transit luggage and cargo between the two airports.

 

  1. All this is included in the HSUK plans, though not the costings, with detailed alignments developed at 1:25,000 scale for the direct link between Heathrow and Gatwick.  The 45km of new high speed railway on a heavily-tunnelled route through the sensitive commuter belt might conservatively be estimated at £4.5 billion construction cost (@£100M/km) but that is cheap compared with the double-digit billion costs associated with new airports in the Thames Estuary, or an expanded Heathrow.

 

  1. Above all, detailed plans already exist for a second operational runway at Gatwick giving Heathrow and Gatwick combined 4 operational runways.  This would constitute the 4 runway London hub airport for which the aviation industry is pressing and which is also provided with high quality rail services to the rest of the UK that will deliver widespread economic benefit.

 

  1. HSUK has made a formal submission of this proposed high speed rail link between Heathrow and Gatwick to the Airports Commission chaired by Sir Howard Davis.  We also supplied the Commission with the details of the whole of the HSUK proposal and the Compass Point network for improved rail access to Heathrow and Gatwick from the regional cities.

 

Additional Comment 2 – Link to High Speed 1

  1. Including a link between HS2 and HS1 was always a core requirement for HS2.  After Sir David Higgins arrived at HS2 one of the first casualties was the proposed redevelopment of the North London Line to perform this link.  The reason given was that it was too expensive and did not offer value for money. 

 

  1. However it was also clear that it would do significant damage to the Camden Market area of north London.  So HS2 is not now intended to link with HS1.

 

  1. HSUK approaches Euston down the Midland Main Line (MML) which terminates in St. Pancras Station.  HSUK will have access to the MML tracks and could send a train into St. Pancras if required.

 

  1. It only requires a few minor modifications to the track layout at Kentish Town and in St. Pancras itself to give HSUK access to the 6 international platforms numbers 5 to 10.  From those platforms HS1 can be accessed directly.

 

  1. Since the UK does not look likely to join the Schengen Area any time soon, performing a ‘bounce back’ to access HS1 will hardly be an inconvenience since border controls will have to be carried out at St. Pancras anyway.

 

  1. The cost of these works is estimated to be of the order of £500,000 (for the avoidance of doubt that really is just half a million pounds).

 

  1. It is recognised that additional money may need to be spent at St. Pancras to facilitate the Border Control at St. Pancras for UK regional trains proceeding to and from HS1 and using the Channel Tunnel.

 

Additional Comment 3 - Public Policy

 

  1. Amongst the many technical deficiencies of the Government’s HS2 proposals, it is clear that these proposals also run contrary to several aspects of public policy including:

 

107.1.        Total disregard for compliance with the 2008 Climate Change Act as HS2 is unable to offer any reduction in CO2 emissions;

107.2.        Public policy expects there to be budgetary restraint in public projects.  HS2 has failed to design a system with the most ‘bang for the buck’.  Comparative estimates indicate that HSUK will be about £20 billion cheaper to construct and will be able to do so much more

107.3.        Public policy favours regional development which is balanced across the regions.  The HS2 design favours London at the expense of the regions;

107.4.        Public policy expects local communities and rural environments to be protected in the face of large infrastructure schemes.  HS2 has unnecessarily chosen a very damaging route through the Chilterns and will damage many other parts of the rural environment;

107.5.        Public policy and Local Plans always favour town centre development or redevelopment over further out-of-town development.  In a number of cases, e.g. Toton, HS2 simply ignores this requirement;

107.6.        Public policy always seeks to get new transport developments properly integrated with existing transport systems to best effect.  Because HS2 has been designed as a stand-alone system, it fails this test on a grand scale.

Conclusions

 

  1. We have undertaken rigorous comparison between High Speed UK on the one hand, and HS2 + HS3 on the other hand.  These comparisons cover the following issues with the corresponding results appended:

 

108.1.         Cost – HS2 £60B vs HSUK £40B

108.2.         Connectivity – HSUK 10 times better than HS2 and 7 times better than HS2 + HS3

108.3.         Journey time reductions – HSUK improves 488 journeys out of a basket of 528 journeys giving them an average journey time reduction of 40%.  HS2 + HS3 improves just 68 of the same 528 journeys but makes 171 worse than today.  The journey time savings are difficult to quantify in the absence of an HS2 timetable.

108.4.         Network capacity – HSUK has double the capacity of HS2 on the core London ‘stem’.

108.5.         Operational efficiency – HSUK connects to the existing network 55 times compared with 4 times for HS2.  HS2’s main fleet is captive to HS2 new build.

108.6.         CO2 reductions through modal shift, primarily from road to rail – HSUK saves 600 Million tonnes of CO2; HS2 saves none.

108.7.         Environmental impact – HS2 damages the Chilterns badly as well as many other features of the countryside like ancient woodlands.  HSUK avoids these problems entirely.

 

  1. The superior performance of HSUK against all these criteria shows clearly that HS2 has failed to pass these ‘acid tests’ and should be rejected as the favoured solution to the call for investment in high speed rail.

 

  1. We consider it essential that the Government conducts a far-reaching and independent Inquiry whose terms of reference would include but not be limited to:

 

110.1.        Establishing whether the claims made by HSUK in this paper about the deficiencies of HS2 and the superiority of HSUK are justified;

110.2.        Establishing the reasons why the HS2 proposals have progressed so far towards legislative powers without adequate technical or procedural scrutiny;

110.3.        Establishing how other apparently superior proposals have been dismissed, without justification;

110.4.        Then, if the HSUK claims are shown to be justified, recommending a way to proceed to deliver to the UK the properly integrated High Speed rail system that it needs and deserves.

 

  1. It is hoped that the Select Committee will recognise that HSUK has a considerable quantity of supporting documentation which it was not appropriate to include in this submission, for example a further 348 sheets of mapping at 1:25,000.  HSUK will be pleased to supply any further information that the Select Committee may wish to see.  We will also be ready, as required, to meet the Select Committee to answer questions to clarify both the HSUK proposal and its methodology.

 

September 2014


ANNEX A

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ANNEX B

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Annex C

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Slide taken from a presentation to the ICE West Midlands on 7th April 2011

by Andrew McNaughton, Technical Director of HS2 Ltd.

END of Annexes