HS2, what’s it all about? Going back to basics.

What is HS2?

HS2 or High Speed 2 as it's being called is a planned high speed rail link from London to the North. The plan is to construct a line starting at Euston Station which will then exit London and continue to the West Midlands. Once near Birmingham a spur will take the line into the city centre, with the main line itself connecting to the West Coast Main Line (WCML) near to Lichfield.

The following project outline is for HS2 phase one which will initially connect London to the West Midlands and the WCML near to Lichfield.

Proposed HS2 phase 1 route released by HS2 Ltd in Jan 2012

Click on the map to enlarge

Click HERE to see the full map as published on the Dft web site 


The line will consist of a terminal at London Euston, a station at Old Oak Common that will allow for connections with CrossRail, Heathrow Express and the GWML, a station for Birmingham International Airport and the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) and a terminal in Birmingham city centre with its main entrance adjacent to Moor Street station, next to the Bullring. From Old Oak Common, there will also be a connection with HS1 (High Speed 1) to allow for direct services to Europe.

From day one HS2 will offer services from places such as Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow. The services proposed beyond the West Midlands will utilise what are being called “classic compatible” trains. They will be able to run on the ‘conventional’ WCML at standard speed, then when they reach a junction near Lichfield they will be able to run at high speed up to 225mph (360k/mh) to London. This will mean that Birmingham and cities from across the north will be able to enjoy a journey time saving of between 25 and 35 minutes, as well as the increased capacity than only the construction of a new line can provide. 

See below for a map showing planned services that will be offered from day one.


Prosed phase 1 service map

Click on the map to enlarge

As mentioned before, the above plans are for phase one of the project which is due for completion in 2026. The plan is then to continue HS2 over two branches — with one line going to Manchester (then to rejoin the WCML near Warrington) and another line continuing to Leeds (then to rejoin the ECML near York). It is the long term goal of the government to build a high speed line that reaches from London all the way to Scotland. But this will take some time given the large scale nature of the project.

HS2 phase one will be the first step in a truly national high speed rail network connecting the North to the South and beyond to the rest of Europe.

Why build it?

HS2 is an exciting project which will usher in a new age of rail travel in the UK, cutting journey times in its first stage by 25 to 35 minutes — and by much more in the second stage — to some of the UK’s biggest cities. But HS2 isn’t all about fancy new high speed trains, it is a crucial project that will secure the UK’s economic future and ensure that our transport network has the capacity to handle future passenger demand.

The WCML is the busiest mixed-traffic rail corridor in Europe and is already close to its capacity limit even after the government spent 10 years and almost £10bn improving the line. Despite this there is just 1 train path per hour spare on the line which can easily be absorbed by freight movements or delays in services. The more crowded a line becomes the less reliable it is. It is for this reason that government has made a decision that it simply isn’t cost effective to keep ploughing billions of pounds into the WCML or indeed the ECML to try and keep up with demand. That is why the Secretary of State for transport has given the go ahead to the HS2 scheme which unusually has the backing of all 3 of the main political parties.

The cost

Unfortunately there is no getting away from the fact that any project of this scale will cost a great deal of money. Stage 1 of project — from London to Birmingham and Lichfield, and the link across London to HS1 — is predicted to cost around £17bn (with the inclusion of a 66% ‘optimism bias’ insisted upon by the Treasury). The 'optimism bias' will help to keep the construction of the line within budget as the actual capital costs for the line are said to be £12bn, this means that up to £5bn of the cost is simply to allow for cost overruns and unexpected delays.  


This is a lot of money to be spending on a single project, there is no denying that, but the government is insistent that the public will see a return on this investment and that doing nothing will in fact have a higher cost on the UK economy. 

The economic benefits to the UK are said to be anywhere from £1.6 to £2.0  returned for every £1 spent on the the first phase, with the return increasing to between £1.9 and £2.6 after completion of the second phase. Most of the return is due to come from time savings gained from quicker service which in turn will lead to better productivity. But economic benefits will also come from other sources, such as better business connectivity for businesses in the north and jobs created directly by HS2 . For example, it will see as many as 10,000 people employed on its construction, and 8,000 permanent jobs created around the new station planned in Birmingham.

It has been suggested that currently the country cannot afford to pay up to £17bn for a new line but this ignores the fact that HS2 is a long term national infrastructure that will be designed and built over the next 14 years with construction not due to begin until 2017. To put this into perspective the London Crossrail and Thameselink projects which have begun, due for completion in 2019 will have a combined cost of £22bn, with the vast majority of this money coming from the government. The main costs for HS2 phase 1 are not due to be accrued until after the completion of Crossrail in 2019. This means the the current sum of £2bn per year being spent on Crossrail will simply transferred over to HS2. The claim by those opposed to HS2  that "we can afford to pay £32bn for a new line (the cost for the entire Y route) during a recession" is disingenuous as it does not  truly represent the long term nature of the proposals or take into account current spending on other larger projects in London to 2019.

HS2 and the environment

A key benefit of HS2 is its ability to support the government’s policy to reduce the UK’s CO2 levels. The numbers given by the government are unclear and widely dismissed by critics. But what is clear is that electrically powered trains are more energy efficient than any form of air or road transport. A little known fact is that the new Alstom AGV which is capable of 360km/h, due to go into service on a new Italian high speed network this year, is as efficient as a first generation TGV capable of 300km/h. Even more remarkable is that the AGV will consume only a fraction more energy per seat than the current fleet of Pendolinos on the WCML which travel 100mph slower!

It may be easy for critics to dismiss numbers based on the amount of CO2 that HS2 will save but it is hard to deny that a new runway built at one of London’s airport would cause an increase in flights with extra capacity quickly being swallowed up by air operators. More flights equal a sharp rise in the amount of CO2 produced by the travelling public — not just in flights but in all the journeys to and from the airport. With HS2, however, it can be as green as the government and the public want it to be, seeing that the government is committed to producing more of our electricity from renewable low-carbon or no-carbon energy which will feed directly to HS2 to power its trains.

Other added benefits of HS2 on the environment will be a shift that it will cause from road to rail, with people that once went by car choosing to take the more comfortable and much faster HS2 service to London and between regional cities — with the freed-up capacity on the WCML being used by more, and faster, regional and commuter passenger services.

HS2 will also free up capacity on the WCML for more freight services — for which demand is already growing, not least because there is now a critical shortage of HGV drivers — meaning that more cargo can be transferred from road to rail. You only have to look at how Eddie Stobart, the UK’s largest haulier, is adopting containerised rail freight to reduce it’s own carbon footprint, carrying goods for companies such as Tesco, to see the potential benefits that transferring freight from road to rail will have. A single freight train can transport 1000 tonnes and more efficiently where as it would take at least 34 articulated HGVs to carry the same load, clogging our motorways and causing traffic which needlessly adds to the CO2 produced by the travelling public.

Transport is the biggest single emitter of carbon dioxide in the UK, responsible for 25% of all emissions. But rail accounts for only 2% of emissions, while already carrying 7% of passenger kilometres — emphasising that rail has approximately a three times energy advantage over other modes.

There is fierce opposition to HS2 from those that live along the route, with campaign groups claiming many reasons not to go ahead with the project. Despite this, YesToHS2, which is an independently run campaign with nothing to gain from it’s construction, is still firmly behind the plans to connected the north to London, thereby reducing the north south divide.

If you wish to know more you may like to read 

Alternatives to HS2

HS2 interactive service map

Other supporting organisations


Greengauge21
GoHS2

You can also find out more by visiting:

The Dft's web site

HS2 Ltd's web site

If you want to show your support for the project please sign the petition Click here to show your support