01.01.12
Getting the best route for High Speed
Source: Rail Technology Magazine Dec/Jan 2012
Tony Lodge, chair of the Transport Committee of Conservative aligned think tank The Bow Group, makes the case for altering the HS2 route.
Two decades have passed since a Conservative Government backed the alternative route for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. British Rail, furious that their proposed alignment had been exposed as higher-risk, environmentally destructive, and low on the cost-benefit ratio retreated to nurse its wounds.
The alignment designed by engineering consultancy, Arup, became High Speed 1, and is generally acknowledged to be a transport, economic and environmental success.
However, it was never the intention that HS1 should terminate in London. That compromise was a result of political expediency. Arup always argued that the UK’s high speed rail network should be extended through London to serve Heathrow and the UK’s regions.
Following the completion of HS1, its designers continued to promote this concept against a background of political indifference. Then, in 2008, a breakthrough; the Conservative Shadow of Transport Secretary, Theresa Villiers, seized the initiative, and confirmed: “A Conservative Government would back the innovative proposal put forward by the engineering firm Arup, to link Heathrow into the main rail network and a high speed link to St Pancras.”
Caught on the back foot, it took then Labour Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon some months to respond, before announcing on 15 January 2009: “I see a strong case for (high-speed rail) approaching London via a Heathrow international hub station on the Great Western line, to provide a direct four-way interchange between the airport, the new north-south line, existing Great Western rail services and Crossrail.”
A political consensus had emerged, supporting a new high speed line connecting Europe, London, Heathrow and the rest of the UK. However, any celebrations that Britain had rediscovered its appetite for ambitious and creative high-speed projects proved premature. When HS2 Ltd’s (the company set up by the Government to design the new line) vision for the alignment emerged, it contained no seamless link to Europe, and it bypassed, by just a few miles, the world’s busiest international, and UK’s only hub airport. It seemed the limited imagination which had produced British Rail’s alignment 20 years back, had returned with a destructive alignment focused on saving every possible minute between London and Birmingham.
As the Bow Group highlighted in its 2010 pamphlet, planners had simply failed to learn the lessons of HS1. Using existing transport corridors, respecting environmental sensitivities, offering intermediate stations and regional high speed services – these were the ingredients that made HS1 a success; and an integrated transport solution, not a point-to-point line in isolation.
The new Coalition Government’s revised remit to HS2 Ltd was therefore welcomed, requiring Heathrow and Europe to be properly considered. However, the perhaps understandable response by HS2 Ltd was to protect its alignment, and suggest a number of retrofits, in the hope these would allow a Hybrid Bill to be processed within the lifetime of this Parliament.
It is difficult to think of any other major project where bolting on bits here and there has arrived at a well-designed, costeffective and elegant solution. If anything, this approach only serves to exacerbate the original flaws of HS2 Ltd’s proposals and the project to deliver Britain’s second high speed railway must be reassessed.
Importantly, Government’s own data makes the right solution obvious.
The Heathrow hub concept, as supported by the Bow Group, costs less – using Government’s own figures for their current proposal, phase 1 of HS2 between London and Birmingham, is estimated at between £16.0-17.7bn. To this must be added the cost of a Heathrow spur (£2.5-3.9bn) and a Western Connection between Heathrow and the GWML relief lines (estimated by various promoters at ca. £0.7bn), bringing the total to £19.2-22.3bn.
This increases to £23.3-27.7bn if the proposed spur is extended to form a loop to allow through running via Heathrow (as it must to allow through trains from Europe to Heathrow, to allow air/rail substitution).
For the Heathrow Hub proposition, Government estimates an additional cost of £2.9bn. Adding this to the cost of the current route gives a total of £18.9-20.6bn. A better solution therefore costs billions less – and there are further savings still to be made.
For example, Government’s costings of Heathrow Hub (which assume the interchange must be underground) are clearly overstated. In addition the proposed (very expensive) Old Oak Common interchange can be omitted giving further savings (with HS2 dispersal taking place instead at Heathrow Hub, via limited stop Reading- Heathrow Hub-London Crossrail services – or interchanging at Stratford). And Heathrow Hub Ltd proposes to privately finance the whole of the Heathrow interchange, further reducing the cost to the taxpayer.
Heathrow Hub has little or no impact on journey times – Government confirm only a 3 minutes penalty for a route via Heathrow Hub, and even this may be overstated since their route assumes a slow speed curve to the west of the Hub.
In any case, the provision of through lines at Heathrow Hub allows non-stop services which would be 1 minute faster between London and Birmingham than the current HS2 proposal;
Heathrow Hub reduces HS2’s environmental impacts – avoiding a surface route through London’s suburbs, and allowing an alignment through the narrowest part of the Chilterns AONB (rather than the widest followed by HS2);
Heathrow Hub reduces Heathrow’s environmental impacts – providing seamless integration, and enabling significant modal shift, from road and air to rail (including air/rail substitution), in the first phase of HS2. The co-location of an ‘on-airport station’ (terminal) with the rail interchange also releases space within the current congested and constrained airport, allowing more efficient aircraft operations;
Heathrow Hub brings more benefits to the UK regions – connecting Heathrow to South Wales, and the West and South West of England, as well as enabling a network approach to transport planning in London and the South East;
Heathrow Hub assists HS2’s business case – reducing its cost and allowing all trains to serve Heathrow, the UK’s largest single traffic generator, and avoiding the need for an inefficient, infrequent service of dedicated airport trains over a spur, each taking up one or more train paths (allowing for deceleration/ acceleration to and from the spur).
The Conservative Party got high-speed rail right in 1991 and 2008, and the Party can again lead on the subject and back the right track for the next section of Britain’s high speed railway. The recommendations of the Transport Select Committee are equally clear. European experience is unambiguous. The Coalition Government should be delighted that there is now a potential consensus around a better, cheaper, less environmentally destructive scheme that can progress with all-party support.
Tony Lodge is Chairman of the Bow Group Transport Committee. The Bow Group first published, ‘The Right Track – Delivering the Conservatives’ Vision for High Speed Rail’ (with a foreword by Lord Heseltine) in January 2010 and in December 2011 published ‘Winning the Consensus on High Speed Rail – why all Parties should now support the best route for HS2’.
Tell us what you think – have your say below, or email us directly at [email protected]