Rail Industry Focus

Strong case for light rail integration with HS2

Norman Baker, former light rail minister; Paul Buchanan, partner at Volterra Partners; David Ralph, chief executive of D2N2; and Martha Grekos, partner and head of the planning and infrastructure team in London at Irwin Mitchell, discuss the opportunities for light rail integration with high-speed rail.

Last year the HS2 Growth Taskforce stated that if the project is to truly help cities achieve their economic potential, the location of phase 2 stations is “hugely important”, whether it be city centre, hub or parkway stations.

The ‘High-Speed 2: Get Ready’ report added that international examples of high-speed rail demonstrate that multi-modal access to and from stations is a “major factor of success”.

During this year’s 10th Annual UK Light Rail Conference in Nottingham, Norman Baker, former transport minister, said there is a strong case for having light rail connections near high-speed stations up and down the line to ensure people “seamlessly move from high-speed rail to another mode of transport” that gets them into the city centre.

Speaking during a lively panel session, Baker added: “My view is that light rail is the best solution to get people from place to place. I think people will move from rail to rail if the connection works. They will not move from rail to bus in the same way.

“However, there is a need for HS2 to be far more imaginative about what they are doing in terms of light rail. I fear that HS2 is, at the moment, focusing on its core line. It is not looking at the connections from city centres. That is not sensible from HS2’s point of view but also for light rail.”

He added that HS2 is a great opportunity for light rail, as this is going to be where growth areas will be in the future, but the light rail industry needs to be more effective at lobbying and getting involved with the DfT and HS2 in making sure they are part of the planning now.

Prior to the panel debate, Paul Buchanan, partner at Volterra Partners, gave a short presentation highlighting that transport doesn’t create economic growth but does enable it.

He noted that cities are growing incredibly quickly and they are growing because of the centres more than anything else. Speaking honestly to the full room of delegates, he said: “I don’t think high-speed rail should be stopped outside of city centres. The market for high-speed rail is city centre sites. That is where it is most competitive. You lose most of the time gained from high-speed rail if you have to use another mode to get into cities.

“I think if you are doing a light rail project you should think of it as a development project,” said Buchanan. “If you are using it as a way of getting development of the route into the city as well as just transporting people it could work reasonably well, but not as well as having a station in the centre in the first place.”

David Ralph, chief executive of D2N2, the local enterprise partnership (LEP) for Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, added that he has worked on regeneration programmes for the past 25 years, but the single most important intervention he’s ever been engaged with is the Docklands Light Railway extension to Lewisham and Greenwich.

“In terms of economic development that project far outweighs any other project I’ve worked on for delivering an impact,” he said. “But I do believe that HS2 will deliver the single biggest economic impact of a generation for the East Midlands, assuming it comes reasonably quickly and assuming there is a rail hub station.”

The location of the HS2 station in the D2N2 patch has been controversial, with Derbyshire politicians wanting it in their area rather than at Toton in Nottinghamshire. But now Derby City Council has also backed Toton, which could be connected by extending the Nottingham Express Transit system to the location, Ralph said.

However, Martha Grekos, partner and head of the planning and infrastructure team in London at Irwin Mitchell, argued that people need to stop thinking that HS2 “might happen”. “It is definitely going to happen,” she said. “I’ve been advising HS2 Ltd and there is a lot of commitment behind this. We need to be thinking about how we bring projects forward to assist HS2.

“We really need to develop a counter-balance to London and various authorities need to come together and work in collaboration rather than against each other. The biggest fear that I have is that there will be Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds or whatever authority not working together to take it forward.”

Baker, Buchanan and Ralph said rail devolution also presents great opportunities, provided a rigorous case is put forward.