Greengauge 21 has long advocated high-speed rail for Britain.
Our support was based on the weighty evidence of a study carried out by Atkins for the Department for Transport in 2000/1. Its remit was to look at high-speed rail, putting it alongside every other available way to address the north-south transport capacity challenge that lay ahead.
It would be the mid-2020s, it was thought then, that the West Coast Main Line, followed by the East Coast Main Line soon after, would reach capacity limits. That’s turned out to be a sound forecast.
High-speed rail came out as the best option in the Atkins work, better than further line-of-route rail upgrades, a new conventional speed railway, a freight railway, further motorway widening, or new motorways, higher user charges to reduce demand and ease congestion, and better indeed, than doing nothing.
All political parties supported what emerged as HS2 in 2010, ahead of the General Election that year. What had been a major planning piece under Labour was duly embraced by the Conservative party (in coalition with the Liberal Democrat party) and taken forward.
HS2 was divided into phases and the first of these, from London to Birmingham is now half-way though construction. But in Autumn 2023, the Government called for an abrupt halt. Continuity of funding is, of course, an important way of keeping costs under control.
This wasn’t a pause due to budget pressures – indeed, the money set aside for HS2 completion beyond Birmingham to Manchester, and beyond Old Oak Common to Euston in London, was re-allocated to a hastily-assembled list of other transport projects.
The decision broke the model of cross-party support, so necessary for successful major national scale infrastructure investment.
Left unchanged, it would mean the nation’s adopted solution to its core transport capacity needs would be left embarrassingly short of its planned market objectives, failing to reach either central London or central Manchester as planned, and with no spare network capacity either to reach the many places that were to benefit from HS2 services – including Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston, Carlisle, Stoke-on-Trent…
Andy Street (then Mayor West Midlands) and Andy Burnham (Mayor for Greater Manchester) came together on a cross-party basis soon after to examine what could be done to limit the damage. They were able to draw on private sector expertise and their conclusions, drawn together under the Chairmanship of Sir David Higgins, were recently published. Their work and report is most welcome. It points to a determination to ensure the nation’s investment so far in HS2 isn’t wasted.
Our assessment of the report can be found here: Mayors of Greater Manchester and West Midlands Report – an assessment by Greengauge 21
We distinguish what needs to be done as a matter of urgency – some planning powers will soon lapse – and what needs to be examined further to ensure the project genuinely provide better links to Manchester, the wider North West and Scotland, which is all essential if it is to deliver value for money.
A sensible way forward, we are confident, can be found.
We actively encourage people to use our work, and simply request that the use of any of our material is credited to Greengauge 21 in the following way: Greengauge 21, Title, Date.