HS2 – Manifestly Unreasonable

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Is it manifestly unreasonable to expect the managers of the biggest rail building project in Europe to know how many miles of supporting roads they are building? Is it unreasonable to expect HS2 to have a firm handle on costs of such enabling works?

It would be seen as reasonable to most people, when requesting what must be a known fact to those who have planned and costed the High-Speed Rail project, that they would know the answer and be able to divulge it.

One might not expect the excuse that their data is not set out in a way that makes it easy for them to impart that knowledge. They quote regulations to get around their need to respond at all to this Freedom of Information request.

The precise words used were ‘manifestly unreasonable’ by HS2’ in response this question:

Please can you tell me how many miles of haul roads and other roads are being constructed for HS2 for Phase 1 and Phase 2/2b?

EMAILED RESPONSE FROM HS2 ABOUT HS2-RELATED ROAD BUILDING

It is used as a barrier to provide information that we should be entitled to as tax payers and merely interested people who live in this country.

If they cannot answer how many miles of roads they are building to service HS2, then how can HS2 have an Environmental Impact Statement and Strategy for them?

These railway statistics, all taken from UK Governmental documentation (Dept for Transport, Treasury, Cabinet Office, as well as four external Consultancy reports by non-Governmental organisations).  state that just under 10% of the UK population ever use the train.

To put this another way, just over 90% NEVER use the train.

The average length of a rail journey when measured from a datum point of 1995 has dropped consistently and now stands at 30.5 miles. That’s commuters travelling to and from their place of work.

Another interesting fact is that it was identified in 1996 that “the trend toward remote working has already reduced demand and this trend will accelerate” Long distance or Inter-city usage is dropping like a stone, down 22% in the year Mar 2019 – Mar 2020. Of course, that includes a small percentage in response to the beginning of the COVID Pandemic.

The Gartner Group backs this up, writing in its report ‘9 Future of Work Trends Post-COVID-19’ that of the nine future of work trends, some represent accelerations of existing shifts and others are new impacts. In some cases, COVID-19 has forced the pendulum of a long-observed pattern to one extreme. Number. 1: An increase in remote working.

In the future, there is likely to be a decrease in face to face meetings, lower travel budgets due to cuts in profits and staff numbers. COVID has pushed us all worldwide into a working experiment of how to achieve business without travel for meetings and without going to the office. That is reported widely to be a permanent change that has been simply accelerated by the pandemic rather than created by it.

The number of passenger journeys in Great Britain decreased by 51.0 million (11.4%) in 2019-20 Q4 compared with 2018-19 Q4. The long-distance sector had the largest decline in journeys this quarter (ending June 2020) at 16.3%.

The decline in passenger kilometres (14.9%) in Great Britain in 2019-20 Q4 was greater than the fall in passenger journeys (11.4%).

The long-distance sector recorded a fall in passenger kilometres of 22.1% compared with a fall of 16.3% for passenger journeys. London North Eastern Railway (down 26.9%), Avanti West Coast (down 23.7%) and Grand Central (down 22.9%) recorded the largest falls in passenger kilometres in the sector.  (source Passenger Rail Usage 2019-20 Q4 – https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/)

To recap, this railway is to service 10% of us who travel by rail, IF we still continue to do that post COVID.

The European Court of Auditors report entitled a European high-speed rail network: not a reality but an ineffective patchwork, shows in Table 4 (Observations, para 48) the “Cost of the audited high-speed line per km and per minute saved”. An average cost is £98bn. An average time-saving on journeys is 20 hours. So, on average, European high-speed rails deliver a 20-hour saving per journey for a £98bn spend.

If 10% or less are using rail, how can we justify spending a sum equating to over 33% of annual national budget?

HS2 will be unable to deliver a mere 20 minutes’ travel time saving for £237bn.

  • How is this value for money?
  • How can HS2 and the Government justify the inherent destruction and increase in environmental pollution to be borne?
  • What exactly IS the business case?

Perhaps this why the Government doesn’t want a general review.

 

This press release was provided by a group protesting HS2.