Why HS2 is such a white elephant for British transport

Two days ago, Boris Johnson, on the insistence of his chief adviser Dominic Cummings despite as many as 60 Conservative MPs (mainly representing northern constituencies) opposing the project, signed approval for construction of HS2, even though the first stage will not be completed for another 10 years (with Manchester and Leeds not benefitting for another 20 years) and it will cause untold levels of destruction to ancient woodlands and countryside along its proposed route, especially around the Chiltern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

 HS2 (High Speed 2) is expected to cost upwards of £100,000,000,000 at the end of it all, which is money desperately needed to restore usable rail links in the north and west of England in particular, not to mention plug gaps in other transport funding at a time when bus services are disappearing fast from rural areas. In the 10-20 years it will take to fully complete the HS2 project, technology and other railway developments will have made it obsolete and the minor journey reduction times will have been achieved on already extant railway lines, meaning that money will have just been wasted. HS2 will add only two new stations to Britain's railway network, neither of which are necessary, when similar investment will ensure many disused railway stations lost to the Beeching Axe could be reopened/rebuilt and run a viable and useful service, including along the often mentioned line to Blyth in Northumberland, the Ivanhoe Line through Coalville and Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire, at Wisbech,and at Tavistock.

 HS2 will also draw more and more people to London, countering its purpose of better connecting the Midlands and North of England.

 In summary, the HS2 project will be the biggest white elephant in British transport history.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My analysis of the Swedish general election of 2022

The Swedish general election of 2022 generated some surprising results, despite also averting pollsters' predictions significantly. The last three years in particular proved to be a rough ride for the Social Democrat led governments of Stefan Lofven and Magdalena Andersson respectively. Although Sweden's laxer approach to the COVID-19 pandemic (compared to most countries in Europe, which imposed lockdowns during much of 2020 and 2021, an approach that arguably caused more problems than it solved) proved effective, Mr Lofven's desire to lift the austerity tax (which only affected a wealthy minority, similar in nature to the wealth tax initiative of former French President Francois Hollande) and to join NATO proved contentious, with two of the Social Democrats' former coalition partners (the Swedish Greens and Swedish Left Party, who had both pulled out of confidence and supply) unsurprisingly voting against Swedish accession to NATO membership (all other parties in the R
Read more

On the 2020 Serbian election: Why a boycott will only worsen things there

First of all, I apologise for the recent hiatus; however elections are still postponed or on hold in many countries, including the UK. Serbia, however, was able to proceed with its 2020 general election amidst this crisis. Its overall result proved reminiscent of Hungarian elections under Viktor Orban's tenure (2010-present), since the leading national-conservative coalition, the SNS (Progressive Party of Serbia) coalition led by Serbian President Aleksander Vucic (Ana Brnabic is the Serbian Prime Minister, and the first woman and openly homosexual person to hold that position), polled 61.6% of the vote, giving them as many as 191 seats out of 250 and a majority of as high as 132, almost unheard of in any country with proportional representation. Press freedom has endured significant curbs since President Vucic first came into power as Serbian PM in 2012 (he became President of Serbia in 2017), as have civil liberties of Serbs in general. Nepotism and corruption in the Serbian
Read more

On the Spanish regional elections of 2023-a warning for progressives

The Spanish regional elections of 2023, especially those in the "Empty Spain" regions far west of the federal capital of Madrid and prosperous yet famously rebellious Catalonia, resulted in a sharp shift towards conservatism and conservative populism. Both Partido Popular (PP, Spain's equivalent of the Conservatives) and Vox (the Spanish equivalent of Reform UK/UKIP) made sweeping gains in all regions, notably taking overall control in Madrid (normally an impossible feat under Spain's PR system), more than doubling their seat total in Valencia to top the poll there, and wresting control of Asturias, La Rioja, and Cantabria from the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE, Spain's equivalent of Labour) and the Cantabrian Regionalist Party respectively. Under the tenure of Pedro Sanchez, the current PSOE-Podemos coalition is floundering and has not done much to ensure Spain's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic since the last restrictions ended in 2021, and P
Read more