*Given that history is littered with spiked infrastructure schemes that are later revived, Greg Pitcher examines whether the recent government announcement to cancel the eastern leg of HS2 to Leeds really means it is all over*
Months of uncertainty and speculation over the future of the eastern leg of HS2 appeared to finally end last year with the publication of the government’s Integrated Rail Plan (IRP).
November’s report, presented by transport secretary Grant Shapps, lopped 120km off the right-hand fork of the route. It announced that while HS2 would still be built from London to Manchester, it would only branch out from Birmingham as far as East Midlands Parkway, near Nottingham, rather than continuing to Leeds as planned.
Prime minister Boris Johnson said that plans including the electrification and upgrade of existing lines would get services into many cities faster, sooner, and at lower cost than previous proposals. West Yorkshire was promised a shiny new mass-transit system; a 64km high-speed line from the village of Marsden, near Huddersfield, to Manchester and Warrington; and a vague ministerial intention to “look at” the best way of getting HS2 trains to Leeds.
Anger at the axing of the eastern leg was immediate, with shadow transport secretary Jim McMahon branding the IRP “a great train robbery”, while president of the York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce Laurence Beardmore called it an “unwelcome hindrance” to economic recovery from the pandemic.
But is all lost when it comes to building a high-speed railway from Birmingham to Leeds? Many believe there could yet be more twists in the tale – and that the scheme might not be dead yet.
**Lessons from history**
David Clarke, technical director at the Railway Industry Association (RIA), points out that the IRP itself leaves the door open for a project linking the Midlands and Yorkshire. “The government has put funding in place to evaluate the best way to get HS2 services to Leeds,” he says. “It is not impossible that this evaluation concludes that the best way is to build the eastern leg. We don’t know exactly what the exam question is that they will ask, but, as it is currently written, the answer could be the eastern leg.”
The scheme would not be the first major infrastructure project to suffer a seemingly fatal blow, only to be brought back to life and eventually delivered. Indeed, parliament granted permission for an east-west railway from Paddington to the east London docks in the 19th century, yet it was almost 100 years later that a government report came up with a similar scheme and called it Crossrail. Even then, the line was rejected by MPs as too expensive during the recession of the early 1990s, before eventually receiving royal assent in 2008.
“Transformational projects tend to have a long gestation period and work in fits and starts,” Clarke says. “When Crossrail was authorised, we were in an economic phase where the increase in patronage of the London Underground was such that, without new capacity, it would throttle the growth of the capital.”
He cites another major rail scheme that took a lot longer to deliver than intended. The Thameslink programme, an upgrade of the north-south train line through central London, was called Thameslink 2000 in the mid-1990s on account of its anticipated completion date. A series of political hurdles followed and the scheme was eventually approved in 2006 before finally being completed in 2020.
**Communication breakdown**
Clarke says that perhaps the most useful comparison that can be made with HS2’s eastern leg is with the same project’s western route. In the late 1990s, an 11-year, £8.8bn upgrade of the existing normal-speed West Coast Mainline train network, running from London to Glasgow via Manchester and Birmingham, began, in a bid to boost speed, reliability and capacity.
“That did not solve the problem long term, as there remained the business case to build a new railway,” Clarke says. He points out that the western leg of HS2 has now been given the go-ahead just over a decade after the upgrade of the existing line. “We would have preferred the IRP to have spoken about the phasing of the HS2 eastern leg,” he adds. “It could conceivably have been deferred and become a phase three.”
He bemoans the communication breakdown during the preparation of the latest rail announcement, saying “effective dialogue” could have built a consensus and prevented the “shock and outcry” that followed.
He says he would like to see analyses about the schemes made public, and options for taking high-speed rail infrastructure to Leeds drawn up.
“If you can see the case for it, then you would want to define and protect the route and get that work to a point where it can be tied in a ribbon and placed in storage until it is needed – much like Crossrail 2,” he says.
**Safeguarding routes**
Alex Williams, director of borough planning at Transport for London (TfL), recalls first-hand the way Crossrail 2 was still prepared for a possible future when, in 2020, it was put on long-term hold due to the effect of COVID-19 on transport demand and budgets.
*“When HS2 opens, people will be asking why trains are going slowly beyond the West Midlands”*
*Alex Williams, Transport for London*
“Pre-pandemic, the Crossrail 2 team was of a scale that it was preparing to go for the Hybrid Bill [the first step towards parliamentary approval], working through all the detailed paperwork,” he says. “After the pause, the team reduced in size, from 40-50 people to just two or three full-time staff. Many retired or went to do other things. The focus now is on protecting the scheme – [through] a formal safeguarding [of its proposed route].”
This is a huge job that involves dealing with more than 600 requests from local authorities every year to review proposed developments close to the project’s route. There is also a parallel work stream to update the safeguarding documents themselves to account for revisions that were made after the most recent set of designs were formally approved in 2015.
“We are keen to issue revised safeguarding directions that take account of work done over the last five years,” Williams says. “As it is a jointly funded project, we are awaiting Department for Transport approval for that, but we are hopeful that will be fairly soon. It is really important that the work done in preparing for powers [via the bill] is reflected in revised safeguarding directions so you are protecting the right scheme.”
Definitely if Labour can get into power in the next electoral cycle i could see it being reversed
2 comments
(for those who can’t get past the paywall)
*Given that history is littered with spiked infrastructure schemes that are later revived, Greg Pitcher examines whether the recent government announcement to cancel the eastern leg of HS2 to Leeds really means it is all over*
Months of uncertainty and speculation over the future of the eastern leg of HS2 appeared to finally end last year with the publication of the government’s Integrated Rail Plan (IRP).
November’s report, presented by transport secretary Grant Shapps, lopped 120km off the right-hand fork of the route. It announced that while HS2 would still be built from London to Manchester, it would only branch out from Birmingham as far as East Midlands Parkway, near Nottingham, rather than continuing to Leeds as planned.
Prime minister Boris Johnson said that plans including the electrification and upgrade of existing lines would get services into many cities faster, sooner, and at lower cost than previous proposals. West Yorkshire was promised a shiny new mass-transit system; a 64km high-speed line from the village of Marsden, near Huddersfield, to Manchester and Warrington; and a vague ministerial intention to “look at” the best way of getting HS2 trains to Leeds.
Anger at the axing of the eastern leg was immediate, with shadow transport secretary Jim McMahon branding the IRP “a great train robbery”, while president of the York and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce Laurence Beardmore called it an “unwelcome hindrance” to economic recovery from the pandemic.
But is all lost when it comes to building a high-speed railway from Birmingham to Leeds? Many believe there could yet be more twists in the tale – and that the scheme might not be dead yet.
**Lessons from history**
David Clarke, technical director at the Railway Industry Association (RIA), points out that the IRP itself leaves the door open for a project linking the Midlands and Yorkshire. “The government has put funding in place to evaluate the best way to get HS2 services to Leeds,” he says. “It is not impossible that this evaluation concludes that the best way is to build the eastern leg. We don’t know exactly what the exam question is that they will ask, but, as it is currently written, the answer could be the eastern leg.”
The scheme would not be the first major infrastructure project to suffer a seemingly fatal blow, only to be brought back to life and eventually delivered. Indeed, parliament granted permission for an east-west railway from Paddington to the east London docks in the 19th century, yet it was almost 100 years later that a government report came up with a similar scheme and called it Crossrail. Even then, the line was rejected by MPs as too expensive during the recession of the early 1990s, before eventually receiving royal assent in 2008.
“Transformational projects tend to have a long gestation period and work in fits and starts,” Clarke says. “When Crossrail was authorised, we were in an economic phase where the increase in patronage of the London Underground was such that, without new capacity, it would throttle the growth of the capital.”
He cites another major rail scheme that took a lot longer to deliver than intended. The Thameslink programme, an upgrade of the north-south train line through central London, was called Thameslink 2000 in the mid-1990s on account of its anticipated completion date. A series of political hurdles followed and the scheme was eventually approved in 2006 before finally being completed in 2020.
**Communication breakdown**
Clarke says that perhaps the most useful comparison that can be made with HS2’s eastern leg is with the same project’s western route. In the late 1990s, an 11-year, £8.8bn upgrade of the existing normal-speed West Coast Mainline train network, running from London to Glasgow via Manchester and Birmingham, began, in a bid to boost speed, reliability and capacity.
“That did not solve the problem long term, as there remained the business case to build a new railway,” Clarke says. He points out that the western leg of HS2 has now been given the go-ahead just over a decade after the upgrade of the existing line. “We would have preferred the IRP to have spoken about the phasing of the HS2 eastern leg,” he adds. “It could conceivably have been deferred and become a phase three.”
He bemoans the communication breakdown during the preparation of the latest rail announcement, saying “effective dialogue” could have built a consensus and prevented the “shock and outcry” that followed.
He says he would like to see analyses about the schemes made public, and options for taking high-speed rail infrastructure to Leeds drawn up.
“If you can see the case for it, then you would want to define and protect the route and get that work to a point where it can be tied in a ribbon and placed in storage until it is needed – much like Crossrail 2,” he says.
**Safeguarding routes**
Alex Williams, director of borough planning at Transport for London (TfL), recalls first-hand the way Crossrail 2 was still prepared for a possible future when, in 2020, it was put on long-term hold due to the effect of COVID-19 on transport demand and budgets.
*“When HS2 opens, people will be asking why trains are going slowly beyond the West Midlands”*
*Alex Williams, Transport for London*
“Pre-pandemic, the Crossrail 2 team was of a scale that it was preparing to go for the Hybrid Bill [the first step towards parliamentary approval], working through all the detailed paperwork,” he says. “After the pause, the team reduced in size, from 40-50 people to just two or three full-time staff. Many retired or went to do other things. The focus now is on protecting the scheme – [through] a formal safeguarding [of its proposed route].”
This is a huge job that involves dealing with more than 600 requests from local authorities every year to review proposed developments close to the project’s route. There is also a parallel work stream to update the safeguarding documents themselves to account for revisions that were made after the most recent set of designs were formally approved in 2015.
“We are keen to issue revised safeguarding directions that take account of work done over the last five years,” Williams says. “As it is a jointly funded project, we are awaiting Department for Transport approval for that, but we are hopeful that will be fairly soon. It is really important that the work done in preparing for powers [via the bill] is reflected in revised safeguarding directions so you are protecting the right scheme.”
Definitely if Labour can get into power in the next electoral cycle i could see it being reversed