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Not to sound smug or anything, but I live in the high-speed rail capital of the Western world. I took trains from Paris to Amsterdam, Brussels, Marseille and other cities. I regularly drive into London on Britain’s only high-speed track. Beyond that, I’m a member of the tribe who is instinctively attracted to the “Britain is worst” narrative – Britain ranks at the bottom of the developed world, no matter what the topic.
Yet watching the government reverse 14-year-old plans to reduce its half-built high-speed rail HS2 to a dedicated line from London to Birmingham, excluding the north of England, I thought: Britain can live without high-speed trains. The UK is the only British country planning these lines and it does not need high speeds like France, Spain or Italy. Even many continental lines are not worth the money. Contrary to all my rail-loving biases, here are the arguments against most high-speed trains.
England’s area is about 50,000 square miles, one-quarter the size of Spain or France. At the current speed, it can still be passed. The distance from London to Manchester is half the distance from Barcelona to Madrid. Some “regular” train journeys take just two hours and six minutes. This undermines the argument in favor of high-speed trains: they replace carbon-emitting flights. There are trains from Rome to Milan, but very few from London to Manchester.
England is densely populated and will need to buy lots of houses and drill tunnels to facilitate the construction of HS2. This has tripled the price of the line since 2009. In contrast, once your TGV is 15 minutes away from Paris, you’ll hardly see a soul. No wonder, then, that the Treasury rated the London-Birmingham line “poor value for money” in 2021. Compare this to China, which has built over 20,000 miles of high-speed rail, and the UK, which has not built HS2, and the picture is even more prosaic. China has 25 times the potential passenger numbers of the UK (and still manages to overbuild).
The UK has other pressing investment needs. “We have been investing too little,” said Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation think tank. “Since the turn of the century, the average OECD advanced economy has invested 50% more (relative to GDP) than the UK.” Although the UK’s tax burden is close to its highest post-war level, it is still well below the Western European average.
Spending billions to complete HS2 will add a 21st century bolt-on to a 19th century rail system. Instead, the UK could use the money to upgrade existing trains to make them run reliably, ending things like one rail company paying a fleet of taxis to ferry stranded passengers from Preston for four hours on other nights. Such absurdities as to a Scottish town. Instead of cutting travel times – which is likely to be a bigger deterrent to travel for most people – the UK could reduce punitive train fares. It could improve WiFi on trains, turning journey time into work time. To reduce carbon emissions, try electrifying your railways.
But even on the continent, many fast trains are expensive wastes of effort. In 2018, the European Court of Auditors analyzed high-speed rail in six EU countries and found widespread cost overruns, delays and too few passengers. (Spain’s little Guadalajara doesn’t need a high-speed station.) Most European lines are not actually high-speed: the average actual speed is only 45% of the assumed maximum speed.
The auditors concluded that sometimes a better solution is to “upgrade existing legacy lines,” but this is rarely even considered. “Decisions to build high-speed lines are often based on political considerations” rather than cost-benefit analyses. I saw this scene one recent evening when my high-speed train from Geneva to Paris stopped in the French town of Bellegarde-sur-Valsselin (population: about 12,000), where almost no one was boarding or alighting. Maybe there was a powerful politician in Bellegarde. France could have used the money to provide boring trains in rural railway deserts. But high-speed trains often escape scrutiny because they are a symbol of national masculinity, feeling modern, green and pro-regional (while also rewarding contractors).
Supporters argue the trains could revitalize the region – a benefit the stingy Treasury is said to have underestimated. However, the auditors found that “analyzing changes over time (for example, the housing market and the number of businesses attracted and jobs created), we found that 15 of the 18 stations had no impact on the audited high-rise stations. Obvious regenerative impact.” Velocity Line. “
A popular cliche this week is that infrastructure is often controversial before it’s built and then immediately becomes vital and beloved. Well, sometimes. The high-speed aircraft Concorde began flying commercially in 1976. It was discontinued in 2003. Some new infrastructure doesn’t help much.
Send an email to Simon: simon.kuper@ft.com
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