Adonis issues clarion call for new high speed rail lines

Adonis gave the assorted his perspectives on high speed rail around the world - he has recently taken a tour of Japan, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain to view the high speed networks there.

He concluded that: “First, I am more than ever convinced that a north-south high-speed rail line in Britain is now just a matter of dates.  As I have seen in country after country, an international high-speed rail revolution is taking place. 

“The issue for us in Britain is not whether we follow suit, but when and how.  A huge amount is at stake in the ‘when and how’, which is why in January we established High Speed 2 both to assess the case for such a line – the transport case, the environmental case and the business case – and also (within certain parameters) to recommend route options.

I am more than ever convinced that a north-south high-speed rail line in Britain is now just a matter of dates

Lord Adonis

“Second, even the limited scope of this lecture is enough to demonstrate that there is not one high-speed model which we can lift off the shelf and implement. The more you learn about high-speed rail, the more alive you become to the range of choices in each major aspect of the project.

“It is very important that policy-makers in Britain can call on a serious body of expertise in the detail of other countries’ practice and plans in everything from funding and engineering to station design, location and spacing, and arrangements for freight, rolling stock and interoperability with the existing network.  

“I am not aware of there being such a single body of expertise at the moment: there certainly isn’t one in government, and nor does there appear to be one in a university or in the private sector. But we need one. It needs to encompass the costing and financing of high-speed projects: I am struck by the wildly divergent costs presented to me for high-speed projects of apparently broadly similar scope, which doesn’t look to me to be purely a matter of engineering requirements. Given our experience with High Speed One, cost control is a key issue High Speed Two.

“Third, other countries have developed high speed rail networks for a variety of reasons – some quantifiable, some not – and never for just one reason.  Often, capacity constraints on a major existing inter-city route has driven the development of a first high-speed line – as with the original Tokyo to Osaka and Paris to Lyon lines – but thereafter wider regeneration, environmental and political arguments take hold, not least the desire of unconnected regions, cities and towns to gain high-speed connectivity. 

“In Britain we are very much at the first – and, in terms of a business case, the most straightforward – stage of this evolution.  High Speed Two is concentrating first on the capacity requirements of our principal inter-urban corridor, London to the West Midlands, the busiest inter-city line in the country and already near saturation even with the recent £9bn upgrade.  It is looking then at options for extending a line beyond to the other major conurbations of the north-west, west Yorkshire, the north-east and central Scotland.  

“Fourth, high-speed rail enables countries to escape from the constraints which geography and technology imposed on the first generation of rail infrastructure, and it is essential that its full potential is exploited in this regard.  We still think of the Channel Tunnel as a wholly exceptional engineering feat which one wouldn’t think of repeating. 

“Yet most other major European countries are undertaking equivalents of the Channel Tunnel to overcome historic transport impediments as part of their high-speed networks.  There is no reason to be imprisoned in our thinking of future rail corridors by the fact, for example, that the Victorians built the west coast and east coast main lines and didn’t go across the Pennines, which separate the two largest conurbations in the country after Greater London.

“Fifth, the environmental argument for high-speed is generally accepted in the other European countries I visited.  Rail is a relatively energy efficient means of transport, contributing only around 2% of the UK’s domestic transport carbon dioxide emissions. 

“A high-speed line will expand capacity in a transport mode that is generally more energy efficient than short haul air and long distance road journeys. The task for High Speed Two is to assess the positive impact of this potential modal shift, against the negative impacts of newly generated journeys and a straight transfer from existing trains, understanding load factors and the sources of electricity generation.  

“Intuitively, you would expect high speed rail to provide positive environmental benefits, and it is this robust assessment that we need to support the overall business case for high speed rail and its contribution to carbon reduction.

Most other major European countries are undertaking equivalents of the Channel Tunnel to overcome historic transport impediments as part of their high-speed networks.  There is no reason to be imprisoned in our thinking of future rail corridors by the fact, for example, that the Victorians built the west coast and east coast main lines and didn’t go across the Pennines

Lord Adonis

“Finally, in every country I visited, there is a high degree of political unity behind high-speed rail, and it is has generally been driven forward by cross-party consensus.  In particular, while “national” parties support high-speed rail partly for overtly nation-building reasons, regional – even separatist – parties also tend to support it to boost the potential of their regions to prosper unaided.  

“It will be decades before we know who turns out ultimately to be right.  Meanwhile this rare potential for political popularity and consensus, on such a major infrastructure policy, is there to be forged and seized by transport modernisers.  And that includes a fair few here tonight,” he said.

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