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An analysis of the cases being put for High Speed Rail

A new high speed rail line in the UK may produce, at best, only very modest environmental benefits, despite the supposed green credentials often cited by politicians.

Building a high speed line linking London to the North of England and Scotland is also likely not just to take people out of their cars and off planes, but generate a lot of new travel – as much as a fifth of passenger trips could be ‘induced’.

And not enough work has yet been done on assessing whether the tens of billions of pounds being earmarked for high speed rail (HSR) would be better spent on other areas of transport.

These are amongst the findings of ‘The Case for High Speed Rail: A review of recent evidence’ by Professor John Preston, commissioned by the RAC Foundation and published today.

Based on a study of several different reports on HSR published in the last couple of years, Professor Preston’s findings include:

The taxpayer would have to foot a bill of anywhere between some £17 billion and £27 billion for the construction costs of a new high speed line, though the service might be able to cover its ongoing operational and maintenance overheads
Assuming the eventual de-carbonisation of power generation (through the usehttp://www.newspress.co.uk/a39x.php of nuclear energy and renewables) the majority of CO2 emissions associated with a high speed line will relate to construction not operation
Many of the green credentials of HSR will depend on the eventual load factor (the ratio of passengers to seats); European high speed rail systems have shown very varied load factors.

Commenting on the report’s findings, Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation said:
“Many politicians are almost evangelical in their support of high speed rail. But they must be careful not to let their zeal be dictated by uncritical enthusiasm rather than hard facts.”
“All the main political parties have been tempted to back a north-south high speed rail line in the UK even before HS2 – the company set up by the Government to officially evaluate the case for such a scheme – has reported back. And they also seem to be happily ignoring the wealth of evidence already out there which contains wide differences of opinion on just how beneficial HSR would be to the travelling public, the taxpayer and the environment.”
“In a world where every penny counts there are big questions to be asked about whether billions of pounds lavished on high speed rail would be money well spent, or whether it should instead be directed towards other types of transport project.”
The report also found that:

The benefit cost ratio of a north-south high speed link varies between 1.8 and 3.5
HSR schemes in Europe have been affected by ‘appraisal optimism’ and the actual benefit cost ratios achieved are significantly lower than those being forecast for Britain
Across a sample of five European HSR routes a quarter of all trips were new (‘induced’). According to the Greengauge 21 study 19% of trips on a new high speed line in the UK would be new travel
The recent studies on north-south high speed lines have been ‘uni-modal’ and do not offer comparative examples of the benefits to be derived from investing in other transport projects, for example congestion-relieving road schemes
The predominant benefits of a north-south high speed line would be time savings for rail users and net revenue to the rail industry
There are also benefits in terms of reduced congestion on existing conventional rail lines (e.g. West Coast mainline)

Professor Glaister continued:
“We would question the wisdom of any government backing a scheme which encourages more people to travel very long distances at a time when the objective must be to find alternatives to movement, such as home working and shorter commutes. It seems odd that the case for such HSR schemes depends on generating new journeys when the emphasis on the roads is to contain the growth of traffic.”
“If the case for high speed rail is being made on environmental grounds then this seems at best shaky. It is far from clear that a high speed line will lead to any significant overall reduction in the UK’s carbon emissions.”
“Professor Preston’s report on the various HSR studies identified £27 billion as the upper estimate of the construction costs the taxpayer would shoulder. This vast amount of money might yield much bigger carbon-saving benefits if spent on a multitude of other things.”
What else £27 billion could be spent on to deliver carbon reductions:

Planting 2.3 billion trees to offset carbon emissions
43 million laptops and one year’s broadband connection so many more people can work at home – more than enough for each person of working age in the UK to have one each
Financing the part-purchase of 27 million new, low emission vehicles via a car scrappage scheme, enough to replace the current private car fleet in Britain
The introduction of at least 5.4 million electric cars (and those powered by other ultra low-carbon sources) under Government plans to make grants of up to £5,000 available to purchasers of such vehicles

Amongst the High Speed Rail (HSR) reports analysed by Professor Preston were:

Greengauge 21’s fast forward (2009)
Network Rail’s New Lines Programme (2009)
A comparative European study by Gines de Rus et al. (2009)
DfT’s New Line Capacity study by Booz Allen Hamilton (2007)