£50 billion HS2 fund would be better spent on improving railways, says Tony Travers

 
Matthew Beard30 August 2013

A leading London academic has claimed that the estimated £50 billion fund for the high-speed rail link from London to the North of England will not provide value for money for taxpayers.

Tony Travers, an expert in Government and advisor to the mayor, said the public cash for HS2 would be better spent on improving the railways and other transport projects.

Mr Travers’ comments came as chancellor George Osborne prepares this weekend to lead a Government fightback over the project after mounting concern over costs and economic benefits.

The London School of Economics academic said: “If the same money - whether it’s £50bn or £70bn - were available for public transport in London, Birmingham, Manchester and other cities it’s hard to believe it wouldn’t be better used there. But the truth is the money would not be available so either you get the money for HS2 or you get nothing. If I were prime minister I would not spend the cash on this, I’d spend it on improving the existing railways and transport infrastructure.”

Mr Travers said the scheme would have “marginal benefit” for London with the regeneration prompted by new stations at Old Oak Common and the southern terminus at Euston.

But he added: “The real risk is that it will take money away from the conventional railway. It will compete with commuter services such as that from London Bridge to Sussex. That’s the way the Treasury thinks - it will not treat the conventional railway and the new high speed line separately, they will both be viewed as transport spending.”

He said the Government would be forced to step in and regulate the three commuter services already operating out of Euston. Trains on these lined would be less frequent in order to force passengers to travel on HS2, he predicted.

London’s two main business lobby groups - the Chamber of Commerce and London First - remain supporters of HS2.

Their backing is steadfast even after a poll of the Institute of Directors published last week showed members did not see the claimed business benefits of the rail link.

But Peter Bishop, deputy chief executive of the London Chamber of Commerce said the Government was “missing a trick” by not revising the route to include a spur to Heathrow airport in the initial phase.

Mr Bishop said: “We are trying to move traffic away from the road and air so you should put the station at Heathrow in phase one rather than phase two. We want an integrated transport system and you have got a chance here with no major cost implications to go via Heathrow and we are turning it down, surely that will get more value out of HS2. We are not going to have a decision until 2015 on creating airport capacity in the southeast so we have to accept that is a factor in this. But we might get even better results for everyone if the HS2 Heathrow spur is considered.”

This weekend chancellor George Osborne will lead the HS2 fightback by warning that abandoning the project would leave commuters around the country suffering from intolerable overcrowding.

Ministers will join in the effort, using forecasts that show commuter trains serving the four biggest cities linked by the line - Birmingham, Leeds, London and Manchester - during peak will be carrying up to twice as many passengers as there are seats by 2033 when the full route is due to open, assuming annual passenger growth of 1.5 per cent. A study by accountants KPMG will also predict that the line will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the regions.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in