High-speed trains

High Speed rail if used as part of a CO2 reduction strategy for dealing with Global Warming is a good idea. Train travel CO2 per capita is the lowest of all modes of tranportation. To make High Speed Rail Service economically viable, we need to include the environmental benefits and value as an economic substitute to air travel and automobiles which contribute more to CO2 emissions then trains. High Speed Trains make sense for high population density centers that are about 600 miles apart. If planes are not available in these routes, high speed trains can be profitable. Also, the higher gasoline prices go, the more people will turn to trains for travel. Especially, if taxi service and hybrid or electric vehicle transport is available at the terminals.

HS2: An ambitious project for an ambition-less nation- a nation set on promoting ambitious foreign countries' rail and high-technology firms at the expense of developing indigenous British public (& commercial goods) transport research & development, design and manufacturing capabilities!!

... A 200-mile-long showpiece and 'mega-pedestal' for what will be perceived as entirely non-UK engineering and manufacturing skills and expertise...

France and Germany's indigenous high-technology design and manufacturing industries will be the chief beneficiaries of any high-speed rail lines- as presently proposed- within the UK...

... while the UK's own companies' design, innovation and manufacturing capabilities in public & commercial-goods transport sectors will be grievously damaged...

Has the country lost its collective mind??
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Instead of going ahead with HS2 as currently planned, wouldn't it be far better public policy and use of tax-payers' funds for govt to put monies towards remedying the well-known shortcomings of the UK's existing rail and road networks AND ALSO developing indigenous UK rail transport research & development, design and manufacturing capabilities- if necessary working in collaboration with proven-as-competent, successful firm(s) such as Hitachi and Kawasaki???

Roderick V. Louis,
Vancouver, BC, Canada

High-speed Rail in the United Kingdom should not get built if it ends up functioning as a show-piece for France & Germany's technological & industrial capabilities while the UK's rail transport R & D + design capabilities appear laughable!!!!

Considering that South Korea has created an indigenous high-speed (& other types of) rail transport industry in less than 10-years- & every year is exporting rail transport products & systems- why couldn't the United Kingdom do the same??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSR-350x
or

http://www.hyundai-rotem.co.kr/Eng/Business/Rail/Railroad/Product/rail_c...
or

http://www.hyundai-rotem.co.kr/Eng/Common/data/KTX-II090120_eng.pdf
or

http://www.hyundai-rotem.co.kr/Eng/Business/Rail/Railroad/Product/rail1_...
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Some of the next 1/2 decade's govt spending- perhaps collaboratively with overseas mega-corporations' &/or Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) contributions- should be put towards the establishment of a high-speed & other types of rail & public/commercial-goods transport R & D technology centre/campus in the UK... if necessary with the UK govt as a temporary minor shareholder in the venture....

What part of HS2 (and the coalition govt's other rail & public/commercial goods transport plans) will lead to UK exports of rail & public/commercial goods transport related equipment & systems??

Roderick V. Louis,
Vancouver, BC, Canada

The speed of HS2 is an irrelevant factor in the debate as to whether the UK ought to finance its construction or not...

What part of the coalition govt's planned High-speed 2 (HS-2) high-speed rail project will lead to UK exports of rail and public-transport related equipment and systems??
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Improving ALL OF the United Kingdom's rail and public/commercial-goods transport systems is an unassailable objective for UK industry and govt...

But putting the best British minds to work- preferably in collaboration with overseas partners- on the designing of rail-related products that eventually end up on and part of the UK's rail systems ought to be an integral part of this objective...

Ensuring that these products and their underlying technologies- if necessary in adapted formats- have significant potential for export- should be as well!!

In terms of long-term industrial strategies, the establishment of facilities in the UK to construct and/or assemble new trains/rail-related hardware for the country is less than 1/2 of what industry leaders, govt Ministers & officials ought to be aiming for…

The creation of a self-sustaining rail technology (and public transport + commercial transport) research and development base in the UK is needed just as much...

The likelihood of EU member nations (and places such as India) that are upgrading their rail systems buying from the UK would be greatly increased if products and systems marketed are perceived to be coming out of a creditable, cutting-edge technology joint-venture- with its own well resourced, demonstrably functional R & D centre....

It could only make constructive sense for some of this & the next several fiscal years' spending- perhaps collaboratively with overseas mega-corporations' contributions- to be put towards the establishment of a rail (& public/commercial ) transport R & D technology centre/campus in the UK... if necessary with the UK govt as a temporary minor shareholder in the venture....

Such a centre/campus comprising significant representation from a world-class rail technology leader such as Hitachi &/or Kawasaki, along with a leading UK firm that has leading-edge complimentary technology expertise- such as Rolls-Royce- would be one way of providing the new centre/campus with automatic positive world-recognition...

An internationally recognized-as-competent UK company such as a Rolls-Royce, BAE, GKN or VT paired with an effervescent and capable international partner- such as Hitachi and/or Kawasaki- and their huge depth of transport-technology R & D resources- would immeasurably strengthen the viability and export-related potential of a UK based "world centre" for rail (& public/commercial) transport technology research & development.....

In addition to the development of new facilities in the UK to assemble rail-transport products and related hardware, a 'World-Centre-of-excellence' for rail-and-public/commercial-goods-transport research and development' type facility in the UK ought to be expeditiously actioned....

UK CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR PUBLIC & COMMERCIAL GOODS TRANSPORT NEEDED!!

Roderick V. Louis,
Vancouver, BC, Canada

In despair, what can I do as a humble citizen, taxpayer and voter to stop it.

China HSR and other rail or expressway expanded plans are painting in a white paper.In 1980's,76% trains in China still were steam locomotives and lag far behind the average level of the world by any measure,similarly in highway etc.

But UK and US aren't.They has aleady built perfect transportation systems(including highway, etc.) comparatively in last 100 years.In 1980s,steam locomotives had become antiques in history museums for a long time.

Concorde was successful to a certain degree,at least it had a very different story with the Titanic. High-speed train won't become another Titanic in UK,after all,it is train,not ship.

Fortunately the US has no say on HS2 - unlike on Concorde.

There is NO doubt that Concorde would have transformed first & business class aviation - had it been built by the US.

However, history clearly records that as soon as the US SST project failed - leaving France/UK with a monopoly on commercial SST - the yanks (as is their way) worked to make SST unviable.

A variety of dirty tricks were applied to protect US airlines from Concorde's super new way to travel: ranging from access restrictions at US airports; flight restriction in US airspace; mandatory exhorbitant ticket prices; the list goes on. The UK negotiators rolled over on everything (no surprise there, either).

The result was that the Concorde project immediately became financially unviable: all the options and orders from other carriers were cancelled. France & the UK retained only a nominal number.
Inevitably, development was abandoned on future generations/versions of the plane (quieter, more efficient, more space).

And the irony is that, when Concorde was decommissioned, the US squabbled to have examples for its museums!

Suggested headline for next week's Economist given the tone of this article: ALL ABOARD THE NIMBY TRAIN!

The economic viability of transport infrastructure is not indicated by the willingness of private enterprise to build it. In developed countries such infrastructure has significant consumer surplus and positive externalities which may warrant it long before it could ever make a commercial rate of return

Like...increased land values? Shock.

The only people who instantly benefit from railways (including those which lead to no where) and people who own land and watch the value of their land go up in value.* It is not just railways, of course. Roads, schools, hospitals and shopping complexes all serve to externalize their value via windfalls in the land market.

This is nothing new:

http://people.virginia.edu/~kr9c/print/imfprint/railway2.pdf

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2004/11/20385/48353

http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/railway-extension-may-drive-parnell-propert...

Sir James Caird, writing in 1877, estimated that the increase in land values in the 1860s and 1870s as a result of urban development and rail, was "£331 m. sterling in these twenty years, at a cost (to the landed interest) which probably has not exceeded sixty millions".

* In Wheels of Fortune, Fred Harrison discusses how most of the rail extensions in the UK could easily have been funded by a land tax to recycle the rent back into public coffers. Likewise, in "Taken for a Ride – Trains, Taxpayers and the Treasury", Don Riley, 2001 tells the story of how he and other property developers got the government to build rail around there areas. He tells the story of the windfall gains he received when London Transport built the “Jubilee Line” to South London. The railway (tube) line cost taxpayers $3.5m. Landowners received windfall benefits of $13.5m.

My fear is that the line is built to Birmingham, and then the money and political will runs out and the track further north is postponed indefinitely. This leaves one with a very expensive railway allowing slightly quicker travel to a city that was already under 2 hours away.
Considerable timesaving will only come when the likes of Manchester, Leeds (and I would hope eventually Glasgow, Newcastle, Edinburgh) have been reached by the line. For that reason I agree with Labour's proposition that now is the time to commit to a line further North as well.

I think the Corcorde would have been a great success if it was the brain child of the American companies such as Boeing, McDonald Douglas or Lockheed Martin. Unfortunately, the Corcorde had French/British heritage and the US conveniently banned it from important American airports to protect their commercial aircraft industry.

I believe the Concorde was an excellent first generation supersonic aircraft. Nobody could expect it to have solved all the problems such as noise, costs etc. If Britain and France had the financial clout like the Americans then, I am convinced Concorde would eventually be a success. It is a pity that nobody would know what a Mark V Concorde would look like !!

I suppose we ought to give this two and half cheers for good intentions and hope (futile, I know) that the costs can be kept to £33 billion and that estimates for resulting economic activity hold good. We are where we are.

Commenter William Cuthertson mentions the old Varsity Line. This was discussed here on The Economist some months ago. It casts light on the political nature of infrastructure investment and the tendency of rent-seeking metropolises to keep on growing beyond the bounds of efficiency.

The Varsity Line existed until 1967 but was ripped up at the direction of the Westminster Government which insisted that all Oxford-Cambridge traffic should go via London instead. Such decisions – like HS2 and other London-centric policies - lead to ever more crowding and congestion in London itself, which must be remedied by ever more spending (such as the 15 billion pound Crossrail scheme).

Contrary to William Cuthertson’s claim, the economic viability of transport infrastructure is not indicated by the willingness of private enterprise to build it. In developed countries such infrastructure has significant consumer surplus and positive externalities which may warrant it long before it could ever make a commercial rate of return. Where the private sector is involved it is almost always subsidised by the government, often in ways which are deliberately hidden from public view. The Channel Tunnel, for example, would not have proceeded as a private venture had it not been propped up by a guaranteed rail usage agreement with the state-owned SNCF and (the then state-owned) British Rail. When construction costs overran budget, it was propped up further by gratuitous extensions of its concession period.

Infrastructure decisions are political, and spatial proximity matters when it comes to political rent-seeking. Politicians are human beings who inevitably look more kindly upon those with whom they have regular social contact. In a country where political power is concentrated within “lunching distance” of the Cabinet, London and Londoners will always direct national resources into perpetuating their position at the top of the pile. The vast outlay of public money on the London Olympics(*) is another example.

Infrastructure decisions are some of the ways in which politically dominant cities grow and perpetuate themselves by extracting rents from politically less powerful regions, irrespective of efficiency. The result of this is to attract ever more people into the metropolis as they seek to be close to the source of political rents rather than being rentees.

On the Bagehot blog the other day there was a discussion on whether Scotland is subsidised by England. One of the interesting facts which came to light was this study which showed that the region receiving the highest per capita public spending in the United Kingdom is . . . . . . . . . London!!!

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(*) On the topic of state-sponsored sport and art, see also this recent article on the Prospero blog on how to be a dictator. Lesson 3: “Everything good must come through you.”

State-sponsored sport and art is another way of cultivating a group of celebrities (always valuable for propaganda purposes) who depend on the London regime for their very existence, and will be reluctant to criticise its rent-seeking activities.

Even more important and more expensive than high speed rail, is re-making and re-zoning cities to be more dense. Aligning communities with high density routes and corridors that can be served by mass transit and rail. And allowing a low-carbon footprint lifestyle.

It is as easy or as hard as moving families to cities, high density flats, and in walkable neighborhoods.

It is changing your life, not just laying tracks.

I am in rare agreement with rewt66. Public investment should be justified on a purely rational basis, and HSR often fails this test. It tends to only make sense in dense corridors like Japan where there is a fairly large middle class population which can make economical use of it. As China's middle class grows, it will probably be well served by HSR.

As for Britain (and California), let the accountants alone make the call. I suspect that the tens of billions at stake would be better spent on more prosaic yet broadly useful projects like local and regional BRT and light rail. Let's face it. The 99 percent need efficient local transit options. Not loss-making halo projects that they may use for a once-a-year or once-in-a-lifetime joyride.

A useful test is to ask is that if the project is economically viable, would private enterprise build it? Private enterprise built the truly inspirational channel tunnel, but the profits, if any, are minimal.

The Economist also pointed out some years ago that no one ever made money out of the railways in the 19th Century, although the building of the network transformed business and society. Likewise, one has a certain agreement with Warren Buffet that the Airlines have been so economically dysfunctional that it would have been better if the Wright Brothers had both been killed during their maiden flights. The Economist also made the same point about the internet after the DotCom bust.

But in this case, I am more reminded of Cyril Northcote Parkinson's observation that the time spent discussing a budget is inversely proportional to the sum being spent. It has all been decided with indecent haste, only an idiot thinks this beast will stay in budget.

If the Government really wants to improve the rather poor quality of life of its residents, then perhaps they can spare a million to replace the now demolished station in the market town where I work, so that I can get from Oxford to home in 35 minutes and not the 95 minutes it presently takes me by car. The track is still there, on the old Varsity line to Cambridge. Now, that really would make a difference, and 19000 such similar improvements for the equivalent minimum cost of HS2 would truly transform the country.

The "incredible feats of engineering" have already been performed, and the technology is proven. Moreover, unlike the concorde, it is more efficient and comfortable than its competitor (short-range air transport). Although I do question whether it makes sense over such short distances as London-Birmingham.

" I just don’t think that high speed rail has made its case for doing those things just yet." Well its been around for forty years. You're either for public investment in infrastructure or you're against it. For maximising social returns or only interested in private returns. Forty years ago economists even thought that government simply gets in the way of private sector investment. They didn't realise that without certan forms of government investment, the private sector struggles to generate adequate returns.

I never thought Concorde would have much of a market. I remember the first time I was inside it in a display before it was certified for commercial flight: so small even I hit my head. Twice. But more importantly, the distances flown, mainly trans-Atlantic, meant you could shave time but not eliminate the travel day.

High speed rail will have a market. Period. It makes some cities into commutes, even lunch or dinner visits. It connects communities of suppliers and thinkers.

Comparing it to the Concorde SST may be a superficial complement...or a grave insult.

The Concorde was a halo project bringing supersonic transport to jet age travelers. It was sleek as a jet fighter. But cramped, noisy and inefficient. Landing in a city, it was noisier than New Year's Fireworks.

Less than 20 copies were made, and those were obligated subsidized government purchases.

IT was never commercially viable or even close. And its crash record is among the worst of any commercial plane.

It single-handedly nearly bankrupted the Airbus parent company. IT may be the biggest manufacturing fiasco of the century. It IS the Webster's Dictionary definition of an Albatross.

The unsexy narrow bodied single aisle Boeing 737 by contrast is the Toyota Corolla of the skies: The most successful commercial jet in aviation history. Not high performance but safe.

There are men you date and men you marry. Knowing the difference is wisdom.