High speed rail lines north of Birmingham have been announced by the Conservatives at their annual conference. North to them means Manchester and Leeds.
They are a copy of the Labour plans announced in March – with one crucial difference. That is not even a cursory mention of Scotland being part of the network at some undetermined point in the unforeseeable future after 2032 (the year, not thirty-two-minutes-past-eight). Labour were careful not to totally alienate their base, Tory Transport Secretary Phillip Hammond felt he didn't need to, saying that the rail lines would join onto the existing West and East Coast Main Lines respectively once the HSR tracks finish.
A couple of further points to the ones I’ve made at length previously. Firstly, the snail’s pace of building the line. London to Birmingham won’t be completed till 2025, then it will take a further seven years to link Manchester and Leeds. Factor in the time-honoured British tradition of the project running over time, and it’ll be generations till this sees the light of day. If you take those twenty two years and work backwards from now, Maggie Thatcher was still in power. How much will things move on between now and the 2030s? Shouldn’t we be zooming around in solar powered hovercraft by then? Or teleporting?
Hammond himself cited the Chinese example who will build 12,000km of track in the same time it will take the UK to build 205km. This isn’t just to do with planning permissions, it’s about the level of investment being put in. The UK government will invest only £2bn a year of the £30bn required for it all. These are of course not insignificant sums of money, but we are continually told the lines will pay for themselves in the boost they represent to the economy. It should therefore be possible to do it faster, and to do more faster.
On the do more bit, I speak of the line being constructed in Scotland. This is where the environmental benefits kick in with the modal shift from air to rail. The UK government haven’t even studied the option in any depth. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that they have given up on the union between Scotland and England. It’s entirely possible that if there was a real proper campaign from Scottish business, media and politicians, things could still change. It seems though the UK government want the Scottish Government to pay for it without devolving crossborder rail, and crucially affording Scotland the economic powers to raise the necessary revenue. It will therefore be an end of the political line between England and Scotland that will connect the two up faster, and put Scotland speedily into the heart of Europe.
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