HS2 is not just another transport project — it’s about the very bones of our economy.
Over the coming weeks, the government will publish at last the Oakervee report into HS2.
The review looks likely to give the green light to this massive investment in the infrastructure of the north and the Midlands — and it’s certain that there will be an almighty row about it.
As always with any infrastructure project in the UK, expect howls of protest about the cost, impact, and expected benefits.
We should pay due attention to these voices — any project, especially one as big as HS2, must be subject to rigorous public scrutiny.
But once the facts have been carefully considered, we should get on and damn well build the thing.
People in the Midlands and the north need this railway. For too long, they have been neglected and let down by a rail network that is not fit for purpose. You only need to look at the dismal experience of passengers on the Northern and Transpennine networks to see that.
It currently takes over an hour to travel by train from Birmingham to Nottingham or Manchester, and nearly two hours to get to Leeds. Commuters in towns like Crewe, Darlington, Grantham and Nuneaton struggle with substandard train services because of an over-stretched Victorian rail system.
However, to assess HS2 in conventional terms, merely as a transport upgrade, is to miss the point. The real reason to build HS2 is to unleash productivity and prosperity across the country. This is about the very bones of our economy.
Be in no doubt: our outdated and under-invested railway holds the economy of the north and the Midlands back, just as London’s super-connected transport network propels that city forward.
Our failing rail network leaves talented entrepreneurs, ambitious students, and influential investors believing that they cannot rely on access to suppliers, customers, employees or opportunities. Investment falters, and jobs go elsewhere.
Capacity is crunched. Freight waits in queues on the motorways, spewing pollution. Commuters wait on crowded platforms and can’t get seats on trains. Airports are jammed up by super-short-haul UK flights, when the slots should be freed up for international journeys and global trade.
It need not be this way. What if a business owner in Birmingham could quickly and easily travel to Leeds or Manchester for a meeting? What if a major foreign investor chose Nottingham because it sat at the heart of a well-connected workforce of millions? What if a working mum could easily commute to a new job in Birmingham, without having to move her family home from the north west?
Each of these decisions and opportunities may be individually small, but replicated across dozens of towns, hundreds of investors, millions of people, it adds up to a tidal wave of prosperity.
Only HS2 can make this possible. Halve the journey time between our major cities in the Midlands and the north, and you create economic possibilities that simply did not exist before.
And it’s not just people whizzing back and forth between major cities that benefit. Vast numbers of the real winners from HS2 may never use the new railway at all: over 70 stations are set to gain extra capacity and new connections because of space freed up on existing lines.
HS2 is also a critical part of the Northern Powerhouse Rail and Midlands Rail Hub projects, both of which promise even better commuter connections.
How can I be so sure that HS2 will have such a tremendous impact on these regions? Because it’s already working. Come to Birmingham, the city where I was born, a city where an economic revolution is underway because of HS2.
A host of major housing developments and regeneration schemes have been launched, including 4,000 new homes to be built right next to the new Curzon Street HS2 station. Peaky Blinders writer Stephen Knight has said that he wants to build a film studio there. Inward investors tell me time and again that they are choosing the Midlands because of the potential of HS2.
Add to that the dozens of businesses that have moved to the region to be part of the HS2 supply chain, and the hundreds of apprentices that are already training at the National College for High Speed Rail, and you start to get a sense of the magnitude of the economic impact HS2 will make
These opportunities and investments represent just a trickle. Building HS2 in full will unleash a flood of opportunity, jobs and prosperity for the Midlands and the north.
This is not just a railway project. It’s a tremendous economic intervention. So let’s take a deep breath, by all means take on board criticism where it can improve the scheme — and then get on and build it.
Main image credit: Getty