Q. What would a high-speed rail system for Britain look like?

Greengauge21 believes that a high speed rail network in Britain should be considered, as we set out in The Next Steps for high-speed rail in Britain, with five potential corridors:

1. London — Birmingham — Manchester
2. London — Cambridge — Northeast
3. London — Bristol/Cardiff
4. Trans-Pennine
5. Anglo-Scottish.

The nature of the high-speed links may well vary across the corridors, being a combination of new construction and upgrade of existing lines.

The important point is that it is a network and that it can be grafted on to the existing rail infrastructure, including High Speed 1 (HS1). Indeed, in the London area, it would be necessary to connect to HS1, to a central London terminal and to Heathrow Airport as well — each element of which has a strong business case in the Atkins work.

High-speed lines would be built alongside existing transport infrastructure. This was found to provide the best environmental solution in the HS1 case. In the case of a section such as London — Birmingham, for example, there would be the choice of following any of the M1, the M40, the West Coast Main Line and the Chiltern Route.

Q. Won’t this be unavoidably expensive?

Network Rail has argued that costs ought to be contained at levels beneath those incurred on the HS1, which are much higher than those of the TGV network in France. We believe that costs might be brought down to as low as £25 million /route mile — remembering that HS1, the nearest benchmark, entailed 25% of its mileage being in tunnel and the construction of four new, complex stations over a relatively short route length. This extent of tunnelling and frequency of stations would not need to be repeated, although the pattern established on HS1 of using the approaches to London to carry high-speed outer commuter services, and not just long distance trains, is an important characteristic that Greengauge21 believes should be a feature of the domestic high-speed network.

Q. Where would be served by the high-speed network?

The major cities of the Midlands, the North, central Scotland, the South West and south Wales would all have direct high-speed services to central London and Heathrow. Eurostar services would be extended to serve Heathrow, the West Midlands and possibly elsewhere. There would be high-speed connections between the major cities of the Midlands, the North and Scotland. High speed services would be (selectively) extended over the existing network to reach places not directly on the new infrastructure. In addition, a wide area in the 50—100 mile radius from London would be served by new commuter services that would make use of the high-speed line.

Of course, many places not served directly by high-speed rail stand to gain too. Intermediate stations on the main lines can be afforded much better services, and places that have no direct services to London because of the non-availability of train paths on the main line, might become connected.

Q. What would be the capital costs?

Greengauge21 estimates the cost of its High Speed Two proposal to be approximately £11 billion, based on High Speed 1 contract costs and with the government’s standard 66% optimism bias allowance.

A high-speed network would be built in stages, probably over two or three decades (which is what has happened in France), and the costs of each stage would vary. The idea would be to create the most valuable sections of route first, and these could be those which best address capacity shortfalls in the existing network.

Q. How would high-speed rail be paid for?

Although Network Rail have indicated that there might be a commercial case for high-speed rail (which would avoid the need for public sector finance), Greengauge21 believes this to be unlikely. Funding will need to come from the public sector, to supplement the financing that can be extracted from what will be undoubtedly a highly profitable high speed train service.

As the Greengauge21 Manifesto points out, the interurban corridors to be served by high-speed rail generate tax surpluses for the Treasury from both road and rail users. With the onset of road user charging and green taxes, this will become more apparent and the cash flows will increase. The recent discussion on domestic aviation and road user taxes triggered by the Stern Report has raised the question of what will happen to the income streams generated, which would be considerable. It makes economic sense for at least some of these cash flows to be used to finance improvements in the low carbon transport, high-speed rail alternative. High speed rail will bring benefits across the modes, road, aviation and rail, and help gain public acceptance for green taxes and road user charging.