Pros And Cons Of High Speed Rail Hs2 50234k

Pros and Cons of High Speed Rail HS2 by Tejvan Pettinger on March 1, 2013 in economics

HS2 is a proposed new railway line linking London Euston to Birmingham, and in the second phase – Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and eventually Scotland. ers of high speed rail argue it is necessary to meet the UK’s rapidly growing demand for travel. High speed rail will provide the greenest, safest and most efficient form of transport. The investment will provide a major boost to business and the economy; the faster rail links will help reduce the north-south divide, and overcome the externalities of car use. Opponents of high speed rail argue that it is primarily an unnecessary project that can’t be justified given the huge cost involved; critics argue that there are much more pressing priorities such as small scale road and rail projects which help to deal with smaller bottlenecks. Also opponents are often motivated by the impact of the new railway on the environment.

Pros of High Speed Rail 1.

2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

Road system is becoming crowded with limited ability to keep increasing capacity. Offering high speed rail, will encourage more people to travel by train relieving gridlock in city centres. Therefore, it is not just rail travellers who will benefit, but those who gain from lower congestion on the roads. Investment will provide jobs for those involved in building and running the new HS2 Journey times from London to Birmingham will be less than one hour. There will also be quick rail links to Manchester and Leeds. Despite objections, HS1 has proved successful. Demand for HS1 rail travel to continent has proved to meet expectations; this has enabled more people to easily travel to the continent. The £17bn will be spread out over 15-20 years, therefore we can afford it. The £1- £2bn annual capital investment will help create jobs, stimulate economic activity and give a decent rate of return. Take travel away from short distance air-travel, leaving lower carbon footprint.

8.

Environmental impact will be mitigated by ‘green tunnels’ and planting of trees. 9. Empirical results show that increased train frequency can have significant external benefits in of lower pollution, fewer road accidents and drops in infant mortality.Figure 1. The environmental benefits of railroads: Effect of 10% increase in rail frequency

Source: VOX – Can railways curb traffic externalities? 10. Trains have a better safety record than the roads. enger death rates (2008)  By car 1.9 per billion Km  By train 0.3 per billion Km

Cons of HS2 

There are other alternatives such as increasing train length on



existing routes. HS2 may only benefit a small section of the population who use



trains between major cities. Benefits of improved speed is debatable given that many people

 

can now work on laptops away from the office. Environmental costs of building new line through the Chilterns. In an era of budget cuts, spending on train service is not the



highest priority. Forecasts for enger numbers are uncertain, no guarantee the demand will be there.



Rail-future a campaigning group for rail travel criticised the need for ultra high speed trains, there may be a bigger overall benefit from running slightly slower trains over different routes. Railfuture

It is not often Britain attempts an ambitious investment project. The political system makes expensive, forward thinking investment projects unlikely to return much political capital. Elections aren’t won by promising improved transport links for the next decade. True, we like to grumble at the inadequate state of current transport links, but to actually invest the necessary money and time is another matter. However, you can be sure building any new investment project will lose a few votes from disgruntled voters who are adversely affected by the infrastructure appearing in their back garden. Even if it does get , there is always some financial crisis to come along leaving the government to scratch around for spending cuts. It’s always going to be easier to postpone capital investment projects rather than make nurses and policemen redundant. The odds are really stacked against HS2 will cost £32 billion to build, generate £27 billion in fares and provide £44 billion of economic benefits