Getting the figures correct for H2S benefits

Jim Steer says, “What welcome news it is that Justine Greening, Secretary of State for Transport, is considering ways to bring forward the benefits of HS2 to Yorkshire” (Yorkshire Post, July 26).

Perhaps he had better tell Justine, and the good people of Yorkshire, that it will cost every household in the land £2,000, equivalent to a tax hit on the county of £1.2bn.

The truth is that this matter is bordering on a fraud. Firstly, the headline cost of the network out to Leeds and Manchester is £33bn. However, adding for trains, £8bn, and tax at 20.9 per cent, yields £49bn. It is that which should be the headline, not £33bn.

Secondly, the economic analysis is mostly nonsense; for example (a) 12.5 per cent of the benefits are from improved reliability; ignoring the fact that the trains could be made to run on time without spending tens of billions on an HSR network; (b) 15 per cent are from reduced crowding, but that too could be solved at relatively trivial cost by adding carriages to peak-hour trains; (c) 12.5 per cent are from “other rail user impacts”, for example, easier station access and five per cent is from “other impacts”, such as reduced road congestion, both of which could be obtained at low cost by other methods; (d) The remaining 55 per cent is from time savings, based on the untenable assumption that time on a train is entirely wasted. Worse still, the benefits depend on wildly optimistic passenger forecasts – requiring up to 18 1,000-seat trains per hour each way.

Rather than creating jobs this proposal will suck resources out of that part of the economy that makes a profit to the loss of all of us. Put simply, the “vision” will turn out to be nightmare.