Which would imply that it's not likely to be well used, on what basis so you suggest that this is the case?
Is it because the growth seen to date is way off from predictions, is so what does rail growth look like?
If I recall correctly the predictions were for (from 2009 when it was announced) growth of about 95% by the time of opening. (The corresponds with the ~90% extra capacity claimed to be created by RP2).
To reach this figure for the year of opening it equals 2.5% growth per year. This means that by 2018 (9 years after HS2 being announced in 2009, although it should be noted that the actual baseline in the HS2 documentation is 2008 so feel free to use either year) that the growth predicted would be 24.9%.
Given that the use of percentages can be used to argue things which are incorrect (as an extra 2% of 200 is more than an extra 3% of 100 in actual numbers) and some people find numbers which are very big hard to grasp for the sake of simplicity we'll covert the 2009 flows to a baseline of 100.
Therefore growth would be seen as a number higher than 100 and a fall would be a number lower.
Therefore
100 baseline in 2009
195 full HS2 opening in 2036 (194.8 to be exact)
For growth to be on target rail growth would need to be 102.5 in 2010, 105 in 2011, 107.7 in 2012, 110.3 in 2014, etc.
Now because of compound growth the numbers will be higher than just adding 2.5 each year, as adding 10% to 100 (10) is more than adding 10% to 50 (5), so it is that as you see growth going up to achieve the same percentage increase you see more passengers needing to be added to the network.
That means to be on target rail growth between 2009 and 2018 would need to have increased from 100 to 125 (124.9).
Even to see growth so that is all railway passengers and doesn't include any shift from air or car, nor would it include the 25% of new trips the target would need to shift from 195 to 260.
That would give us a growth factor of 3.6% per year. Which would equate to 137 (137.49) in 2018 compared to our baseline of 100 in 2009.
The actual figures show that across the region's which will benefit from HS2 that the average figure is 149 when comparing rail travel between London to that region. (This is so that there's no accusation that the increase is due to split tickets inflating the results)
However for some regions, which includes those which benefit the most from phase 1, growth results in the figure being 170 when compared against the baseline of 100.
There's two important factors to highlight:
Between 2009 and 2018 there's been fairly limited capacity improvements to the ECML and MML, which would explain why the North East, East Midlands and Yorkshire and Humberside have seen lower growth than the West Midlands and the North West (who have seen the WCML upgrade and the lengthening of the 390's).
- To date there's been no increase in capacity or journey time improvements from HS2, nor is there likely to be significant growth due to the anticipation of HS2. However once Phase 1 opens then it is likely that there would be extra growth beyond the background growth.
From the 2018 figure of 149 to reach the enhanced target of 260 (which had needed 3.6% growth year on year) because of the growth seen to date this would need to be 3.2% growth year on year.
However as indicated that would include those switching from air travel, who I wouldn't expect a significant change from until there's speed improvements which won't be seen until HS2 is at least partly open and the full benefit won't be until HS2 is fully delivered.
Given that the accusation is that HS2 would be under used the other thing to consider is how busy HS2 would be compared to the predicted passenger numbers.
To do this we could change the baseline around, so that 2036 becomes the baseline with a figure of 100. That means that we can see how full HS2 services are likely to be compared to the predictions if HS2 were to be fully opened today.
Before I give that figure, and to give some context, if HS2 were to have opened in 2009 there would have been 38 passengers for every 100 expected in 2036.
Likewise, for a bit more context, based on the expected passenger numbers in 2018 it should have been 48.
Based on the 2018 numbers there would be 57 passengers for every 100 expected in 2036. As such, even with it being 18 years before the full HS2 project will be delivered, there's quite a hard case to justify HS2 as a White Elephant.
Especially when you consider that with 100 million passenger journeys it would be dealing with broadly the same number of passengers as Waterloo, a similar number of passengers as the airports of Luton & Heathrow combined or over 5% of all rail travel seen in 2018.
For full disclosure, and so people can use actual numbers to create an argument against what I've said here's the ORR data which I've used for the advice argument:
View media item 3340
P.S. for the benefit of the Moderators; I'd suggest that this is on topic of the name for HS2, as the suggestion was that it should be called a White Elephant, and I'm suggesting that to do so you would need to explain why it would be considered as such and putting the case for why it shouldn't be.
However I do know a thing or two about light (Photons) amplified by the stimulated emission of radiation...
