Not really. What it shows is what nearly everyone already knew. The point of no return with HS2 happened at least 5 years ago.
The latest review was just about backside covering so when the programme slips by a few more years and the out-turn cost reaches £200bn, the politicians will be able to say they had no choice but to proceed and that was what the experts were telling them to do.
The real learning point from this is that every big rail scheme from now on will be that bit harder to get underway - because governments will be in no doubt that whatever figure is mentioned at the start is a massive underestimate, and having aligned themselves to a scheme backing out of it later becomes impossible to do.
HS2 phase 1 will go ahead in the form it is currently planned - but not because of the absence of an alternative technical option.
It will happen because there is no political alternative. HS2's biggest fans need to reflect on that because it will have consequences for phase 2 and beyond.
In which case what have the rail experts missed which should have been given as an alternitve scheme?
5 years ago there had been very little spend on HS2, even 3 years ago there hadn't been very much. However given how much had been said by those opposed to HS2 they have said very little about what we should do instead.
It's things like smart timetabling (but no details of what that looks like)
We need to travel less (yes we do, but we may well do that and still end up using rail more)
That broadband/working from home will do away with travel (yet the faster broadband gets and the more we work from home the more rail travel has increased)
We need to reopen closed railways (as if opening a rural branchline would help with mainline capacity, if anything it would mean that we needed HS2 all the more)
We need to invest in the existing railway network (as if we hadn't been, we've spent ~£30bn in the last decade)
We need longer trains (as if we haven't, during CP5 and CP6 there were, at the start of CP6, 5,000 new coaches from rolling stock orders, since then there's been even more ordered for delivery during CP6, including EMR and Avanti)
We should build a pair of new lines for the WCML (which is exactly what HS2 is doing, is just not having to blitz through towns and cities which are along side the WCML)
We need to reopen the GC line (for the Southern party of HS2 we effectively are, just with a better alignment, with good drainage and using Euston as Marylebone doesn't have the space for extra trains)
We need to upgrade the Chiltern Line (we do, but that's as well as not instead of HS2, so that the local train services benefit)
I'm sure that there are others, they all make good sound bites - however they ask fall short when looked at in much detail.
It comes back to the passenger rail growth, HS2 was based on doubling of passenger numbers between 2009 and 2037 (growth rate of 2.0). It why I keep highlighting this, as if the the expected growth had fallen short then we could do something smaller.
Between 2009 and 2018 (so just 9/28 years) we should have seen a growth rate of 1.25, however rail growth between London and the regions which benefit from HS2 has seen a growth rate of 1.5, with some regions like the West Midlands and the North West seeing a growth rate of 1.7.
As such the average growth rate across all the region's is 4.6% per year compared to the expected 2.5%.
Now whilst there's been some lower growth years of late the fact that we are well head of the curve means that it is likely to have little impact. Anyway those lower growth figures are included in the 4.6% figure!
It should also be noted that even if we fell to 2.5% for the next 9 years and then 0% growth for the next 9 years we'd still only be a short distance away from the growth rate of 2.0 by being at 1.86. However that would mean that having built HS2 phase 1 that it had 0 impact on passenger numbers. Which is unlikely, as any other time there's been improvements to capacity you are rail growth increase.
If that rate of growth continues we could see the passenger growth factor hit 3.5. Now obviously this would have to slow down as we run out of capacity, however it shows that actually we could need to build HS2 and do all of the alternatives and build another North South line just to keep up with rail growth.
View media item 3340
(The latest data is due out shortly, based on the by TOC data I'd expect to see yet more growth).
Whilst there are problems with the way HS2 has been run and it had done badly on explaining why it's needed, that doesn't mean that something isn't needed. Given all of the above is likely that you'd end up with something fairly similar to HS2 being proposed.
If you think about it, if you are accepting that we need more capacity by building a new pair of lines how would you go about doing so?
Let's set out some key goals, and feel free to include others:
- link between major cities, so that's likely (as a bare minimum) to include London, Birmingham, Manchester
- you'd want to see which other cities you could also link to, which could include cities such as Edinburgh, Newcastle, Liverpool, Cardiff and the like, however you're not going to be able to create a single scheme (without it having a even larger budget and looks like rebuilding the entire intercity network) which links every city with a new line
- you then look at your core cities and see what other cities you can link to, even if that's by means of services and not track
- you then look at a route, there's only so many ways to get between London, Birmingham and Manchester and it looks broadly like HS2 without going much or of your way.
- such a route should avoid impact on people, so probably best to bypass major towns, especially if you can provide extra capacity to those locations by using the released train paths and reduced long distance passenger numbers on the other remaining services
- such a route should avoid sites which are important to nature, however you're unlikely to miss all of them, even if you slowed down to 30mph
- the likes of Leeds and York are likely to need to be fairly key points to serve, given the very slow East West services you'd need to build a connection to them, however in doing so you'd need to ensure that speeds are fairly high so that it doesn't take longer than the existing services given that you'd also want to serve Birmingham
- you'd want to have some connections between all the cities served, however there's a limit on how much you can do this (again without rebuilding the entire intercity network) and so many are likely to have to continue to rely on existing services, however this is likely to result in Birmingham being at or near the centre of the network
As I've said feel free to add others (I'm sure there's plenty I've missed) but it does indicate that something similar to HS2 would likely be the result whoever you asked to look at it.