Peer review: Professor Rod Smith
Former chief scientific adviser to the DfT
There is no doubt that Tom Kelly faces a massive task in informing, educating and changing the public perception of the HS2 project. I hope he is not underestimating the mountain he faces.
I have worried that since the inception of HS2, no overarching plan has been produced. The widespread perception is that of a series of ad hoc decisions that have been made sequentially - a new railway to Birmingham, let’s extend it to the Northern cities, then connect across the Pennines.
But many questions remain: will Scotland ever be connected? If so, it seems essential that the East route is taken, linking the North East and Newcastle.
Why is the western route unpromising? There is no real population concentration north of the Liverpool to Manchester axis, and the terrain is difficult for railways - this was well-known in the middle of the 19th century!
How will the Welsh capital be connected? Will anything happen south of the Thames? What triangulated routes will bring resilience to the eventual nationwide system? How will the new railway help in the development of new cities? How will it contribute to the pressing question of airport capacity? (A good example is Birmingham Airport, which will be nearer in time to London than Heathrow is on the Piccadilly Line).
When the motorway system was conceived (and many years before it was actually built), such a national plan did exist. It would be my number one priority to do the same for the high-speed rail system, and so stimulate public awareness that this is indeed a national project - not just (as many people perceive) a white elephant to cut a few minutes off the journey time to Birmingham.
The capacity that the high-speed rail system will provide is its real selling point - a capacity that will have to deal with a rapidly growing population increasingly frustrated by congestion of the motorway and trunk road network.
How passengers connect to the system needs careful thought. The fringe of the city interchange can provide access without taking passengers on unnecessary journeys to the old city centres.
Above all, it needs to be very clearly communicated that although good transport is an essential contributor to a successful economy, it is not by itself sufficient. Local policy decisions will contribute to the success or failure of the new possibilities provided by the high-speed system.
Stations, pearls in the necklace of the railway, can act as magnets to stimulate economic development or become monuments to folly - it all depends on generating enthusiasms to effectively use the increase in land values that a new stations brings. Local and regional transport systems need to be realigned to act in a complementary way to the new network - the capacity of the new system will not be useful unless it is matched by enhanced and extended local distribution systems.
