28 February 2011
The High Speed 2 rail line would cost £32bn but generate £71bn over 60 years, Transport Secretary Philip Hammond has said.
Launching a consultation on the project’s route today, Hammond said high-speed rail offered ‘a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the way we travel in the twenty-first century and would help us build a modern economy fit for the future’.
The government is proposing a 'Y' shaped network linking London to the West Midlands, and then on to Manchester and Leeds.
There would also be connections, running at normal speeds, to Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and links to Heathrow airport and the High Speed 1 line to France.
The economic case is based on attracting passengers away from roads and domestic air travel by offering fast travel between city centres, much as Channel Tunnel rail services have largely replaced flights from London to Paris and Brussels.
With London to Birmingham travel times falling to 49 minutes, the completion of HS2 should shift some 6 million air and 9 million road journeys on to the rail network, the Department for Transport claimed.
The government estimates the cost of the line at £32bn, but expects it to generate economic benefits of around £44bn and fare revenues of around £27bn over 60 years.
That would give a net present cost of building and operating the line of £17.1bn, and a benefit to cost ratio of 2.6, the DfT said.
Objectors, led by Buckinghamshire County Council, have said they will fight the project in particular because of its environmental and aesthetic effects on the Chiltern hills.
But the DfT said that all but 1.2 miles in this area would either be in tunnels, cuttings or alongside an existing main road.
The objector group Stop HS2 has argued that the project would increase carbon emissions because the trains would use three times the power of conventional ones.
Meanwhile, the Campaign for Better Transport urged the Government not to neglect the rest of the rail network.
Campaigns director Richard Hebditch said: ‘We’re very worried that ministers will need to cut budgets elsewhere to pay for high speed rail.’
The consultation runs until July 29.
