I’m glad the folly that is HS2 is being scaled back, but the schemes replacing it are not much better
This week, a rare outbreak of sanity is predicted in British government rail policy. The eastern branch of David Cameron’s HS2 vanity railway is likely to be cancelled in favour of a flurry of other improvements to rail services. Rather than whingeing, red-wall Tories should be cheering. Their constituents should be getting about sooner and faster, rather than merely getting more swiftly to London some day.
This leaves in place the southern leg of what now appears to be principally a London-to-Birmingham high-speed “shuttle”. Its value for money – which was based on the northern leg – has collapsed. The chief beneficiaries of the surviving HS2 will be Midlands commuters into the metropolis. The contribution to “levelling up” will be zero. Meanwhile, anyone criticising China for carbon-guzzling should witness the carbon-fest that is HS2’s devastation of the London Borough of Camden. Several hundred homes have already been destroyed.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
