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Category Archives: Parliament

The HS2 Phase 2B Hybrid Bill (Crewe – Manchester) passes 2nd reading.

20 Monday Jun 2022

Posted by Paul Bigland in Hs2, Parliament, Politics, Railways

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Hs2, Parliament, Politics, Railways

It’s late. The debate has gone on for many hours and there’s been some interesting interventions (and some batshit ones too) but finally, the votes were cast at 21:40 tonight. The Phase 2B Hybrid bill has passed 2nd reading by…205 votes to 6! (link).

I’ll write about this in more detail later (when Hansard publishes the transcripts) but it was a many faceted debate. It was clear from the off that the opponents of HS2 (well, the few that are left) had nothing new to say and the MP for Tatton, Esther McVacant set the bar low with her speech which could be best described as ‘batshit’. The Tory MP for Buckingham, Greg Smith, wasn’t much better. He’s a Brexiter and climate changer denier who’s keeping a seat warm on the Transport Select Committee – which is a complete waste of time as it’s clear that despite all the expert witnesses he’s listened to – he’s never learned a thing. Add in Bill Cash MP and Philip Davies, the MP for Shipley and you could see why the anti HS2 camp were in trouble. If these were their ‘big guns’ then it was obvious they were firing blanks!

Worse was to follow when it became clear that some of the MPs who were celebrating the dropping of the Golborne link were actually still in favour of HS2! I suspect the schizophrenia of their position will come back to haunt them as the Govt made it clear they’re still committed to improving rail links to Scotland (and there’s not many routes that line can take).

What was clear was that HS2 still maintains massive cross-party support. Of course there was the usual party-political point-scoring but even so, there was a lot of unanimity – especially amongst Manchester MPs who’re not going to stop agitating for an underground station in the city. It was the same with North Wales corridor MPs, one of whom made a very good speech about maximising the benefits of HS2 by electrifying the North Wales Coast line.

All in all it was an interesting debate as it was clear the opponents of HS2 were maginalised and they knew it.

Here’s the list of those whom voted against HS2. Can you guess what else it is that links many of them together? I’ll reveal it in my expanded blog.

As I’ve been saying for sometime now – stop HS2 is dead…

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The curious case of the revised HoC research paper on Hs2

30 Sunday Jun 2019

Posted by Paul Bigland in Andrew Haylen, Hs2, Parliament, Railways

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Andrew Haylen, Hs2, Parliament, Railways

On June 20th a new House of Commons research paper was released, written by one Andrew Haylen. HoC research papers are normally well-balanced and unbiased, but this one seems anything but. It places a lot of weight on newspaper reports and uncritically swallows the House of Lords Economic Affairs Ctte report which criticises HS2

Haylen’s report claims that “there are alternatives (to HS2) available that could deal with the capacity constraints on the West Coast Main Line at a lower cost.”

Really? We’ll look at that in more detail in a minute. The report also claimed that the  estimates for the cost of HS2 were actually £65bn, way over the budget envelope of £55.7bn.

Needless to say, this paper was leapt on by opponents of HS2, who made all sorts of daft claims.

Then mysteriously, the report vanished only to re-appear on the 27th June with a new co-author, one Oliver Bennett. One of the changes that was made to the report was the idea that HS2 was going to cost £65bn, the forward to the report now says this;

“It seems the estimated costs for the full Y-network of HS2 had risen and have been estimated in this paper to be around £65 billion at the time of the 2015 Spending Review. This estimate is derived using figures published by the National Audit Office (NAO) and the Department for Transport (DfT) in 2016 and 2017 about the estimated scale of efficiency savings that would be required to keep the project within the funding envelope.

Since then, HS2 Ltd and the DfT have sought to reduce the costs of the infrastructure for Phase 2b by around 40% from the 2015 Spending Review estimate, with the total savings ambition for Phase 2 of the scheme at around £12.8 billion (in 2015 prices). As at November 2016, £7.14 billion of these savings had been embedded in the Phase 2b cost estimate. The revised cost estimate for the full Y-network, based on efficiency targets set out in the July 2017 financial case, is therefore £52.6 billion”.

Clearly, someone, somewhere ‘had words’ and pointed out the financial errors in the report! You can find the revised report here.

But there’s not just financial holes in the report. Bizarrely, there’s not a single mention of freight! How on earth Haylen can claim that the strategic alternatives to Hs2 can supply sufficient capacity when he’s only looking at WCML passenger services? He clearly has no idea that the Existing West Coast Main Line is the busiest mixed traffic railway in Europe. Freight could be a big beneficiary of the capacity HS2 releases on the WCML, that not only encourages modal shift off our congested roads, it also has an impact on meeting our carbon cutting targets. Is any of this considered? No.

Nor does Haylen seem aware of the fact that HS2 doesn’t just release capacity on the WCML! HS2 also removes long-distance non-stop services (such as Kings Cross-York and beyond) from the East Coast Main Line (ECML) and also releases capacity on the Midland Main Line too! I can only question just how much research Haylen has actually done into the strategic case for HS2 if he’s managed to miss these important details out. Or is it that they’re too inconvenient as they’d destroy his claim about the supposed ‘strategic alternatives’?

Let’s have a look at a map of the HS2 routes and associated services to illustrate the point that HS2 isn’t just about the WCML – and it certainly isn’t just about that route’s passenger services.

HS2-route-map-July-2017[1]

Haylen seems blissfully unaware of the existence of the Eastern arm of Phase 2b – the one that goes to East Midlands Hub, Chesterfield and Sheffield (thus relieving the Southern end of the MML) and onwards to Leeds and York (thus relieving the ECML).

How will his belief that tinkering with capacity upgrades to the WCML is sufficient help them? Simple. It won’t. Not one bit. His conclusions, (and his briefing paper) are so badly flawed they’re worthless. Not only that, they’re actually misleading. This is not the standard we should expect from the House of Commons library.

Even Haylen’s claims about the WCML passenger services don’t stand up to scrutiny. Let’s look at the issues in detail and the scheme known as “P1” from a 2013 report on HS2 strategic alternatives Haylen champions. Here’s the summary from the report.

P1.PNG

P1 is is a package of works costed at around £2.5 billion, that is said to increase capacity on the WCML to an extent that makes HS2 unnecessary. That report dates from 2013, so clearly whatever argument was made for P1 was not accepted as HS2 was chosen instead. What’s changed?

First, what is “P1”? Essentially, it’s everything that was rejected as part of the last WCML upgrade – grade-separation at Ledburn and Colwich, and 4-tracking just North of Nuneaton and on a short section of the Birmingham line. No work is said to be necessary at Euston, on the basis that turnrounds can be shortened.

And for that we get – what? One extra train per hour net out of Euston, making 16 instead of the present 15 on the Fast lines. The Birmingham and Manchester routes both go from 3 tph to 4 tph, but the present 2 tph in peak hours to Runcorn and Liverpool reduces to one, compensated for by detaching a portion off a Glasgow train at Warrington (something than in itself demands a stretch of quadrupling of the Chat Moss line).

But why? Seats on long-distance trains are not the pressing problem. The problems on the WCML out of Euston are capacity for commuters, and interurban connectivity. All four fast line commuter services from Euston in the evening peak hour are “double red” for crowding; two of the four are 12 cars already. And through minimising journey times, connectivity is poor – Watford and Milton Keynes each have only an hourly fast train to the West Midlands, not much good for commuting and no good for accessing an airport. There is no direct service in peak hours between the employment and residential centres of Watford and Rugby.

So how does P1 do in these terms? In terms of connectivity, it’s a disaster. For instance:

• Watford doesn’t even feature on the service diagram, so its link to the West Midlands, poor today, is presumably beneath notice;

• Milton Keynes is there, but what is shown is no direct service to the West Midlands, just two through trains running via Northampton and making local calls on the way, extending journey times;

• Presumably to minimise journey times, Coventry and Birmingham international are each served by alternate Euston – Birmingham fast trains, in place of all three today;

• Trent Valley stations are served by putting their stops into the Chester service, slowing that probably by about 15 minutes. And as it doesn’t now call at Milton Keynes, presumably in mitigation of the extended journey time, they have no link to that employment centre other than an hourly slow service via Northampton;

• And what happens to the Trent Valley stations peak services, formed by through trains dropping in, up in the morning and down in the evening? P1 is presented as a peak service, and there they aren’t;

• Rugby has no fast trains to London at all.

As for capacity, the real benefit seems to be just the chance to put one more 4-car unit on two outer suburban trains in each peak hour. This is an indirect effect of the grade-separation at Ledburn, allowing trains to be presented to Northampton at reasonable intervals instead of in pairs, increasing the chance of being able to reduce trains to 8 cars for the sake of platforms on the Birmingham line, or simply to save unit-mileage and fleet by not losing a 4-car unit to Birmingham or Crewe unnecessarily. But this is a pretty small return, especially as these trains are now the only service for commuters to Rugby, who currently have a number of stops on InterCity services. And whilst stating an assumption that all slow line services will be 12-car, no mention is made of the fact that, short of major work at Euston, platform 10 at Euston remains unable to take 12 car trains, so they can’t all be 12-car.

And if we take the service diagram at face value, there must be doubts about practicability of what it shows. Can New St and Piccadilly accept four Intercity trains per hour in place of the current three? Probably not. Can two trains per hour be timed to make the slow crossing move to the Manchester line at Crewe in the face of everything from Up North? “Not proven”.

Then, how valid is the underlying assumption that Euston can handle another peak hour train without enhancement? Ironically, it probably is valid for the peak hour itself, as things can only be efficient in the peak, or else they don’t work at all, although a platforming pattern that is efficient at Euston may deliver trains to the rest of the railway at times that don’t suit constraints elsewhere. The difficulty is the transition to the off-peak service. We are given no clue as to what the off-peak service is, but if a 15- or 30-minute peak cycle has to be adjusted to something like the present 20-minute cycle, the platforming pattern at the transition becomes irregular, leading to either excessive use of platforms or weird gaps in the service. Alternatively, you might create the off-peak service by dropping from 4 tph to 2 tph on the Manchester and Birmingham lines, but that is less frequent than now, which can only deter optional travellers.

So P1 is not a shovel-ready alternative to HS2. The useful capacity it adds is minimal, and the journey time savings it presents are achieved at the expense of connectivity. Maybe it can be improved – probably some calls could be reinstated given careful flighting of trains, but what makes a “timetable solution” at one place almost inevitably creates a timetable problem at another. Meanwhile P1 costs about as much per extra path as HS2 Phase 1, but without the journey time savings or potential for 400 metre trains, or availability of paths to relieve the MML and ECML, so the chances of a positive business case are pretty low.

The lesson is – within a mixed-traffic railway, you can’t have it all! Journey times come at the expense of capacity and connectivity. Station stops come at the expense of journey time and capacity. Capacity comes at the expense of a timetable fine-tuned to commercial needs.

Which is where HS2 comes in. As well as simply creating another pair of tracks’ worth of trains, in effect it relieves the WCML of one of the competing pressures, namely journey time for the end to end travellers. Once able to focus on capacity and connectivity, the railway we already have can do what it is good at – serve commuters, local and interurban passengers, and freight. P1 is just a diversion from this objective; it’s a clever attempt to show what we might have to do in the absence of HS2, but it didn’t work in 2013 and it doesn’t work now.

There’s really only one place to file this research paper, and that’s the bin.

 

Hs2 news: Phase 2a to Crewe Hybrid Bill 2nd reading.

18 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by Paul Bigland in Hs2, Hs2 to Crewe, Parliament, Rail Investment, StopHs2, Transport

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Hs2, Parliament, Rail Investment, StopHs2, Transport

The 2nd reading of the Hs2 Phase 2a West Midlands to Crewe Hybrid Bill has been scheduled for Tuesday 30th January.

phase 2a

A number of important decisions are made at 2nd reading. Firstly, the principles of the bill are established. A debate is held, the length of the petitioning process is decided and finally, the premise of the bill is assured. This final bit means that 2nd reading is regarded as Parliament’s intent. If the bill passes with a large majority (as the phase 1 bill did), Parliament’s intent is very clear. After the Second Reading, there can be no amendment which can destroy the principle of the bill.

In addition to referring a hybrid bill to select committee, the House may also give instructions to the select committee. Instructions can prevent the Hybrid Bill select committee from amending certain provisions or allow it to make alterations to infrastructure provided for in the Bill

After the bill passes 2nd reading the petitioning committee (made up of MPs unconnected with the project) will be established.  The composition of a select committee reflects the party balance in the House. The select committee will mostly sit in a quasi-judicial capacity. It will not be looking at principle or policy; its focus will be restricted to addressing mitigation, compensation and adjustment.

It’s the same after the bill passes the formality of 3rd Reading & goes on to the Lords. The whole petitioning process isn’t rerun, and the Lords will have no power to reject or fundamentally alter the Bill.

So, what does this mean for the Stophs2 campaign? They’re toast! It means the focus has moved away from phase 1 and shifted North. Their campaign’s always been very weak and disorganised on this section. All their national groups were Phase 1 based. There are very few active ‘action’ groups locally. Staffordshire’s is a great example of this, they were always divided by the ‘cult of personality’ as local eccentrics or ‘kippers’ (UKIP supporters) tried to use the issue for their own ends. As UKIP has collapsed and is on the verge of bankruptcy, don’t expect much organised opposition there! The recent Stop Hs2 petition on the Government website is a useful indicator as to the health (or otherwise) of the anti Hs2 campaign in the area. Here’s a spreadsheet from yesterday which has a breakdown of the signatures by constituency. From this it’s easy to see how few active anti Hs2 ‘action groups there are.

revised petition

There will be  number of things to watch out for at 2nd reading, including the size of the majority for the bill, the number of MPs who vote against – and where their constituencies are. After that there’ll be about 3 weeks for people to petition the Committee. The number of petitions will also be of interest, especially as this time electronic submissions will be accepted. For phase 1 petitions actually had to be delivered to Parliament in person.

I wonder if StopHs2 will be organising a rally outside Parliament on the 30th the way they did for 2nd reading of the Phase 1 bill. That was an embarrassment as less than 100 people turned up!

DG177046. Anti Hs2 demo. Westminster. London. 28.4.14.

This was meant to be a national demonstration from all the different phases of Hs2. Remember over 6.5 million people live in constituencies Hs2 will pass through, yet less than 100 people turned up to protest!

If there’s no demonstration this time it will say an awful lot about how far the Stop Hs2 campaign’s collapsed.

 

 

Hs2 Ltd respond to the Petitioning Committees first report

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by Paul Bigland in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Parliament

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Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hybrid Bills, Parliament

On the 26th March the Hs2 Petitioning Bill Committee published its first interim report which contained a series of requests & observations generated by the petitioning process. You can find their report here.

Yesterday Hs2 Ltd published their response, which you can read here.

Both make interesting as they give an insight into the issues raised & the vast amount of detailed work that’s gone into progress so far. One thing in particular caught my eye, which was these comments regarding ‘template’ petitions;

Petitions

Cut & paste petitions were a centrepiece of the anti Hs2 mobs tactics. They hoped that, if they swamped the Committee with petitions they could bog down the whole process & delay Hs2 long enough that a new Government would decide to cancel the project due to delays & costs. Like all the other anti Hs2 tactics, it’s failed. The Petitioning Committee have made it clear they aren’t going to let themselves get bogged down this way & neither are Hs2 Ltd.

Another interesting aspect of the Petitioning Committee’s report is that they are looking to make recommendations on the conduct & process of future Hybrid Bills (such as the Phase 2 bill). What’s the bet that one of those recommendations will be to close the loophole of ‘template’ petitions & prevent the threat of future bills getting bogged down in this fashion?

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