When it comes to
rail links, I am convinced that better, faster, more reliable links will
encourage a shift from road or air to rail, and are worth doing for that reason
alone. The claim that Wales could lose 21,000 jobs as a result of the
HS2 link from London to Birmingham and points north is a figure which
I’d treat with some caution, though.
As I recall, the
French experience with the TGV services was that demand grew faster, and to a
higher total level, than any of the advance projections suggested; but that the
vast majority of those travelling were doing so for leisure rather than
business purposes. I rather suspect that
the UK
experience will mirror that - if a network is ever actually built.
And that ‘if’ was
my main concern with this story today. Although those quoted didn’t actually go
so far as to say it, it almost seemed that they were arguing against building
HS2 at all, because of the possible adverse impact on Wales. It’s a tempting conclusion from a Welsh perspective – but it would be
the wrong one.
The problem with
consideration of high speed lines in the UK is that it’s all being done on such
an ad hoc basis; there is no master plan, no vision for an integrated transport
network linking up major cities across the UK as well as linking with cities on the mainland of Europe. The result is that there is a danger of
pitting areas against each other. There’s
nothing wrong with a bit of lobbying, or even a lot of lobbying, to be first in
the queue; but it rapidly becomes destructive if the queue only has room for one.
I think there are
good arguments for the link to Wales
and the West to come ahead of the northern link, but if we can’t have first
place then it’s better to be arguing for an early extension to the queue than to argue against
the northern link. An excessively negative
approach could simply mean that we’d all lose in the end.
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