An Expensive Shave

NASA spent $25 billion to get to the moon.

So are a few minutes shaved from my train journey to our Manchester office worth £32bn?

That seems to be the rather high price to pay for the proposed High Speed 2 project that is now in its official consultation phase.

Rory Sutherland wrote about HS2 in his Spectator column recently. Firmly in the ‘no’ camp, he argued that time on a train is actually rather pleasant and a better use of public finances would be to focus the bit between his house and Euston.

The ‘for’ camp argue that we should see the £32bn as an investment that will deliver a fantastic return in terms of jobs, economic growth and progress.

Rory is of course correct that time on a train can be pleasant (especially in first and not on the last off-peak train before rush hour on a Friday). That time is also valuable and productive for business people who by the miracles of modern technology can make and receive calls, catch-up on emails and even think about stuff. Which causes somewhat of a hole in the economic growth argument you would think?

The story about economic connections and growth also falls down by the fact that it about a few minutes less on journeys between London and Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.

The latest GDP figures show the Birmingham area ranked 14th in a European league table. London is in the top 2 and looking a little further south the Randstad area in the Netherlands along with the Cologne, Dusseldorf and Hamburg area in northern Germany are both in the top 5.

So wouldn’t it be better to pool our resources with our European cousins and figure out how to bring London closer to these areas?

That and get a decent taxi lane between Euston and Rory Sutherland’s house.