英国宣布取消高铁2号线项目北段建设

The HS2 decision will make it harder to build infrastructure

Oct 4th 2023 |

ON OCTOBER 4TH Rishi Sunak declared that HS2, a high-speed rail line designed to connect London and the north of England, would not extend beyond Birmingham to Manchester. Britain’s prime minister made this announcement at the Tory party conference—in Manchester. In what was once a railway station. During a rail strike. Full marks for chutzpah, but what about the decision?

To be fair to Mr Sunak, this was not an easy call. Costs have spiralled horribly. The total bill for HS2 was first put at £37.5bn ($62bn at the time) and may end up close to £100bn. Value for money matters. Making pledges to do whatever it takes might work for wartime administrations and central bankers, but it is no way to run the public finances. Even so, this is the wrong decision. It doesn’t make sense in its own terms. And the problems that bedevil HS2 are deep-seated ones that only the government can solve. Cancelling the project does not just leave them unsolved. It exacerbates them.

First, consider the decision itself. The case for HS2 remains valid. It is designed to relieve congestion on existing rail networks. Although the pandemic muted demand, the number of passenger-rail journeys is at 83% of pre-pandemic levels and rising fast; the need to increase long-term capacity has not gone away. Under the cut-down scheme, trains will zip from London to Birmingham before trundling along a congested line to Manchester.

The most useful bit of the project was still to come. The southern leg of the line is the bit of HS2 that is trickiest to build; it is also the one that improves connectivity the least. Starting construction in the north would have been sensible, as some pointed out at the time; amputating it at Birmingham compounds that error.

Mr Sunak pledged to divert money to other transport projects in the north. These are needed, too, but why should anyone take his promises of a new “network north” at face value? It is true that HS2 has specific problems, most obviously the insistence on eye-catching speeds that jacked up the bill. But in many ways it is not an outlier, but emblematic of an infrastructure-planning system in which delays are rife, modifications proliferate and costs spiral.

An upgrade to a trans-Pennine route connecting Manchester and York has been announced many times since 2011 and is still not complete. Britain Remade, a pressure group, has found that tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive to build, per mile, than in France. Simple projects to widen roads fester for years. Last month a decision to turn the A1 in north-east England into a dual carriageway was delayed for another nine months. That sounds fine, except that the scheme was first mooted 15 years ago. Simply planning a road under the Thames has taken ten years and cost more than it did to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.

If cancelling HS2 were to galvanise the government to speed up infrastructure projects, that would be something. But believing in this would be as optimistic as the project’s initial budget projections. The government is not some innocent bystander in this mess. It has been slow to issue national policy statements, crucial documents that underpin planning-assessment processes. From wind farms to housing, it runs scared of NIMBYs. Mr Sunak had nothing to say about the obstacles to building in his speech.

Indeed, this week’s amputation is likely to raise infrastructure costs yet further. The presumption that really big infrastructure projects will survive changes of government, or even party leaders, is no longer safe. After this decision, contractors will therefore charge a higher risk premium. The amount of time and money consumed in planning applications is likely to increase, too. One lesson NIMBYs will take from this fiasco is that delaying projects can eventually lead to their demise.

Mr Sunak says he is making hard choices, but with an election looming and the Tories trailing, the reversal looks more like political expediency. Last month he pushed back deadlines to phase out new petrol cars; now he claims that people care more about potholes than about high-speed rail. That may be true in a narrow sense, but a fundamental job of central government is to build strategic infrastructure. Mr Sunak’s HS2 decision flies in the face of his vaunted long-termism. ■

每周从最新一期的《经济学人》选取三篇最新外刊的绝佳文章，对每段内容的每句话从用词、表达和谋篇等多个角度进行精读精析。哪怕你是英语小白，也能听得懂！

课程期间，如果遇到任何英语学习上的问题，都可以直接向Kevin老师提问，直到你弄明白搞清楚为止！

前100名报名的同学，除了享受以上优惠和福利，报名一季度36场精读课的同学，额外减免30元，即只需要69元！报名一整年150多场精读课的同学，额外再减免100元，即只需要199元！名额有限，先到先得！

《马斯克传记》一共95章，外加有一定长度的前序。我计划，像超精读外刊文章那样，每天用1-2小时录制一个章节，96天时间对这本大厚书进行逐词逐句的精细化阅读！

而单就语言学习来看，一本英语原著所包含的词汇用法、句式结构和写作技法都是超级丰富的。当你真正吃透一本英语原著的时候，英语能力和水平都必然会有非常明显的提升！

课程期间，如果遇到任何英语学习上的问题，都可以直接在群里或私信Kevin老师提问，我会发语音或文字等进行答疑解惑，直到你弄明白搞清楚为止！