The prevailing narrative about HS2 is that it runs counter to Green transport objectives. Several reasons are cited, most commonly that it is energy-intensive, destructive of habitat, aimed at rich travellers, and taking up funds that could be more effectively used for local transport. Of course, we have responses to those criticisms – see our Explainers and Evidence posts for details.
What isn’t often emphasised is quite how well-aligned HS2 actually is to our policy objectives. Here’s a table of transport policies from our Policies for a Sustainable Society, showing how HS2 helps deliver them.
| Policy | How HS2 supports it | |
|---|---|---|
| TR010 Objectives: travel should be by sustainable modes of transport that don’t use too much resources, minimise impact on the environment, reduce car use. | HS2 is powered by low-CO2 grid electricity. It uses less land and disturbs less habitat than road alternatives. It’s much lower CO2 than air alternatives. It promotes rail as an alternative to car for both local and long-distance travel. | |
| TR030 hierarchy of travel modes: walking > cycling > public transport / rail freight > taxis > cars > HGVs > planes | HS2 adds capacity to the existing rail network and is a public transport alternative to cars and planes. It opens up space on the main lines for more freight trains to reduce use of trucks. | |
| TR031 planning at the most local level possible, communities identify their own needs | By removing the national-level long distance express trains from the current rail network, HS2 allows railway capacity to be managed and allocated by Midlands and Northern local transport authorities rather than from on high by Whitehall. | |
| TR047 favour electric transport | HS2 is powered by grid electricity. It therefore automatically gets less carbon-intensive as the grid uses more sustainably-generated electricity. HS2 has an objective only to use renewable or low-CO2 nuclear electricity in operation. | |
| TR200 car journeys must move to public transport | HS2 adds capacity to both long-distance and local rail networks and speeds up journey times, so many thousands of journeys of all lengths can be done by public rail rather than car. | |
| TR242 Increase investment in rail services | HS2 represents the best-value investment in our current rail network. If built in full it adds capacity to all three of our north-south main lines and the key station bottlenecks at Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, thus enabling huge expansion of local rail services across the Midlands and the North. | |
| TR244 Support principle of north-south high speed line to reduce short-haul flights, as long as local service provision isn’t affected. | HS2 doubles the capacity of London-Scotland train services and knocks nearly an hour off the journey time. It’s thus an excellent alternative to the huge (5m+ per annum) air market between London and Glasgow/Edinburgh. And far from impeding local service provision, HS2 enables it to be greatly expanded by removing the capacity-hogging express trains. | |
| TR350 invest to transfer freight to rail | HS2 frees up our major freight route, the West Coast Main Line, for more freight train paths, by removing the capacity-hogging long-distance express trains from it. This makes space for at least 20 extra freight trains every day. | |
| TR512 substitute air travel with more sustainable modes | HS2 offers a super low-CO2 alternative to domestic air travel, particularly on the our busiest domestic corridor, London-Scotland Central Belt. | |
| TR532 encourage access to airports by public transport rather than road | HS2 will be connected to Birmingham and Manchester airports. This means more passengers will be able to access these airports by rail, particularly from longer distances away. (Both these airports already have rail connections to the existing network). There will be good rail connections to Heathrow airport via Old Oak Common and the Elizabeth Line, meaning more people can avoid driving to the airport. |