Will the battle for HS2 be won or lost on a spreadsheet?
A lot of the debate at the moment is about, bluntly, the figures – but everybody involved realises that quantifying the indirect benefits, harms and opportunity costs that building a second high-speed rail line entails is enormously difficult.
This fuzziness is used to campaigning effect by both the scheme’s backers, whose optimistic imaginations are allowed to run riot, and its detractors, who can similarly puncture most of the economic projections with an ease born of the ignorance we all share about what will really happen.
It’s unlikely we’ll ever get a true handle on the exact figures, but there’s an extent to which they don’t matter. It’s become much more a political bout than an economic one, and both sides will eventually depend on appealing to emotions – people’s hope and fear, anger and desire.
Those against HS2 have a lot of work to do, however – and will have a lot to answer for if they successfully get it blocked. The chances of the money actually being diverted to other rail and public transport projects is virtually nil, so their argument that it is the ‘wrong priority’ is completely misplaced.
