Scrapping HS2 ‘will bring higher fares and congestion for decades’

Rishi Sunak’s decision to scrap HS2 north of Birmingham will bring “higher fares and congestion for decades”, it has been claimed.

Plans to make up for the lost capacity due to the cancellation of the railway, which was first revealed by The Independent, are said to be years away and passengers will reportedly have to be priced off the railway to ease congestion.

The prime minister used his Tory conference speech in October to confirm The Independent’s reports that the northern leg of the high speed rail line would be scrapped, sparking fury among regional leaders and business chiefs.

Experts have now said the decision to cancel the second phase of the project will have knock on effects for the rest of the century.

Andrew McNaughton, HS2’s former technical director, said Mr Sunak had created a “growth reduction scheme” by axing the route.

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He told The Observer the “whole strategy for connecting the north and south of England was HS2”.

“Any other plans were all predicated on HS2 creating the new capacity either directly or indirectly for the next 100 years,” he said.

He added: “If there is nothing to replace it, you would need to ration. What’s the rationing on the railway? You have to price people off. That’s how it’s always been done as the only way of managing demand.”

“There is no alternative,” Mr McNaughton said. He added that HS2 was “by far the best solution” unless Britain is to live with congestion for the rest of the century, choking economic growth. “It was the only big intervention that was going to work,” Mr McNaughton said.

Network Rail confirmed that since Mr Sunak’s decision to scrap phase two of HS2 it had kicked off a project examining how best to avoid congestion among the west coast mainline.

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But industry insiders told The Observer that completion of the review would be “years away”.

A Network Rail spokesman said: “For over a decade the long term strategy for dealing with the growth and capacity constraints along the [west coast mainline] has been the completion of HS2 to Manchester.

“Now the government has changed course, our strategic planning team are starting a large piece of work to look at what interventions will now be required in the decades ahead to deal and address those growth and capacity issues and pulling together modelling and plans and proposals which will eventually go to the government to seek funding to implement.”

After The Independent revealed secret government plans codenamed Operation Redwood to junk the railway line, Mr Sunak blamed ballooning costs for his decision to junk the railway line, saying the “facts have changed” since it was planned.

“I am ending this long-running saga. I am cancelling the rest of the HS2 project and in its place, we will reinvest every single penny, £36bn, in hundreds of new transport projects in the North and the Midlands, across the country,” he said.

But he was criticised by business chiefs and local leaders across the north of England and even former PM David Cameron.

Lord Cameron said Mr Sunak had made the “wrong decision” and would “fuel the views of those who argue that we can no longer think or act for the long-term as a country”.

The government said capacity between London and Birmingham, the most congested part of the west coast mainline, would “nearly double” thanks to phase one of HS2.

A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “This is in addition to redirected funding from Phase 2 being used to support a raft of transport projects across the country, benefitting more people in more places, more quickly.”