That aspiration for an overall transport strategy for the UK came across strongly in the Rebalancing Britain report. Whether or not the Department for Transport had asked Higgins to start laying the building blocks of a coherent transport strategy is unclear, but the language used (and the high-level support from both Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne at the report’s launch in Leeds Civic Hall) seemed to suggest that HS2’s aspirations are far more than simply building a new railway between London, the Midlands and the north of England.
Does Kelly expect the rest of the railway industry, as well as other transport providers and authorities, to pick up that mantle to develop a proper transport strategy, based on what HS2 has suggested and using its framework? Grand aspirations for a Transport for London-style body have been mooted, to tie together the various threads of transport strategy in various Northern towns and cities, bringing the benefits of Oyster card smartcard ticketing and other benefits to George Osborne’s ‘powerhouse’.
“We wouldn’t be so vainglorious as to dictate to anyone else what they should or should not do,” says Kelly. “But I find it hugely encouraging that the Government has accepted the idea of a Transport for the North to mirror (in whatever way) Transport for London - to give focus to discussions about transport in the North.
“I’m delighted that the local authorities in the North have agreed with that concept. I’m delighted to see the conversations which are now taking place among the authorities in the North as a whole.”
In the past, conversations with people looking after their particular interests were much more disparate, but Kelly notes: “Now I think they’re realising the power of speaking with one voice. And in the Midlands you’re beginning to see the same sorts of coalescence. What that means is that you’re not pitting one area against another, you also don’t pit one mode of transport against another.”
In reality, this makes the connectivity improvements that you need using both rail and road easier, given the level of opposition to any new motorways. But what about Higgins’ suggestion that a new six-lane motorway across the Chilterns might be inevitable if HS2 isn’t built? Is Kelly confident, with the Government’s announcement about a new road building programme, that any new road building fits in with HS2’s plans? Do they synchronise?
“I think the important thing is that we are not in any way tribal in the way that we look at either rail or road or whatever, but that we look at it as part of an integrated whole.
Connection improvements
“The important step, that I hope has begun to happen last year, the first question people ask is not what, but why. Why do we need to improve connectivity, why do we need to improve capacity? And once you’ve asked yourself ‘why’, then you can begin to answer the question ‘what’.
“It is great that people are now looking at east-west links as well as north-south. But also in the One North report, it said explicitly that the multiplier effect on the economy of the North would be all the greater if HS2 and the east-west connection improvements were both done, because that would increase connectivity across the North, as well as north-south. It’s not either/or - it’s both. And it’s vital that people understand that.”
All of this new connectivity comes at a price, however, and HS2’s £50 billion budget has been much scrutinised in great detail by some of those committee and media outlets mentioned above.
The costs for Phase 2 perhaps haven’t been as tied down as those for Phase 1 - indeed, there will need to be another Hybrid Bill through Parliament to authorise the powers to build the rest of the ‘Y’ route. So how does Kelly see the budget developing over the next few years? What challenges are there ahead? A General Election looms in just a few months’ time, potentially giving rise to a change in the political weather. What sort of impact does that have on how the project is being planned?
Says Kelly: “The reality is that we live in a time where there are severe budget constraints and there will always be a tension between addressing immediate needs and addressing a strategic need, which is what HS2 is designed to address. That will not go away. We are under no illusion about that, no matter who is elected come May.
“However, I think the important thing that people understand is that doing nothing is not a cost-free option for the country either.”
That ‘doing nothing’ means a country that would be ever more congested - with restricted opportunity to travel between London and Birmingham, or Leeds and Manchester, for example.
Phase 2
“Congestion comes at an economic price,” adds Kelly. “So too does isolation and the inability of people to make the most of their talents except by coming to London, where house prices are increasingly unaffordable for young people and where commercial property prices are now the highest in the world. That feeds into prices for domestic consumers as well. So I think people now know, if you like, the price of not doing HS2.”
Even so, that doesn’t mean HS2 is not bound to abide by the budget constraints that it has been set. “Phase 2 is three years behind Phase 1, so you wouldn’t expect it to be at the same degree of development that Phase 1 is at.”
Despite some uncertainties about future cost, there is an advantage in that the later programming of Phase 2 gives HS2 Ltd greater opportunity to learn about construction techniques that could save both cost and time (clearly, the two go hand-in-hand).
“We have to use the time,” says Kelly. “We have to learn how to do this in a way which is cost-effective and time-effective, and the practice in terms of how it’s done globally.”
The experiences of parts of mainland Europe highlight ways in which high-speed railways are built, “which we may be able to learn from”, he adds.
Although some lessons were learned from the building of High Speed 1, the learning required is almost vertiginous in its scale. After all, when Japan first introduced the Shinkansen in 1964, steam trains were still running at King’s Cross and St Pancras.
“The construction industry on the railway has done remarkable things with our railway and continues to do so. When I was at Network Rail, I looked at what they did at King’s Cross, what they did at Reading, and what they did for Scotland.
“I’m lost in admiration in the way that they can do things. But their experience is working on a Victorian railway and making the best of that. The HS2 experience is much more greenfield, therefore the way in which you approach it will inevitably be different.”
‘Business as usual’ is not, suggests Kelly, the way to deliver HS2. He explains: “We have to think our way through, how we do it. And it keeps coming back to my overall view of the project, which is that we have to take it step by step. We have to listen to the construction industry. We have to listen to the experience abroad and we have to learn those lessons.
“I hope there will be developments in the next year - but sitting here today, I wouldn’t predict it. Do I think that if you’d been sitting there this time last year, you would have been able to predict how it would have gone? Would you have been able to predict how local authorities in the North and the Midlands would buy into it like they have? No. So you take it step by step, being very clear what the end objective is.”
For any of this to work, the construction industry needs to engage with the HS2 vision. There’s a lot of pressure to deliver a value for money railway - spending a large amount of public money, but at the same time not a project that’s done on the cheap. Does the construction industry realise just how carefully HS2 needs to spend its money?
“I remember speaking to people on HS2 who interface with the industry, about a week after the Second Reading. They said they detected an immediate change in the attitude of the industry. The industry went from being not necessarily sceptical, but not quite thinking that this was an immediate priority, to suddenly thinking ‘this is going to happen and we need to get involved’.
“I think we’ve seen that level of engagement increase month by month. The two supply chain conferences held in London and Manchester in October - both were sold out.” (Kelly’s press officer Ben Ruse points out that this was a free event - but the rooms were indeed packed).
“The atmosphere at both was of both an industry that was excited and excited in the right way because they were intellectually engaged in it and I think that’s hugely encouraging.”
However, the conversation with the construction industry has “only just begun”, he says. The industry might be engaged, but as any senior figure in the railway and construction industries is only too aware, there is an immediate and pressing issue around the availability of the skilled staff that will be needed.
While the Crossrail project has been making great strides in making sure those skills exist (through initiatives such as the Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy), and while the High Speed Rail College (located in both Birmingham and Doncaster) is due to open in 2017, is there not still a danger that the companies bidding for HS2 construction contracts won’t have the people they need?
“I think the important thing is that the conversation has begun with the industry now, about the kinds of skills that we’re going to need and about how we supply those skills,” says Kelly.
“I also think it’s vital that we recognise right at the start that to deliver HS2 we are going to have the opportunity to up-skill as a country, and to leave a permanent legacy of a skilled workforce.
“For someone who goes into this project right at the start, there is the potential to spend a large part of their career working on this project and learning skills as they go along. That is why the skills college is so important. That is why it’s so important that we develop skills right along the route, and not just in one locality. That is why it’s important that the skills college is not just based in one locality, but between Birmingham and Doncaster.
Kelly believes it is too early to say how precisely that’s going to turn out, “but I do think the industry gets it”. HS2 Ltd itself did not take the decision as to where the college would be based (this was a matter for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills), but it was clear that politicians wanted to ensure that both cities enjoyed the benefit.
“I’m delighted to say it was not a matter that HS2 needed to have an opinion on, because in the end it was always going to be a decision that was going to be taken by politicians. It’s a bit like the Secretary of State deciding the final route for Phase 2 - that’s how it should be done in a democracy.”
We have established that the construction industry - and the wider supply chain - is increasingly behind HS2. The support of the wider railway industry is perhaps more complicated, given that it will be some time before train procurement is needed, let alone a recast of the National Rail Timetable in order to fit in with HS2 service patterns. Some of these milestones are still years ahead. So is there a message that they need to hear?
Kelly doesn’t think so: “They’ve heard and they’ve responded, and that message is more that HS2 just becomes another part of the network. The more synergy there is between HS2 and the network the better, because that allows us to maximise the output from the outset. That allows us to get the most out of the strategic advantage that HS2 will bring.
“I spent several very productive years at Network Rail. I understand the day-to-day pressures. I understand the immediate problems that they face. But I also understand that underlying many of those problems is the issue of capacity, which HS2 will help address.
“So again, it’s this tension between the strategic and the immediate. HS2 will demand a lot of commitment, time, energy, money from the industry - but the strategic prize, in my view, is worth it.”
Leaving large organisations and industries aside, it’s striking how some people who have yet to engage with the project do not get what’s in it for them.
