Member Article

High speed rail report ?fatally flawed?

Plans to phase in two high speed rail routes between Scotland and London would have a “devastating” impact on the economies of cities up the East Coast of England, according to regional business leaders.

High-speed rail think tank Greengauge 21 has produced an 80-page report outlining how it saw the development of super fast rail services across Great Britain.

The report makes a strong case for the overall need for high speed rail, but its plan of implementation and means of funding such a project are “spectacularly flawed”, according to one of the country’s largest chambers of commerce.

James Ramsbotham, NECC chief executive, said: “Greengauge is absolutely right to say that the high speed rail network needs to link the major cities of the UK but entirely wrong about its method of implementation and funding.

“A phased approach to building such a rail network would suck investment to those areas that will be connected first. The potential impact on other regional economies not linked in quickly would be extremely damaging. In addition, choosing to route the first phase up the West Coast would skew investment away from Europe and the ports that are closest to it. Britain’s core cities must all be connected up swiftly if high speed rail is to deliver the benefits that are needed from building this network.

“Greengauge’s approach to funding high speed rail is highly unsatisfactory. Putting additional taxation on other modes of transport and levying against businesses is a destructive way to build a network that is supposed to be there to encourage economic growth. For the North East, the ‘pay now, wait for benefits later’ approach is grossly unpalatable. Businesses will take a lot of convincing that it is worth the wait.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .