Transcript High Speed Rail – Deceiving the regions?

Megaprojects, jobs and regional
regeneration: HS2 in the UK
Mike Geddes
Stop HS2
[email protected]
What the UK government says
• High speed rail will change the social and
economic geography of Britain; create jobs and
improve competitiveness.
• Linking England's main cities by HSR could help
break down the north-south divide and
regenerate the north.
• HS2 (London to Birmingham) will create 40,000
jobs.
• Other political parties and the trade unions also
support HS2
What does Stop HS2 say?
• These claims project benefits over long periods (up to
60 years), well beyond any reputable economic
forecasting horizon.
• Research (for government) shows economic growth
created by HS2 would be ‘very small indeed’.
• Most so-called ‘new’ jobs will be transfers from other
places
• Even using official figures, each job ‘created’ would
cost £400,000+
And.....
• What HSR will do is to redistribute economic activity
between places.
• The larger the local economy the more it will benefit.
So-called ‘agglomeration benefits’ flow primarily to the
most economically powerful existing agglomerations.
• Thus the main beneficiary from HS2 and the wider
proposed HSR network is likely to be London.
• If other major cities benefit, this will be at the expense
of regions, towns and rural areas not served by stations
on the proposed route
HSR = neoliberalism
• HSR would indeed “change the social and
economic geography of Britain”.
• It would integrate big cities (the 1%) into the
European neoliberal space-economy
• At the expense of everywhere else (the 99%).
If HSR is a useless neoliberal
megaproject, what is the alternative
(1)?
Improve the existing rail network
•
•
•
•
Much cheaper
Much quicker
Improves the whole national network
Minimal environmental damage
If HSR is a useless neoliberal
megaproject, what is the
alternative(2)?
‘If we really want to create jobs in local economies rather than drain them
away along a very fast railway line we could:
• insulate 20m homes
• make every house a mini-power station to generate and export its own
electricity
• sort out extremely poor quality commuter railway lines around all our
cities
• build 10,000 km of segregated bike paths to connect every school,
hospital, employment site and public building to every residential area.
These projects would deliver real jobs on a large scale in every city region
and local authority area but do not have the sexiness of high speed railway
lines.’
Professor John Whitelegg
International comparisons
• The UK government claims that European
experience shows that HSR will create jobs and
regenerate lagging regions – eg in Lille
• Stop HS2 says research shows that:
* Lille has not grown as much as the French
average
* Other government funding more important
than HSR
* While towns surrounding Lille have declined
Issues for discussion
• What is the experience elsewhere in Europe
about HSR, jobs, and regional regeneration?
• What arguments have been successful in
persuading trade unions to oppose HSR?
• How can we persuade people that there are
better alternatives to neoliberalism and HSR?