HS2 video transcript The institution of engineering and technology is the largest professional engineering organization in Europe, and a leading source of impartial and independent engineering intelligence for all policy-makers. Today we talk to the IET's transport expert Chris Richards who helps us shed light on the complex issues surrounding the government's high speed rail project. On resistance to HS2: There are many different reasons why people are averse to the idea of High Speed 2. For example the route itself goes through the Chilterns, which is itself an area of outstanding natural beauty. But from the IET's point of view, we've got many different problems with the engineering case, the economic case, and the business case. On regenerating the regions: Well it's actually impossible to predict what will happen to the economic and geographical landscape of the UK as a result of high speed 2, but one of the things we are trying to point out is that, actually, High Speed 2 won't be going to Scotland on a new track, it will be using the existing network after Manchester and Leeds, so you'll be travelling at normal speeds anyway. On boosting economic growth: Well one of the things we've seen with the High Speed 2 project is actually the benefit-cost ratio of the project going down bit by bit. At the moment it stands at 1.6, which means for every point we spend we get £1.60 back, which is at the lower end of the spectrum for a transport project of this scale. On the engineering design From an engineering perspective, the IET is actually quite concerned about the infrastructure design speed. At 400km per hour, it would actually make HS2 one of the fastest railways in the world, and the faster the trains travel the more energy they consume, which increases the cost of the overall project. In addition to that, we're trying to get the government to look at the link between high speed one and high speed two. At the moment, high speed one runs between London and the channel tunnel rail link, and what we're trying to say is that it would make sense to join the two together, but there is no analysis actually presented on how that is going to be done effectively. On reducing carbon emissions Reducing carbon emissions from transport is something we urgently need to do as a country, and High Speed 2 was presented as a way to accomplish that. You can understand why; by getting people to move from cars and aviation to travelling by rail, but what the transport select committee has actually said in their evidence to the government is that this shouldn't be presented as a carbon reduction scheme, because the analysis isn't actually 100% there as to why this is actually reducing our transport carbon emissions. What does the IET think needs to be done to make HS2 a success? Well, from the IET'S point of view, decarbonising transport is something we urgently need to do in this country, and in principle high speed rail is a way to try and accomplish that. But there are a number of flaws in the analysis of HS2, around the economic case, the business case, and the environmental case, where we're not entirely sure the government has done a proper analysis of this. So basically we are calling on the government to look at this in more detail, and come forward with a project which actually meets the carbon reduction elements of what we need in the UK.

• published: 28 Sep 2012
• views: 3472