» A new route from London to Birmingham to be opened by 2026, with further extensions planned into 2030s. Project continues to face healthy skepticism.

Whatever the recession’s effects on government budgets, infrastructure development in Europe continues to advance at a steady pace. The United Kingdom government affirmed last week that it would move forward with the construction of a £18.8 billion ($29 billion) high-speed link between London and Birmingham, due for opening in 2026. This in spite of draconian cuts across all sorts of public services, both in Britain and across the continent.

The U.K.’s high-speed effort — it will effectively produce the nation’s first domestic truly high-speed line — follows almost two decades of travel to and from Paris and Brussels via Eurostar trains that operate under the English Chanel. Though those services have only recently met opening-year ridership expectations, Eurostar holds the large majority of the air-rail market share to these continental capitals, especially since following improvements completed in 2007 London finds itself within about two hours of its mainland peers. The popularity of that service surely had something to do with the government’s decision to move forward on a second line.

HS2 will bring measurable benefits: London to Birmingham in just 45 minutes, compared to 1h20 today, and eventually an hour off of trips to Manchester or Leeds, once extensions north to those cities are opened in 2032 at a cumulative cost of £36 billion. Direct trips between northern cities and Heathrow Airport and even the continent via the Channel Tunnel Rail Link will be put into place. London’s aging Euston terminal will be significantly spruced up. The biggest improvement, perhaps, will be the practical doubling of capacity between the capital and the Midlands by providing a release valve for the West Coast Main Line, which recently went through its own upgrading project but which is predicted to reach capacity with a dozen years. (It already handles more than 40% of the country’s freight and 75 million annual passenger journeys.)

Yet the enormous cost of the link up to Birmingham has been put in question repeatedly not only by those who worry about increasing public debt but also those who question the need for the new rail link — especially along the chosen alignment.

The questions vary, depending on the critique: Is it worth spending this much money, primarily to reduce travel times by half an hour on trips between London and northern cities? Is the West Coast Main Line actually at capacity, or can it easily be expanded? Will UK travel patterns change to a significant enough extent to justify more transportation connections?

Much of the criticism of the project has focused on the line’s segment through the Cotswolds northwest of London, a pristine section of Britain that also happens to hold the residences of some of the nation’s most wealthy. But project planners seem to be unable to find an alternative to that alignment; it has remained the same even after the political transition between Labour and the Conservatives after the 2010 elections. That opposition, however, comes across as nimbyism, especially since its prime backers call from the affected area.

But the complaint that there is not enough of an economic rationale for the project is more compelling. The government’s own study of the project suggests that the first section would have a shaky benefits-cost ratio of just 1.6. This means that each pound of investment in the project would lead to £1.6 in economic benefits (in today’s discounted currency). Public works projects should be considered in comparison with one another to prioritize investments, and this rating is low.* The government’s own study of the 51M alternative, produced by project opponents as a suggestion to expand capacity on the West Coast Main Line, suggested a benefits-cost ratio of five or six for that less costly scheme.

Up in the air is the issue of whether the system will ever be extended north of Birmingham, to Manchester and Leeds as suggested by current planning, and then further north to Scotland. Of course, the financing to make those expansions possible is lacking, despite the fact that they would improve the benefits-cost ratio of the program to between 1.8 and 2.5, a far better result.

Meanwhile, the delayed completion of the line (it will not enter the construction stage until 2018) forces us to ask whether governmental action today is “final.” The justification of the wait has been that the government wants to first complete the equally huge Crossrail urban rail project for London. But who knows what priorities the government of 2018 will have. Will the high-speed rail project by then have lost political support?

A low cost-benefit ratio, however, does not necessarily mean the project shouldn’t be built.** The 51M scheme would be fine, but according to the government, it would fail to provide the capacity expansions to the rail network the country necessitates. It would force increasing freight shipments onto congested roadways. As the U.K. plans for its future, it has a choice: Allow its existing infrastructure to become paralyzed by disinvestment and a lack of capacity, or invest to expand it. The latter choice will allow for expanded travel and trade, the former will not.

These issues plague the development of many similar infrastructure investment projects. The California High-Speed Rail project, which continues to attract significant criticism from across the country and which lacks the national commitment devoted to Britain’s program, nonetheless represents a fundamental choice about the future of that state. Will it invest in its mobility systems to guarantee that its future inhabitants have access to travel options? Or will it overwhelm its existing infrastructure with the pains of growth? It’s an expensive choice.

* The government’s insistence that the project will create a large number of jobs (and therefore that it is good) improves the benefits-cost ratio only to the extent that external (non-construction) employment growth occurs because of the rail project and wouldn’t otherwise. After all, construction jobs, if that were the priority, could come cheaper: We could pay people to dig holes.

** As long as the ratio is over 1. Otherwise, the project would then produce more costs than benefits…

Image above: Rendering of British High-Speed Rail, from HS2

» Country’s second high-speed rail line would speed commuters from London to Birmingham in 49 minutes; extensions to Manchester and Leeds are planned.

After seven months in power, the United Kingdom’s Conservative-led government has endorsed the previous Labour Government’s plans for a high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham, a connection that will reduce running times between the country’s two largest metropolitan areas from 1h20 to less than fifty minutes. In addition, the Department for Transport, led by Phillip Hammond, has recommended the eventual extension of the route northeast towards Leeds and northwest towards Manchester in a 335-mile Y-shaped corridor to cost upwards of £30 billion ($46 billion) to construct.

The Conservative Government’s endorsement of this HS2 route confirms practically universal political support for the high-speed project in Britain and indicates that construction will get underway in 2016. Upon entering power, the Conservatives sent mixed messages about their interest in devoting a huge percentage of the country’s budget to this project; this week’s news demonstrates significant political support from the right-wing for the program.

The route is to be designed to allow trains to travel at speeds up to 250 mph and significantly relieve the West Coast Main Line, which carries 75 million passengers a year and which is expected to reach capacity by 2024, despite having been recently reconstructed at a cost of £13 billion. The new line will include a link to the existing HS1, which connects London to the Channel Tunnel. At completion, HS2 will allow 3h30 travel times between London and Glasgow or Edinburgh in Scotland and 3h00 trips between Paris and Birmingham.

Up to 15 trains per hour will terminate at a 10-track station added to the existing London Euston, carrying up to 16,500 passengers per direction per rush hour. A spur to Heathrow Airport is planned.

Though the primary purpose of the new rail link will be to reduce travel times throughout Great Britain, the Department for Transport has argued that it would also allow commuters to live in places like Coventry and Milton Keynes and work in London. Those cities are respectively 100 and 50 miles from the capital. It is worth questioning whether it makes sense to encourage such long-distance commuting, no matter how quickly it can be done. Indeed, though one of the stated goals of the high-speed train project is to reduce carbon emissions by reducing the number of automobile and airplane trips, long-distance work commutes are energy intensive no matter the mode used.

HS2 is also likely to see mounting criticism from communities along the line that will be affected by the construction of the project and the operation of the trains. The expansion of Euston Station will force several hundred families to move away from their homes in London; meanwhile, as the trains travel across the Chilterns and Warwickshire, they are likely to produce an uncomfortable increase in noise for up to 50,000 people. Though Mr. Hammond has reworked half of the route in response to citizen concerns and argued that the project will be attractively designed when built, he may face mounting criticism from within his own party if the project moves ahead as planned.

Nonetheless, the British high-speed rail project is likely to be a successful enterprise. HS1, which was completed in late 2007, has far fewer riders than HS2 is expected to carry but the services that use it (Eurostar and Southeastern High-Speed) are operationally profitable. Its huge £5 billion construction cost (including the £800 million renovation of London St. Pancras Station) has been partially paid off through the £2.1 billion 30-year concession announced last month — and new development expected around the London terminus, Stratford International, and other stations will add to the benefits. Similar or better results can be expected for the new line.

The government’s assertion of the importance of a link between HS1 and HS2 will add to value of both lines. By allowing direct service between central England and Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, or other continental cities, this connection — to be tunneled under north London — will encourage more air travelers from outside of London to switch to the train.

Moving tens of thousands of daily travelers to the new line will allow the West Coast Main Line to be freed for local, regional, and freight services. The creation of new terminals in London, Birmingham, and the other cities served will encourage more downtown development. The government recognizes the economic benefits of increased spending on mobility infrastructure.

To put the United Kingdom’s project in perspective, the government is planning to spend more than $40 billion on a rail line that will connect four metropolitan areas — London, Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds — whose collective population amounts to about 22 million. California’s similarly priced fast train will in its first phase link five metropolitan areas — Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Bakersfield, and Fresno — whose inhabitants number about 21 million. Future phases to Stockton, Sacramento, Riverside, and San Diego will add another 10 million to the service area.

If a Conservative government in the United Kingdom is willing to fund its project, in spite of massive cuts to the rest of the public budget, it’s hard to understand why bipartisan agreement in favor of investment in U.S. infrastructure in the form of high-speed rail cannot be assembled.

Image above: Trains at London’s Euston Station, from Flickr user Matt Buck (cc)

» As the United Kingdom encourages investors to pony up billions of pounds for its High-Speed 1 route, Chicago’s sell-off of parking assets comes back to bite.

Who knew an investment in public infrastructure could be so profitable? Or rather, are government entities being bamboozled out of the value of their own property?

About two years ago, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley sold off the rights to 75 years of his city’s public parking meters for $1.15 billion to a partnership of private companies led by Morgan Stanley. Mayor Daley pushed the city council to approve the deal, since it would mean a huge cash infusion into a municipal government facing large budgetary shortfalls. And he argued that putting the parking system in the hands of private enterprise would bring in market-based pricing, essential to improve the circulation and distribution of automobiles in the city’s downtown, but impossible to implement because of a lack of political will.

Bloomberg News, however, revealed last week that the private partnership that bought up the spaces expects to generate at least $11.6 billion in revenues over the course of the contract — producing a potential profit of $9.58 billion, twice what some anti-Daley city council staffers predicted in 2008 the city would lose by selling off the meters (an amount that at the time was considered outrageously high). Chicago, meanwhile, has virtually exhausted the initial funds it received from the deal, having done little to adapt to its local government funding shortfalls.

This situation should put a chill in the spine of those who believe that privatization of public infrastructure will benefit the public pocketbook. And it should be a lesson for politicians who advocate balancing the budget in the short-term through the sale of assets that generate income over the long-term.

Yet the City of Chicago continues to consider the leasing out to private corporations of its Midway Airport. Major candidates running for mayor in Toronto are actively discussing the possibility of privatizing parts of that city’s transit system.

And on the other side of the world, Britain’s new conservative government is hyping the lease-off of the 68-mile High-Speed 1 rail line completed in 2007 at a cost to the government of £6 billion. On Tuesday, between two and six investors submitted their final bids (currently undisclosed) for the 30-year concession that officials expect to bring in between £1.5 and 2 billion, enough to aid the cost-cutting government in reducing its deficit.

Evidence from Chicago suggests that if investors are willing to put up £2 billion now, they are likely to make several times that amount over the course of the contract. In other words, by selling off the rights to High-Speed 1, the British government may get a big boost immediately but find itself yearning for more funds several years out. What makes this agreement particularly galling is that the U.K. already had to bail out the (private) constructor of High-Speed 1 and if the private operation that runs the line eventually faces financial difficulties, the government will likely have to do something similar again, just as it has done repeatedly since the recession began.

That’s because when it comes to public infrastructure, the public seems always to take in the losses even as private companies reap out increasing profits.

Moreover, by agreeing to lease out the line, the government basically abandons any hope of using the program for the benefit of the greater good. Granting control of the infrastructure to a profit-motivated enterprise basically ensures putting existing operators in financial trouble. The infrastructure owner seems likely to demand high usage fees, and these may make the provision of low fares more difficult. Is this in the general interest of the public?

Nonetheless, I do not want to suggest that there can be no appropriate role for private entities in the construction and management of public infrastructure. But it may make more sense to keep for-profit businesses involved only on secondary elements of a project, not have them get directly involved in the transportation element.

And in defense of the City of Chicago, Mayor Daley was likely right when he suggested that only in privatization would the city ever see increasing parking fees. But that fact strikes at the heart of the issue: selling off public infrastructure is too often a response to a lack of political will to get what is needed done.

In Chicago’s case, a politician who has won every mayoral election since 1989 claims he wouldn’t be able to assemble support for raising parking rates, so he would prefer handing out profits on meters to a private group than pushing for his cash-poor city to take the same difficult step. In the U.K., an unwillingness to consider other revenue sources forces a debt-ridden government to sell off its most valuable assets rather than milk them for all they’re worth.

For the average person, privatization probably won’t appear to have changed matters much. But the money they spend parking their cars or taking the train will be going into private hands, not public ones.

Image above: Flyover for High-Speed 1 at Ashford Station, from Flickr user Elsie esq (cc)

» New government, set on fiscal austerity, could limit transport expenditures in face of the recession. New minister declares an end to “the war on motorists.”

In power for thirteen years, the British Labour party had a mixed record when it came to transportation investments. While it greatly expanded funds committed to public transportation operations and maintenance, especially in London, it did so while pushing private ownership of bus lines and PPP control over construction programs. While it brought the nation’s railroads back from the abyss caused by John Major’s hugely problematic privatization of British Rail, it made few investments in high-speed rail even as virtually every other developed country was doing so.

Only last year, after enduring intense pressure from the rival Conservatives, did Labour finally come around, agreeing to fund a new line heading north from London. In March, Secretary of State for Transport Andrew Adonis finally revealed that program’s first phase, which would according to that government’s plans connect London and Birmingham by 2026 at a cost of more than £16 billion. Future extensions would head north to Manchester and Leeds, with eventual future phases to Glasgow and Edinburgh. It would have no direct link to Heathrow Airport, allowing the Crossrail commuter rail program that’s currently under construction to fulfill that role.

The British national elections held earlier this month, however, may have permanently altered the government’s strategy in relation to its rail program. The newly ruling coalition of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, putting Labour into opposition, has meant the definitive end of the proposed third runway at Heathrow (certainly a big step forward), but the former government’s relatively well thought-through high-speed rail plans are also on the cutting block. The Conservatives’ obsession with connecting Heathrow directly to the rail line — not, in my estimation, a particularly useful idea (and an expensive one, since it would require a detour) — will mean that the environmental reviews Labour had already performed will have to be restudied, potentially delaying the project.

But at least both parties now in power are in favor of the continued investment in the project. But at what cost?

Setting a new message, new Transport Minister Philip Hammond staked out his government’s position on transportation rather starkly at his first press conference. Arguing that Labour had given too much of a priority to transit during its more than a decade in control of the House of Commons, Mr. Hammond declared that he and his compatriots would “end the war on motorists.” While the high-speed rail project may be moving ahead, other future public transportation projects may be under threat — especially since the new government has committed to putting Britain on a fiscal starvation diet.

According to Christian Wolmar, a prominent British transportation commentator, the announcement by Mr. Hammond, who was previously the Conservatives’ “Shadow” Chief Secretary to the Treasury, means that there will be little influence of the Center-Left Liberal Democrats in the new government’s transportation strategy. That party, unlike the right-wing Conservatives, had been in favor of substantial measures to increase use of the country’s abandoned railroad rights of way and exert increased fees on motorists. Yet Mr. Hammond has refused to introduce any road pricing under his mandate, a significant problem if his government is to commit fully to the public transportation programs Labour had pursued.

Potentially the most affected immediately will be the £16 billion Crossrail program, which was supposed to be a RER-type commuter relief line for London. Though the Conservatives have said they would complete it, they haven’t promised that they would do so on schedule, despite the fact that it is vital for the stability of this crowded city. Does this mean funding for Crossrail — whose own completion was holding up Labour’s high-speed rail construction schedule — is to be extended and re-prioritized for high-speed rail?

Will funds currently allocated to rail projects be moved into the construction of new highways?

What is clear is that the Conservatives expect to find new sources of funding; Mr. Hammond said that “the era of easy public money is over” — a reflection of the fact that the kind of mammoth improvements seen in the U.K.’s transport system over the last ten years may be a relic of the past, lost to different priorities in a new government.

It may be too early, however, to guess how the new government will approach the complicated issue of funding high-speed rail and other transportation projects already underway. But the new coalition certainly won’t have it easy attempting to assign priorities in the midst of a major downfall in revenues.

» Mayor Boris Johnson instructs Transport for London to purchase controlling shares of Tube Lines, the PPP process’ remaining private infrastructure manager.

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone sued the government twice in the early 2000s to prevent the full-scale contracting out of maintenance and work on the London Underground, which then-Chancellor of the Exchequer and soon-to-be-former Prime Minister Gordon Brown imposed on to the city beginning in 2003. The U.K. government, which provides financial sponsorship for most of the reconstruction of this city’s huge transit network, forced a series of public-private partnership (PPP) agreements through, giving big contracts to private enterprises Tube Lines and Metronet in exchange for the city getting big bucks from the national government to rebuild its decaying subway.

To Livingstone, a Labour politician, the multi-billion-pound PPP deals were undermined by a “fatal flaw” that kept public sector ownership of the system but gave private entities control over it. As a report to the Mayor put it in 2001, “Implementation of the PPP would be unsafe, inefficient, and prohibitively expensive.” The PPP process allegedly cost £500 million in consultancies and fees just to set up.

Livingstone must feel relieved in his vindication. In 2007, Metronet fell into administration (bankruptcy) and was subsequently absorbed by Transport for London (TfL), the public authority that runs the region’s rail and bus system. This put two-thirds of the Underground maintenance and renovation contracts back in government hands. Now, in the shadow of the British national elections last week, Livingstone’s replacement, conservative Mayor Boris Johnson, decided to buy out Tube Lines, which held the remaining third of contracts, after a public conflict over whether the company was being reasonable in its cost estimates for work to be done.

One of the largest forays into re-privatization of a public transportation entity in the West has come to an end, less than a third of the way into what was supposed to be a thirty-year commitment.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been a repeated critic of significant private involvement in the creation of what is supposed to be public infrastructure, so I may come at this discussion with a bias.

But the facts here speak for themselves: The history of the London Underground’s journey in and out of private stewardship should put a damper on what is increasingly frequent talk from the United States to Uganda of expanding PPP models into the provision of a whole series of public services. That is — I say this with a degree of self-imposed moderation — at least until the reasons for London’s failures are understood and appropriate precautions are taken to prevent similar problems from occurring in the future.

Otherwise, we may see a whole lot of wasted spending.

It’s worth reviewing the way the London PPP process was set up: three contracts were written, each covering the renewal and maintenance of about a third of the system’s 250 miles of track for a period of thirty years. The government let the contracts out to bid, and two companies won: Metronet took the Bakerloo, Central, Victoria, Waterloo & City, Circle, District, East London, Hammersmith & City, and Metropolitan Lines while Tube Lines took the Jubliee, Northern, and Piccadilly Lines. TfL would continue running the trains, but these companies were to be paid to do the work keeping stations, trains, and track up to par — under the direction of TfL management. This went far further than the usual government agency/contractor relationship by giving almost complete control over the system to the private companies rather then just bits and pieces of work to be done, as is more typical.

After the 30-year contracts were signed in 2003, there wasn’t much room for maneuver, though a “Tube Arbiter,” Chris Bolt, was supposed to guarantee that the cost estimates of work to be done by the private consortia and to be paid out by TfL were accurate reflections of reality. Theoretically, the involvement of private contractors would reduce overall costs by inducing the supposed “creativity” of the private sector.

Unfortunately, that “creativity” was motivated by profit and insider deals, particularly in the case of Metronet, which gave exclusive contracts to the companies that owned it, including Bombardier, the train maker, Atkins, an engineering specialist, and Balfour Beatty, a construction firm, increasing costs substantially. Because the PPP contract spread out over a 30-year period, the “competitive” nature of private involvement in the reconstruction of the Tube was abandoned as soon as the deal was signed.

And then Metronet fell apart beginning in 2007, forcing TfL to pay back £1.7 billion in borrowing, of which the taxpayer lost £410 million — not exactly chump change. The government had bet on private sector productivity, and lost.

The problem for the public sector, of course, is that it can’t allow investments like those in the London Underground to be simply thrown away: The system must be upgraded, no matter the cost. Thus the government gave the PPPs a 95% guarantee on their borrowing, virtually eliminating any risk. It was the public’s responsibility to clean up the mess when Metronet broke down: It had no other choice.

Tube Lines was in better shape financially; the decision by Mayor Johnson to buy it out had a lot more to do with a conviction that the public sector could do the work better than private companies than a fear that Tube Lines would go bankrupt. TfL will spend £310 million to buy out the shares of Tube Lines’ owners, contractors Bechtel and Grupo Ferrovial, funds that the mayor’s office claims it can make up by eliminating shareholder profits, cutting “middle management fees,” reducing the amount of duplicated work, and taking out debt at cheaper rates than was possible by a private company.

But Johnson’s main concern — the situation that got him into this buyout deal in the first place — had been the fact that while TfL had scheduled £4 billion to pay for seven years of upgrades for the routes covered by Tube Lines, the company claimed to the PPP arbiter that they would cost £4.46 billion — £460 million of which TfL did not have on hand. So the only choice was to reduce the amount of work planned to be done — or simply purchase the company’s commitments, eliminating direct private involvement in the London Underground, exactly the choice Mr. Johnson’s TfL made.

The problem, suggested former London Underground Managing Director Tim O’Toole last year, is four-fold:

“The lack of competitive bidding in allocating work over 30 years results in inflated costs and preferential fees to the involved private companies; negotiations over future or new work are conducted without the ability to introduce market discipline, resulting in higher costs; in place of competitive bidding, the structure relies on record-keeping, derivative measurements and man-marking, all at additional administrative expense; the asymmetry of information in favour of the private companies leads to a claims culture, resulting in future unpleasant budget overruns.“

It is unclear whether TfL will be able to maintain its infrastructure for a cheaper price than have the PPP companies: The claimed reason for involving private actors in the first place was that the government-performed upgrade of the Jubilee Line, done in the 1990s, had been a fiscal disaster, going over budget by one billion pounds. And PPP Arbiter Chris Bolt suggested this year that TfL’s work was more expensive than that of Tube Lines.

Yet the experience with Metronet, which probably had far too much on its plate — was an unforgivably colossal failure: That company had £17 billion worth of improvements planned over a thirty-year period, but was £2 billion over budget just five year in. Before it was put into administration, it had refurbished only four stations, versus the seventeen it had been expected to complete by that point. Moreover, TfL claims it is improving the Victoria Line more efficiently than is Tube Lines on equivalent work elsewhere in the system; that company had been very late in completing its own work on the Jubilee Line.

Administrative costs will go down, as the “partnership” between public and private entities was marked more by disputes over costs than agreements. TfL and the PPP companies sued one another repeatedly over the course of the past ten years. Former Mayor Livingstone has suggested that the difference in cost estimates between Tube Lines and TfL could be accounted for by the outrageous salaries the former pays its staff — 150 from Bechtel and Grupo Ferrovial, for example, are paid an average £500,000 each annually, compared to the £90,000 they might receive in the public sector. Mayor Johnson agreed, suggesting that the price difference was the result of management fees: “In other countries this would be called looting,” he said. “Here it is called the PPP.”

And it is definitely true that the public sector is able to take out loans at lower interest rates than were the PPP companies.

No matter what, London continues to set records in terms of how much money it spends on improvements. Arbiter Bolt has demonstrated that peer systems from New York to Hong Kong cost 20 to 40% less than London — in terms of purchasing-power parity — to complete similar work. This, however, may have more to do with work conditions specific to the United Kingdom than anything else.

If Mayors Livingstone and Johnson are correct — that the PPP process resulted in increasing costs for construction that would be better managed by a publicly-controlled entity — the decision to pull leadership of the Tube renewal program back into the heart of TfL makes a lot of sense. Indeed, the example of Metronet suggests that the limited risk assumed by the private companies at least under the terms of this process has yielded few if any tangible benefits for the London public, actually costing the government millions of pounds that would have been better spent on construction. Peter Hendy, current Commissioner of TfL, expects to save hundreds of millions of pounds over the course of just a few years, and he argues that TfL will be able to complete renovations to the Northern Line (so far very late) faster and with fewer disruptions than had the PPP company.

The more recent controversy with Tube Lines demonstrates the failure of a massive 30-year contract with a single organization. There is little motivation for improved performance and there are too many ways in which the private sector can orient its decision-making inappropriately around profit creation, often with the goal of generating huge salaries for its upper-level employees — spending that wouldn’t occur similarly in government.

The London Underground has improved significantly over the past decade: its renovated stations look modern and its operations reliability has significantly increased. But the public likely would have benefited from similar upgrades at a lower cost had TfL remained in charge. Indeed, the positive differences in the system are the result of a vast expansion in public contributions for its maintenance thanks to a national government effort to expand support for transit, not some sort of private-sector ingenuity. The latter seems mostly to have resulted in delays and cost overruns — all at a cost to the taxpayer, not private industry, which has mostly gotten away unscathed.

Tim O’Toole, the former Tube Managing Director, suggests a more conventional financing structure, which would include shorter-term contracts for smaller work commitments. This would allow TfL to adapt to changing circumstances more rapidly and adjust spending based on needs, not profits or the broader economic environment, notoriously difficult for the private sector to adapt to, unlike the far more steady hand of government.

The involvement of private firms in fulfilling specific, project-based contracts rather than an attempt to literally pass off the running of the network to corporate entities seems to be the appropriate future for London. The ideologically charged vision of a “business-oriented” approach to transportation investments pushed by Gordon Brown a decade ago has been debunked as misleading and expensive. There are things an efficient public sector can be good at, and mass transport may be one of them; the next stage of the London Underground’s history, back in public hands, will provide definitive evidence for that assertion’s validity. Other cities considering such a significant PPP process should get to know this example well before moving forward.

In related news, Boris Johnson released the Mayor’s Transportation Strategy yesterday. Image above: London Underground sign, from Flickr user jessicamelling (cc)

» Initial project would link Birmingham to the capital in 49 minutes, but future connections would extend north to Leeds and Manchester.

The fear that only one section of the United Kingdom’s Midlands would receive new high-speed rail service has been laid to rest. Hoping to draw unity around a single compromise alignment, UK Secretary of State for Transport Andrew Adonis has drawn out a twenty-year plan that would connect London with Manchester and Leeds via Birmingham. It’s a 335-mile Y-shaped network that would cost £30 billion to construct and dramatically advance the speed of rail travel in Great Britain — even as it more than doubles transport capacity.

If it expects to meet future travel demand, the UK has basically no choice but to invest in the new high-speed corridor, designated HS2. Despite spending £13 billion on a huge reconstruction of the West Coast Main Line between London and Glasgow, trains running to Birmingham and Manchester remain packed at rush hour — and the line will be fully at capacity by 2020. The corridor carries 75 million passengers a year.

It was always expected that the second British high-speed link — the first, carrying Eurostar trains from the continent, made it to London’s St. Pancras terminal in 2007 — would allow customers a faster journey between London and Birmingham, the country’s two largest metropolitan areas. With political will backing such a project from both sides of the aisle, the real question was how trains would make that connection, and where they would go as they headed further north.

The government has now been studying how the program could be implemented for months.

With last week’s publication of a series of reports on the project by the UK Government, we now have a pretty good idea. According to plans, construction will begin in 2017, with the first segment open by 2026. That is, if the ruling Labour party remains in government; much could change if the conservatives currently in opposition win the national elections planned for later this year.

The Labour project is well thought-through, with an emphasis on improving transportation conditions for one of Europe’s biggest corridor markets, which today serves 45,000 long-distance journeys a day. A series of studies by the government have demonstrated that in order to increase capacity along the rail route, the country has two choices: invest in yet another reconstruction of the existing line — a project that would yield only minor improvements in speed and only minimal capacity expansion — or create a brand new, dedicated passenger corridor. The latter project, is turns out, is not only cheaper, but will also allow the British access to much faster trains, a potential economic boon. It is estimated to increase intercity rail ridership along the corridor to 165,000 daily.

The first phase of the project would be a connection between London and just north of Birmingham designed to cut travel times between to two major cities to 49 minutes, down from 1h20 today. This portion of the new line would be ready to serve up to 18 trains an hour operating at up to 250 mph, providing a three-fold capacity jump with 1,100-seat 400-meter trainsets. Total costs of this first section would reach between £15.8 and 17.4 billion mostly because of the necessary one-billion-pound reconstruction of London Euston station where trains would terminate and a major new tunnel under the heart of the capital. Center city Birmingham would not be on the primary route but instead see a terminus spur from the project, allowing trains to continue express from London to the north.

Trains would be designed from the outset to be able to continue north along the existing West Coast Main Line to serve Manchester and Scotland directly.

If approval is given by the government in later years, the line would be extended northwest to Manchester and northeast to Leeds along dedicated tracks, though exact alignments for those corridors have yet to be determined. The government has avoided antagonizing the electorate on either side of the Pennines by planning to serve both, though it has not committed to improving the rail link between Manchester and Leeds. Provisions for further new projects north into northern England and Scotland have yet to be made. This means that they’re unlikely to be built for decades.

Even so, Glasgow and Edinburgh will be put within 3h30 of London thanks to the fact that high-speed trains will continue on conventional tracks past the high-speed lines’ ends in Manchester and Leeds. That will be fast enough to seriously shrink the air market between those cities.

The Labour government’s strategy in addressing a connection to Heathrow Airport is to build a station just west of London where high-speed trains would meet Crossrail regional rail, Heathrow Express, and Great Western Main Line trains. This station — at which all trains would stop — would allow customers a one-transfer connection to the airport (in ten minutes) and easy access via Crossrail to major destinations throughout London not particularly close to the terminus at Euston, including the major business district at Canary Wharf (in twenty minutes). Because 80% of HS2 customers are expected to have London destinations, this new interchange will serve an important role in reducing congestion at Euston and its Underground station and take advantage of Crossrail’s 24 train-an-hour capacity.

It also avoids the mistake of serving Heathrow Airport’s very limited likely rail traffic. That said, nor does the government’s project include provisions for a bypass line around London — a potentially valuable addition to the country’s rail system.

The Labour government has suggested it will be willing to commit £2 billion a year to the construction of the line, which is why the country isn’t planning a full-out assault on Scotland as soon as possible. Construction will have to wait until the £16 billion Crossrail scheme is completed to avoid raiding too much of London’s treasury.

Yet this will further delay the United Kingdom’s investment in fast trains, especially in comparison with its mainland peers, which are constructing high-speed rail links at an ever-quickening pace. But the slow speed of completion may simply be a reflection of the U.K.’s tendency to pay far too much for the upgrade of its rail network: HS1 between the Channel tunnel and London cost three to four times as much per route-mile as equivalent projects on the continent. This may be a reflection of high labor costs or the use of private entities to manage projects, but either way it means that the country is simply not able to connect its major cities by fast rail as quickly as its neighbors.

Nonetheless, the choice of the Y-shaped alignment is an important step forward — even if people won’t be able to take advantage of the new lines for sixteen years.

» A station at Heathrow looks more promising when envisioned as a connection between the United Kingdom’s northern and southern rail networks.

In my Friday article on the brewing controversy over whether to link Heathrow Airport to the United Kingdom’s proposed HS2 high-speed rail network, I dismissed the idea rather quickly, arguing that the airport station proposed by the Conservative Party would multiply construction costs and increase travel times. Because Heathrow is not directly on the way between London and Birmingham, including a station at the airport on the first segment of the HS2 route would be a wasteful choice. The Labour Party’s inclination to have airport users transfer to another line to get to terminals is probably the right approach.

Yet, after reading a report on the Heathrow connection by high-speed rail advocacy group Greengauge 21 (thanks to commenter John W), I’d like to modify my position on the issue.

By integrating Heathrow Airport into a bypass route around London, it would become an essential element of the nation’s high-speed network by allowing commuters to make cross-country connections without entering the capital. This link could provide fast train access to much of southwestern England and southern Wales, two regions which thus far have been excluded from consideration for new service.

The Greengauge 21 project promotes its concept in opposition to the three primary options that have typically been proposed for a Heathrow connection: a spur line terminating at the airport, which would suffer from low frequencies (as suggested in Greengauge 21′s first plan in 2007); a required transfer from a station elsewhere that would reduce rail use at the airport significantly (as suggested by Labour); and a remote hub along the London-Birmingham route that would extend journey times and costs (as suggested by the Conservatives).

Greengauge 21 argues that there is no reason to reroute the London-Birmingham route, since that would limit the ridership to be gained from the fastest-possible journeys between London and the north. But by constructing that first stage of the HS2 route with plans for turnouts towards the airport from the beginning, the U.K. could be setting the stage for direct airport access and future fast train service along the South Western Main Line and the Great Western Main Line. The former corridor could handle high-speed trains today, while the latter is planned for electrification over the next decade.

This proposal would create a £3.2 billion London bypass modeled on France’s LGV Interconnexion Est, which runs to the east of Paris, serving Charles de Gaulle Airport on the way. Interestingly, SNCF, the French rail company, proposed a similar line around Chicago via O’Hare Airport in its proposal for a Midwest high-speed rail system several months back.

The French model is worthy of serious consideration as the British implement their own rail improvements. Until the Interconnexion was completed in 1994, customers hoping to take high-speed trains between regional cities were required to transfer in Paris, often even having to get between stations on opposite sides of the city. This lowered ridership significantly, as the time advantage of high-speed trains are lost when major transfers are necessary. But the Interconnexion allowed trains to travel directly from the southeast and southwest to the east and north, allowing people in Lille, for instance, to get to Lyon without changing trains: there are now ten direct trains between those cities everyday.

The fact that the Interconnexion includes a station at Charles de Gaulle Airport (and Disneyland Paris, for that matter) is secondary to the line’s role as a connection between regions. The fact that the airport station is able to attract 3.4 million TGV users a year, no small number (it would be Amtrak’s fourth most-used station), is an added advantage. Virtually none of those riders are coming from the Paris region.

Heathrow could play a similar essential connecting role between the HS2 corridor and the southwestern sections of the United Kingdom, allowing people in cities along the high-speed line like Birmingham and Manchester direct service to Cardiff, Bristol, and Portsmouth, which may not get a new dedicated high-speed line but could at least see high-speed trains. The airport becomes a through-station, with most trains passing through in the middle of a longer cross-country trip. Greengauge 21 argues that this strategy could attract 15 million passengers a year to Heathrow’s high-speed station by 2055.

The primary goal of the HS2 project should be first to connect London to Glasgow and Edinborough city centers in about two hours. This project would provoke a major mode shift towards rail across the country. The construction of a link to Heathrow wouldn’t reduce the airport’s congestion much since only about 10% of passenger movements at Heathrow could be realistically moved to rail and only six British cities currently have directly flights to the airport anyway.

Yet taking advantage of the airport to build a new bypass around London would play a more important role in reducing road travel on routes not involving London, with a movement away from flying as only a secondary, complementary effect. If constructing that bypass becomes a priority in the future, routing it through the airport could be the right approach — and British rail planners should be designing HS2 now to be ready for it.

Image above: Greengauge 21′s Heathrow Opportunity Plan, from Greengauge 21

» The British government is set to produce a high-speed plan that does not include a direct connection to Heathrow Airport. Is that a problem?

It’s one of the standard arguments made by promoters of high-speed rail: by investing in multimodal hubs at airports, trains can reduce congestion in the air by encouraging people flying short journeys to switch to rail, even while expanding access to long-distance routes only feasible by airplane. The argument is lapped up by politicians and business groups, both of whom use air travel far more frequently than the average population. The two most advanced plans for American fast train services will include direct connections to airports: in Florida at Orlando and in California at San Francisco, San Diego, Ontario, and Palmdale.

Yet the British government is planning to release a report next week that will advocate bypassing Heathrow Airport, the world’s second largest, on the way between London and Birmingham. To be completed by 2025, this corridor would be the first segment of what will eventually be a north-south high-speed mainline between the English Channel and Scotland. The full £60 billion High-Speed 2 project, it seems, will prioritize center-city connections over air links.

Is that an acceptable position?

The question of whether to route HS2 through the airport has become a prime source of political argument in the United Kingdom, which is likely to vote in national elections in the next few months. The Conservatives, currently in opposition, have been pushing a fast rail link for more than a year, claiming that it would help reduce congestion at Heathrow. Until recently, the ruling Labour Party had been less committed to the project but over the past few months it has invested considerable sums in initial planning for the line, hoping that it will be a popular policy and improve its political chances.

Now that the north-south link has support on both sides of the political spectrum (as well as a promise of financial help), 220 mph trains running from London Euston Station to Birmingham, Manchester, and Edinburgh in just over two hours seem inevitable within the next few decades.

But one major point of contention has been over the future of Heathrow. The airport is over-congested with only two runways despite its high traffic (Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, the world’s busiest airport, has five runways), so its owner BAA has asked for the right to construct a third runway, a position endorsed by Labour but opposed by the Tories, who want most future domestic travel to be by rail. Labour leaders, led by Secretary of State for Transport Andrew Adonis, have suggested that both the third runway and the high-speed system be built.

The peculiar extension of this controversy is that Tories are now pushing for a high-speed hub near Heathrow that would allow commuters from the north to make easy connections to international flights. Labour leaders, however, will pronounce in next week’s report that there is no business case for a hub at the airport and suggest that train riders hoping to get to flights would be able to connect quickly enough to the Crossrail commuter rail line currently under construction.

The Tories have announced that they will not support the government’s plan for the high-speed train’s route and reserve the right to alter plans if they are to win the election. Polls, which showed massive leads for the conservatives just months ago, now show a tight race for control of Parliament.

It’s not clear whether the Tory or Labour strategy would be more effective in reducing the number of passengers choosing to fly between domestic destinations in the United Kingdom. BAA has announced its support for a direct link to the airport because it assumes it would actually increase traffic, the exact opposite of the argument made by the Tories, who think that an easy connection would encourage people to take the train.

On the other hand, BAA officials might be worried that Birmingham Airport, also planned for a stop on the initial HS2 link, could benefit from a redistribute international air traffic in the country.

But the most important question is whether it’s worth aligning a high-speed route specifically to provide a station at an airport, even if it slows  city-to-city services. It’s a move that has been made previously by France with its TGV links to Paris and Lyon airports (pictured above), and by Germany, whose Stuttgart 21 project will provide direct ICE trains to that city’s airport.

Opened in 1994, Lyon’s airport link has been relatively successful with 400,000 annual passengers, but that’s minor compared to a typical city station, such as the suburban Avignon TGV station, which attracts 2.2 million a year — more than every American Amtrak station except for those in New York, Washington, Philadelphia, and Chicago. There’s a reasonable explanation for the low ridership at Lyon: customers using the same TGV line also have a connection to Paris-CDG, a much larger airport with more flights. The two TGV stations in central Lyon are also more convenient to most residents of the region via public transportation than the airport stop.

Should countries like Britain considering high-speed rail invest limited funds in airport stops?

One thing that’s worth considering is that airport fast rail links are not really designed for passengers who live in the nearest large cities. Newark Airport, which has almost twice as many annual users as BWI Airport in Maryland, nonetheless has 1/6th of its Amtrak ridership, at only 110,000 a year. That’s because the vast majority of people coming from New York City and other nearby destinations used NJ Transit commuter rail. The higher Amtrak user counts at BWI are likely a result of relatively poor MARC commuter rail service. People don’t use (or, rather, pay for) fast intercity rail from the center city to the airport just a few miles away when they have alternatives.

London Heathrow offers metro and commuter rail services today and will get Crossrail regional rail operations within the decade.

Most airport users come from the surrounding region. On the other hand, high-speed rail will for the most part only serve connecting passengers coming from medium-sized cities within a 200 to 300-mile radius but which lack direct public transportation access to the airport — a relatively limited market, especially since there are other, growing airports further afield, and London Heathrow has no room for more traffic.

Most people in Birmingham would like to use their local airport to get to continental Europe, and there’s no reason why such services should be monopolized by London. The primary purpose of HS2, meanwhile, will be to allow inhabitants of Birmingham and other cities direct access into London, not via London. It’s hard to see how airport/high-speed rail connections address those facts.

Heathrow may be a different case, as it is by far the U.K.’s largest airport. Perhaps a rail station there would be considerably more successful in attracting customers, making it worthy of investment. If airlines were better at integrating train tickets into their reservation systems, people arriving at Heathrow from abroad would be able to switch easily to trains heading north to Birmingham or Manchester. But that would only be possible if HS2 is designed with airlines in mind and in agreement with those air carriers, not necessarily possible considering their clear conflict of interest.

These issues apply to any proposed airport connection for a high-speed rail system.

Ultimately, though, this discussion may be irrelevant to the U.K. Even the Tory plan wouldn’t provide direct terminal access to Heathrow; customers would still have to transfer to another train or bus to get to gates. Since that’s true, it’s hard to identify a major problem with the Labour plan, which would be cheaper to build, faster to ride, and also provide a one-transfer link to the airport.

Image above: TGV Station at Lyon-St. Exupéry, from Flickr User Bicycle Bob

» Successful implementation at huge U.K. airport could mean more interest in PRT elsewhere.

Proponents of personal rapid transit systems have frequently promoted themselves as opponents of traditional public transportation. Unlike expensive metro or light rail systems, they claimed, their PRT lines would be cheaper to construct, more convenient for passengers, and more attractive for users. Now that a new line is readying for opening in the United Kingdom, the technology may attain new prominence.

Over the years, most attempts at implementing PRT have failed due to a lack of interest from investors — and as a result of deceptive, dishonest campaigns by “pod people” who simply promise too much.

Even with the rebirth of modern rail systems over the past few decades in the United States, PRT continues to be brought up as an environmentally friendly solution for urban transport, allowing passengers virtually instant access to vehicles, stop-free commutes, and direct access to many destinations. In other words, it theoretically can solve many of the deficiencies of regular transit, which requires waiting for trains or buses to arrive, multiple stops along a route, and a walk or drive to and from stations. Yet only in 1975, at the University of West Virginia in Morgantown, has a system that allows such on-demand travel by automated train been constructed.

Next spring, London’s Heathrow Airport will take a step forward to advance the PRT concept with the implementation of a new network connecting its Terminal 5 and associated parking areas. The ULTra (Urban Light Transit) system is being developed by Bristol, England Wales-based Advanced Transport Systems and will initially travel between three stations along a three-mile track using 21 four-passenger vehicles. The mini-cars, which travel at speeds of up to 25 mph and which use lasers for guidance along the 7 foot-wide pavement, have tires and are autonomous, meaning they more closely replicate the experience of automobiles than trains. They’re battery driven and use energy at the equivalent of 200 mpg.

Vehicles are designed to bypass stations, allowing non-stop travel. Customers will pick their destination by pressing a button on a touch screen before departing. Empty vehicles will be available at all times at stops for passengers needing to get between the car parks and the airport terminals, or vice-verse.

The system didn’t come cheaply — at $41 million, the private airport owner that paid for the line and some of the technology’s development is making a big bet that it hopes to eventually expand throughout the airport and into the surrounding areas with 400 pods at a cost of $330 million. That is, if this first test goes well.

If the claimed $7-15 million costs per mile (without rights-of-way) are to be believed, this PRT is cheaper than normal transit, but not much. Per passenger, its costs may actually be higher, since it is only expected to handle about 500,000 annual passengers, an average of less than 2,000 a day.

Nevertheless, the system holds promise: its use of batteries installed in each vehicle rather than an electrified third rail or catenary makes the corridor easier to maintain and cheaper to build — an advantage that will soon be replicated in the implementation of similar technology on tramways. The use of electricity rather than diesel motors (as in the existing buses used by passengers) will eliminate local-source pollutants and decrease noise levels. The elimination of human drivers will improve travel times by 60% and reduce operating costs by 40% — if initial estimates prove accurate. Passengers will get direct and instant access between parking lots and the terminal; plus, they’ll eventually be offered similar service to surrounding office buildings and hotels.

Unlike the cities in which PRT lines are usually proposed, this airport environment provides a sealed-off, protected setting in which to experiment with this model for a new form of transportation. The ULTra project seems highly likely to operate problem-free here, but what is the appeal elsewhere?

Abu Dhabi is planning a new city called Masdar that will not allow cars and instead rely on PRT lines to connect people from one place to another; San Jose is planning a people mover between its airport and surrounding transit stations and neighborhoods; other American cities like Mountain View and Ithaca are “studying” the idea, though there are no definite plans there. Companies such as SkyCab and Vectus are planning their own rival PRT technologies to spread around the world, and unlike some previous PRT pushers, they seem truthful in what they expect to provide (in other words, they don’t claim that initial capital costs will be paid back with fare revenue).

For airports and new cities, PRT could supplement other mass transit systems rather effectively and encourage people to live car-free lifestyles by providing them destination-to-destination service with minimal walking to and from stations. In newly built environments, PRT could be constructed cheaply and it could be installed in such a way that does not disrupt its surroundings. Proponents use this fact as evidence for the universal applicability of PRT, claiming that it should replace transit systems since it would allow for the phase out of cars, but their arguments are weakened by the realities of the way cities work.

PRT cannot replace light and metro rail systems, as its capacity is far lower. Along major routes at peak periods, systems that are capable of carrying hundreds of people per train every two minutes are necessary, and PRT will never allow that kind of operation.

Similarly, if a PRT vehicle sounds awfully like an automated car, the analogy isn’t far off: indeed, the idea that people would be able to travel by themselves from one place to another is simply an advanced version of the car sharing systems now being implemented in places like Paris. Most major cities have serious transportation needs along heavily traveled lines, and PRT will not be able to do much there, since the lines would be completely overloaded and therefore unusable if implemented in very dense cities like New York or San Francisco.

In addition, PRT’s proponents ignore the fact that their calls for dense networks of lines and stations would duplicate the already existing road system and degrade the urban landscape with elevated structures. This is no effective already to urban sprawl, since direct access to PRT stations every few blocks would undoubtedly encourage the sort of spread-out environments that have blighted American cities for decades. For those that don’t care about that problem, a cheaper alternative might be to wait a decade or so for more advanced automobiles that can negotiate existing streets without drivers. Stations wouldn’t be needed for such a system — people could simply call an automated service, and a robotized car would arrive in front of the house. This is no less a fantasy than the installation of hundreds of miles of PRT tracks above city streets.

This experiment at Heathrow Airport, then, will test some of the basic arguments of PRT advocates and probably verify many of their claims about the system’s effectiveness, but it won’t provide a solution to the deeper problems with the idea.

Note to readers: Discussions of PRT frequently produce angry debate. There’s nothing wrong with spirited interchange, but let’s try to restrain ourselves from personal insults. They are not acceptable here and will be deleted. Image above: ULTra in action at Heathrow, from Advanced Transport Systems Ltd

» Network will be 67% electrified by 2017.

Andrew Adonis, the United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for Transport, announced yesterday that the government would invest £200 million in the increased electrification of the railway system, adding to a commitment made last summer and furthering the country’s investment in carbon-friendly transportation systems.

According to Mr. Adonis, new funds would be allocated by 2016 to three projects in Northwest England: a connection between Blackpool and the West Coast Main Line; a link between Manchester and Euxton Junction; and a corridor between Huyton and Wigan. This comes in addition to the £1.1 billion worth of announcements made in July, which included the electrification of the corridor between Liverpool and Manchester and the installation of overhead catenary along the Great Western Main Line between London and Reading, Bristol, Cardiff, and Oxford. The line between Bedford and Sheffield may also be electrified by 2020 as part of a larger interest in electrifying the country’s network.

The net effect: an increase in total rail passenger miles traveled on electric trains from 60% today to 67% in 2017, with new service to 22 towns and cities formerly only welcoming diesel trains. Customers will benefit from faster travel between Scotland and Northwest England and from London to Wales. Pollutants from diesel locomotives will be reduced, with a corresponding uptick in electricity usage.

Rolling stock on the newly electric lines will come from the already electric London-area commuter railroads being replaced by the Crossrail regional rail scheme, which in turn will be receiving new trains once its new train tunnel opens under London city center. In addition, the government is planning an investment in 1,300 more cars for the system as a whole.

The recent focus on rail by the U.K.’s Labour government comes at the conclusion of twelve years in power, with elections next year likely to result in a Conservative win. Much of the first decade under the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Blair meant limited investment in the new mode outside of an upgrade of the West Coast Main Line as the government simply attempted to correct the mess that resulted from the privatization of British Rail in the early 1990s; that effort is yet to be completed, as the recent failure of several operating contracts attests.

With pressure from the rival Conservatives to develop a plan for high-speed rail, Labourites have pushed their own improvement programs focusing on electrification and the High-Speed 2 program, which would connect London and Scotland in just over two hours. A decision on the alignment of that line will be announced in the spring, just prior to elections. Labour is clearly attempting to use a renewed focus on rail improvements as an electoral point-booster. Whether the citizenry will be convinced is another matter, since Labour suffers from deep unpopularity as a result of its long stay in government, limited ability to improve public services, and involvement in the Iraq War.

No matter, each of these electrification projects is good news for the country’s transportation system, since they will ultimately result in faster, more reliable trains. Electric vehicles provide the benefit of eliminating point-source pollutants, but their implementation may or may not produce overall lower carbon emissions since that depends on the source of electric power. If Britain’s electricity continues to be sourced primarily from coal, gas, and oil, improvements will be minor; a more serious switch to nuclear and renewable sources in compliance with objectives that may be established this week in Copenhagen would make electric trains far more environmentally sustainable.