HS2 again

I do not think there is an economic or environmental case for HS2. Looking at the bigger picture, I think it will only increase London-centrism, and there are alternatives that would stimulate the economy far more, such as granting more planning permission, or cutting taxes. There are many costs of HS2 that are not budgeted for, such as improved transport links from Euston, and the likely overrun of the compensation scheme. And then the demand for tickets is likely overstated, as is lost productivity due to being on a train. I think the government's case does not consider that the economy will make better use of high speed Internet connections, and that the future of transport likely lies with driverless cars. Since much has been made of NIMBYs with loud voices, it is worth mentioning that the Campaign for HSR is funded by vested corporate interests.

I am concerned about the vacuous rhetoric about investment in our future, creating jobs, and bringing Britain into the 21st century. These things can be said of virtually anything the government might want to do, but this rhetoric does not make a plan better than the very unglamorous and boring alternative - not spending our hard-earned money. I am under the impression HS2's claimed net benefit ratio of 2 ignores the social cost of paying for it, in terms of tax wedges etc. This means the true benefit ratio is probably closer to one, even before the underlying optimistic assumptions are questioned. The country faces a host of problems in the future, such as old age getting more expensive, rising costs of healthcare, increased competitiveness from emerging economies, an education system falling down the international league tables, a depressingly large total debt, a housing crisis, a huge number of NEETs, and a massively expensive state which still has a huge deficit. All of these things are likely to reduce our wealth and/or make the state more burdensome, thus increasing the damage of raising each additional pound of taxation. I've read that it will create 40,000 jobs. That probably works out at £800,000 per job created. How many private sector jobs will be destroyed by the tax required to fund that?

If there is an economic case for HS2, it should be funded privately by investors. If it fails, it loses the money of people who freely took the risk. If it succeeds, investors profit by having provided a service people want more than the cost of the ticket, so everyone wins. There is no such free choice when governments engage in large and risky projects. The Victorians showed it was possible to build railways without public subsidy.

Not only is the business case very weak but I would have thought that HS2 would be a simple issue for Conservatives - don't upset Tory heartlands, don't spend taxpayers money unless it's an absolutely necessary evil. The Conservatives will lose party donors because of this, and voters, and party members, and councillors, and possibly seats. They should be expending their political capital on getting the country's finances into shape and reversing bad Labour decisions.

I think driverless cars are an exciting development, which I think will be a massive driver of growth not requiring public subsidy. Transport will be safer (cheaper insurance, and many other related benefits), and a great deal of time currently spent driving will be able to be used productively. With computer-controlled junctions, and bumper-to-bumper driving, network capacity will increase massively. Computers will mitigate the causes congestion that complexity scientists have studied. Road maintenance will be cheaper. Time will be saved by the car parking itself after it has delivered the occupant to the destination, or driving to pick up the next person who booked their journey by smartphone. Car parks will have improved density due to no need to open doors. I think Britain should be leading the way. We need to investigate which laws will need changing, and we should maybe channel research grants into looking at how we can develop and exploit the technology. This isn't a long way off either, Google has a car that has driven a couple of hundred thousand kilometres through San Francisco, the only crash happening while it was on manual override.