Train journeys should increase our leisure time, not make us work longer, writes Tom Hodgkinson

Victoria broke the silence at the breakfast table. “Did you know,” she said, “that the London to Birmingham HS2 line, when finally finished, will cut a mere 29 minutes off the journey?”

We thought about this figure. 29 minutes. Is our time really so precious and important that we, as a country, will spend 20 years and billions of pounds just to save 29 minutes of it on a journey that only takes 81 minutes as it is?

Have we gone a little bit crazy here? What’s the point? Estimates of the cost of HS2 thus far range from £30 billion to £98 billion. That’s at least one billion quid per minute.

According to the i newspaper, the proposed Manchester leg, which has now been cancelled, would have got journey times down from two hours six minutes to one hour 41 minutes. That’s, erm, 25 minutes saved. What’s the benefit, exactly?

Is the thinking that those 29 minutes or 25 minutes, when added up among thousands of people, will somehow boost the economy because those people will now spend an extra 29 minutes working on important, money-making projects, minutes which were previously spent staring out of the window, wasting time?

That seems to be the view of Rory Stewart on The Rest is Politics. He said that the rationale behind this massive outlay, which began in 2009, was that it was an anti-idling measure. Fast trains would increase GDP and make the people work harder:

“The calculations around it were all about the fact that by saving time we were going to be more productive. That was how the treasury did the money. The idea was that having 20 minutes less on the train would give you 20 minutes’ more contribution to the economy.”

But surely the whole point of train journeys, in a sane society, is that they take time? That’s what we like about them. They give us a chance to doze and dream and read a book, or chat amicably. Trains mean time off, or should do. The longer the better. Hurrah for the slow train.

So we should welcome the cancellation of the Birmingham to Manchester leg. High-speed trains, to us idlers, are a an expensive trick to make us work harder, faster, longer. Slow them down, give us a break.

PS: Our forthcoming book Thirty Years of the Idler: A Visual History is now available for pre-order here. Price is £30 plus £4.99 post and packing in the UK (more overseas).

PPS: We’re taking bookings for our autumn season of A Drink with the Idler. Roll up for Griff Rhys Jones, Georgia Mann, Cory Doctorow, Louise Winter, Emma Southon, Rupert Sheldrake and Anna Keay. Free for subscribers.

SELECTED COMMENTS

These comments were mailed to us after an earlier version of this piece was sent out as a newsletter. We like to publish a selection and reserve the right to edit them for clarity. Feel free to drop us a line with your thoughts.

Sir: When they started HS2 a few years ago, that was my first thought (I also wondered why Tories were thinking of doing something ‘nice’ for us). I do love (and miss) those 2.15h train journeys between Manchester and London with such bad inconsistent wifi – forcing me to read a book (or a magazine) properly. But there’s a lot more to it than just knocking off a few minutes off of one particular train leg journey… it was about updating the infrastructure, and connections between towns and cities across the whole of the North (when I say ‘upgrade’ I mean ‘update to a basic London-esque/European standard’). The timetables, reliability, carriage capacity, the cost of travel, between Liverpool, to Manchester (and its surrounding stations) to Leeds and beyond… especially at peak times and during the colder months – is an absolute joke. And worse still, these bastards in charge, as per usual… it’s the way they’ve done it. They’ve managed to turn every pathetic idea they’ve ever had into an opportunity for playing politics and state theft – they’re now at a level where they’re doing it in plain sight with a smile. It’s utterly depressing.
Alice

Sir: Bravo Tom, about time someone said it. I too welcome the cancellation of the northern section. Spend the money on the current network and rolling stock, preferably renationalised. The Guardian seems to have lost its mind. They’re happy to report the cancellation in a resolutely ‘sad face’ way since it allows them to bash the government. But, during the construction of the first leg, they criticised HS2 all the time, usually from a green perspective (it has cost 100 ancient woodlands) and as way to highlight corruption during the Boris years. I think they were right first time. My sister lives in Aylesbury on the front line of the original mess. She once described it to me as “like a war zone.” Trenches, nightmare construction vehicles and mud everywhere, protesters in holes and up trees (she met Swampy!). She even said she saw construction workers feeding live animals into a wood chipper to annoy the protesters. Amusingly, my sister is a Tory and she blames Labour for all of this. It wasn’t a Labour initiative though; that’s verifiable. Anyway, I’m glad the second half of it is cancelled. Best thing Sunak has ever done and will ever do. Caroline Lucas, I believe, agrees. In November I’ll be travelling in Netherlands and Luxembourg on, as you put it, slow trains. And it’s going to be bliss.
Rob

Sir: As a northener I have to disagree about HS2! High Speed rail is not just about being fast. In part it’s about having more time when you get to a place to spend with friends and family. It brings people and cultures closer together. Fundamentally in relation to Manchester and the North HS2 will create a second line. At present there are two lines from London to the West Midlands – the West Coast Main Line and the Chiltern Line. So they don’t really need another one. If there are engineering works on one line, or God forbid an accident or derailment, then you can fairly easily hop on the other by going to another terminus. North of Birmingham there is only one line – the WCML, there since the 1830s and all alone. So if there are engineering works or some other mishap you are completely scuppered. This is why HS2 should have been started in the North, and not started in the South – using taxes from all over the UK just to make the lives of southerners just that little bit more plush and easy. HS1 is a perfect example as i found out one Friday night routing via London – when someone decided to bring the high speed network to a halt at Ebbsfleet, I was able to simply transfer to the old line into Kent from Victoria and get to Ashford from there. And the reverse scenario is equally true of course. This is also in part why I have chosen to move to France. In my new country high speed rail is everywhere – you can spend a bit more when the timings or the distance compel you to go high speed e.g. on a long journey, or you can take a more leisurely and economical branch line if that makes sense on a given day. It also connects across Europe – a Trans Europe EXpress. When my friends come to visit me from London they can take the high speed line to Le Mans, avoiding the need to fly in a highly polluting and noisy fashion or go through airport security, and they can get here easily in a day, without the bind or kerfuffle of having to get out of bed awfully early. But without HS2 they won’t be able to do that. Equally in the case of lines further North, without an extension to high speed rail folk from Scotland won’t be able to get to Europe in good time, without having to fly, and air travel is such a drag. I wouldn’t scrap the ECML, but further extensions to high speed rail are definitely a must. Infrastructure projects are great in my view at least – they keep our economy going through a recession and are an all round public good. Although I do feel rather cheated by recent events, I am comforted by the fact that I have moved to a country where regional interests are taken account of, at least to a degree. So let’s hear it for the swoosh and zoom of those high speed Hitachi marvels of engineering – giving us less time of noisy, smoky, rattly diesels and more time to relax and reflect when we arrive at our destination, refreshed and invigorated by our sleek, smooth high speed rail experience.
Matt

Sir: I heard a man on the radio, an expert, saying that you could put supermodels on the train handing out Petrus for free, forever, at a tiny fraction of the cost of HS2. Which would please passengers immeasurably more than some fractional time saving. Great way of making an important point.
Toby Ingram

Sir: I totally agree. Spain has made a huge investment on their high speed train network which hasn’t really made much difference to their economy. Many smaller towns on route have been affected by the lack of non-high speed trains that have increased the fares substantially (a bit like the bullet train from Kent to London).
Francisco

Couldn’t agree more, so pleased.
Sukey Dunn

Sir: I think it needs to be recognised how frequently and consistently shat upon we in the north are. We didn’t want it in the first place. Personally I’d like to be able to get the 140 miles from Preston to Newcastle in less than 5 hours with 3 train changes. I’m not interested in getting to the fairly loathsome capital a few minutes early. But try appeasing the folk of Cheshire who were forced into selling much loved homes and farmland, who lost businesses to make way for ‘the route’ with your jaunty missive. We are all furious ‘oop t’t north’ with always, always being fannied about. Absolutely furious.
Melsissa Sinden Gray

Sir: A wonderful piece!
Michael Lewin

Sir: “Saving” time like this, or at least the rationale you mention, reminds me of the German children’s book Momo, in which a group of so-called Grey Gentlemen harass people into saving time, with contracts and all, but what they actually do with the saved time of the people is smoke it in their cigars … It’s an amazing book, probably a bit dated by now, but I suspect you’d love it. Or maybe you’ve long been familiar with it anyway? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_(novel) That said, I recently read that even a few minutes of shorter train times on main routes could lead to more on-time trains in the whole network, and thus one rationale is the integration of more lines into a seamless network. I feel like I can’t properly express this in English, gah! But it was about the German train network, where everyone is frustrated because none of the trains are on time anymore, meaning you rarely catch your connecting trains – and one major line being faster could help the others be on time. Something to do with the phasing/frequency. So while I agree, slow trains are fine, and train journeys should be used for reading and musing and all that, missing your connection and waiting in ugly stations for an hour or two for the next one is not fun at all. Maybe it’s not simply the ole efficiency thing what’s behind it?
Claudia

Sir: It’s true! Bill Bryson said something a bit similar in The Road to Little Dribbing. Shame nobody listened to him then! https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7697997
Naomi Darlington

Very good and funny as usual.
Karen Gibbons

Sir: I love this mock naive analysis. The simplistic approach is always present but it’s your way of leading you away from the imperatives of capitalism. And there we are…millions per minute, millions per mile, all defended by a clearly erroneous assumption that time saved will all be spent making money. The idler’s analysis of staring out of the train window and the joys of actually doing nothing is so honest and healthy.
Peter Delmonte

Sir: With the greatest respect, your musings on HS2 go to the heart of the whole problem with this infrastructure project; putting aside all the mis-management and cost over-run accusations which have beset the project, I am adamant that one of the main reasons it has failed is because someone signed-off years ago on giving it the wrong bloody name. HS2 was never really about improving journey times – as you point out, you would have to be stark raving mad to commit this amount of public money to save 10-20 minutes in journey time – although slightly reduced journey times were an added benefit. The point is that this country has under-invested in its rail network for generations and without substantial upgrades in its backbone it will continue to decline to the point of being unusable. You will no doubt have travelled by train in Europe and beyond, as I have, and reflected how much more comfortable, reliable and pleasurable the experience was. This densely populated island needs a mass-passenger transport system which is reliable, affordable and which people want to use. But the existing lines were too old to merit any investments which could increase capacity or improve rolling stock to make that happen.
This could have been a chance to change all that for the next 50-100 years, however by fixing public perception on it being all about ‘high speed’, it was doomed to inculcate criticism from the man-in-the-street and become a political hot potato. That’s the real tragedy here, and just another example of this once great nation somehow finding a way to stupendously kick itself in the nuts. I would imagine you and all Idler devotees (myself included) would have championed this project and rallied behind the it in the face of challenges had it been framed as an opportunity to get out of our cars more, to spontaneously gather with friends and relatives at the other end of the country, to extend our cultural horizons by visiting more of our great cities in relative comfort, to embrace the great british countryside, to facilitate more adventurous walking and cycling at the weekends, to make attending that play, concert or reading we are excited about less of a gamble because we might not make it home afterwards… Who would not agree that was money well spent.
Giles Beswick

Our September/October issue is available is available in Waitrose, Waterstones, Smiths Travel outlets, select Smiths high street branches and in around 100 indie stores. Click here for your nearest stockist.