The government has been accused of attempting to suppress the drawbacks of its flagship transport project after previously unseen research revealed cities across the UK could lose up to £220m each as a result of HS2. The KPMG study, commissioned by the government, predicted more than 50 areas would be worse off as a result of the high-speed rail project – including Bristol, Cambridge and Aberdeen.
Read article in The Guardian.
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According to the report, post HS2 Bristol will be £101 million worse off, however before HS2 Bristol will be electrified and have new faster, higher capacity trains (OK, some don't like them, but that's a different matter) which has not been given a financial figure to it. As such it may well be that HS2 puts a bit of a dent in Bristol's economy, but possibly only about as much as the electrification of the GWML brings. Therefore without counting all the benefits/losses of all the rail projects scheduled between now and HS2 opening there is no way of being able to compare the true picture. Also that doesn't take into account any further rail schemes whilst HS2 is being built.
Also it should be noted that the top 4 cities listed (Aberdeen (£220m), Cambridge (£127m), Bristol (£101m), and southern Essex (£151m)) have a loss of £0.6bn, whilst just the West Midlands sees an increase of £1.5bn. Meaning as a whole the UK economy is a lot better off. It should also be noted that these 4 areas would probably manage fairly well and although £0.6bn sounds a lot; in comparison to the £1,509bn which is the UK GDP it is just 0.04%. In reality any negative change made by HS2 is likely to be no more than a rounding error.
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