High Speed Rail

I'm not taking a view on the benefits of high speed rail for the UK, or of HS2 in particular, and it's not particularly relevant to Barking, but I do want to expose some logical flaws in an Economist editorial - at least as reported in 'The Week' (10 September 2011).

The first - and easiest to deal with - flaw:

Talking about "Second-tier" towns [like Stoke] , the writer calims that "their own rail services are likely to be reduced when the new line [HS2] is built". There is clearly no causal link here. Whether or not HS2 is built, rail services on the existing lines can be improved (subject to capacity) or worsened. I hope the writer was not being disingenuous rather than just illogical.


Second, the writer claims that high speed rail in France and Spain has benefitted the larger cities, rather than the smaller towns and cities linked to the high speed network. Maybe so, but exactly the same argument pertains to 'improving existing services'. Faster, more frequent and higher capacity rail services to/from London are likely to cause more people to go to - say -  London, whether or not they comprise entirely new lines.
 
Proponents of HS2 say that the capacity increases possible on the existing network are not enough, and would bring too much disruption when lines and stations are closed during works. Quite obviously new lines bring additional capacity to the network as a whole, and the pro HS2 camp argue that the existing lines can be improved more easily once HS2 is built, quite simply because the proportion of an increased network that will have to close for upgrade work is smaller.