Over the years I’ve written a lot about global north-south issues. Yet until now, I’ve never said a word about the same divide within England, my own country of birth and residence. But the two overlap…
The HS2 project survives. Despite ferocious attacks, the initial High Speed Rail (Preparation) Act 2013 was passed in November and the Hybrid Bill – where the real arguments are debated – is now going…
Education minister Elizabeth Truss has travelled to Shanghai to find out the secrets behind Chinese pupils’ mathematics success. I suspect she will find that it’s a cultural phenomenon, impossible to import…
I wonder how many friends I would make among commuters by suggesting last week’s 3% rise in rail fares is at least in part a good news story. Of course, there has been understandable indignation that fares…
Professor Peter Mackie Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds Leeds and its metropolitan region should be one of the big winners from HS2. Financial and legal services, engineering consultancy…
The UK’s largest infrastructure projects of coming decades have been wrapped in controversy: the HS2 high-speed rail line linking London to the north is mired in political wrangling and disputed facts…
The last half century has seen the gradual development of high-speed rail (HSR) systems. From the inauguration of the first “bullet train” services in Japan in 1964 to the recent rapid developments in…
The recent publication of the government’s strategic case for HS2 has added to mounting concerns about the strength and validity of evidence put forward to support the project. Previously, the business…
Next year, high-speed rail travel will celebrate its 50th birthday. In 1964, Japan put into service the first Shinkansen line, from Tokyo to Osaka. Its trains initially operated at speeds of up to 210…
David Cameron said recently that opponents of HS2 are “putting the future of the north of England at risk”. Is he right? Professors Colin Bamford and Paul Salveson from the University of Huddersfield present…
The UK’s most ambitious infrastructure project is in trouble. Criticism of the High Speed 2 rail network has come from left and right of the political spectrum, with both the New Economics Foundation and…
A commitment to building a new wave of high-speed rail networks has emerged, such as HS2 in Britain. But given how costly they are, their wider impact has been under-investigated. It is little wonder that…
Transport megaprojects tend to make rather gloomy reading. The prevailing opinion, at least among social scientists, is that all big infrastructure projects share three characteristics: they take longer…
The International Monetary Fund’s annual report on the UK economy calls for the Chancellor to boost economic growth through investing in infrastructure. While the IMF is right to make this point, we must…