The unlikely boons of longer train journeys
‘The benefits to passengers from the high-speed link are overstated … there is an assumption that all the time that business travellers spend on a train is wasted … this is a somewhat questionable proposition.’
Financial Times, January 11
So the High Speed Two rail link was approved?
It was indeed. The London-Birmingham link will be ready as early as 2026. Then there may be an extension linking Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds. We’ll only have to wait until 2033 for that.
The cost-benefit analysis says the project is good value for money.
Yes, according to HS2 Ltd, a company that was established to make the business case for high-speed rail. Of course, other things might be better value for money. HS2 Ltd, using Treasury assumptions, discounts future costs and benefits at a discount rate of 3.5 per cent for 30 years, and then 3 per cent. If the government borrowed £10bn at the current 10-year interest rate of about 2.1 per cent and kept rolling it over before paying it back in 60 years, the eventual repayment would be almost £35bn. But the present discounted cost would be just £150m – a massive benefit/cost ratio. If playing by the cost-benefit analysis rules, just borrowing cash and doing nothing is a winning strategy.
You’re just messing around with the numbers.
I am, and you can mess around with a lot of numbers if you are making these calculations over a 60-year timescale. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to HS2 Ltd’s forecasts, or those of their opponents.
But it’s not just about forecasts – it’s about the value of time saved because of a faster journey, right?
That’s true. The high-speed link would save about 40 minutes on a journey from London to Birmingham. How much that is worth is an interesting question.
If you have a morning meeting it might mean an extra 40 minutes in bed.
It might indeed, which is priceless. HS2 Ltd told me that they use numbers from the Department for Transport. The DfT apparently values leisure time at about £6 an hour – this, intriguingly, implies that the UK government’s official position is that anyone under the age of 21 is wasting their time earning the young person’s minimum wage and would be wise to chillax in front of the Nintendo.
What about business travel?
Well, business travel is valued at £50 an hour. Unless the business travel in question is commuting, in which case it’s £7 an hour.
What?
Doesn’t make a bit of sense to me, either. Perhaps the idea is that commuting is eating into your leisure time, which is almost valueless apparently, whereas business travel is eating into your employer’s time, which is precious indeed. Complain to the DfT if you don’t like it.
And surely business travellers will often be able to work on trains, with laptops and smartphones.
Personally I find I often get more done on the train than anywhere else – bar an aeroplane, of course – because I’m not distracted by Twitter or videos of amusing cat antics.
That rather implies that you don’t otherwise make good use of your time.
It’s not clear any of us are that good at managing our time. Economist Alan Krueger and psychologist Daniel Kahneman studied people’s emotions while participating in various activities. Their subjects – women in Texas, in this case – most enjoyed praying and “intimate relations”, but these activities were not chiefly how they spent their days.
I’m confused. Are you implying that users of High Speed Two should be having sex on the train?
Who is to say what social mores will govern our behaviour by the time the line is finished? But I think we can agree that if rail travellers occupied themselves in this fashion then shorter journey times would not necessarily be a tremendous boon.
I’m not sure this is a helpful line of inquiry. What did Kahneman and Krueger discover about how people feel while on business travel?
Business travel wasn’t a category that was reported, but the morning commute, it turns out, is the most miserable of all commonly reported uses of time. You might think that shortening commutes would be very valuable, then – but the DfT hasn’t received that memo.
And how much of this column did you write on the train?
All of it.
Also published at ft.com.
13 Comments
Mike Scott says:
By 2026, you will most certainly get Twitter and amusing cat videos on the train just as well as you do at your desk, so you can discount the less distracting working environment on train journeys.
14th of January, 2012Megapatzer says:
I can’t read or use a computer on a train because I suffer from motion sickness if I do.
14th of January, 2012I suspect this is quite common ( Wikipedia states that about 33% of people suffer from motion sickness in mild circumstances). This doesn’t seem to be considered when arguments are made regarding whether or not time spent on a train is productive.
Neil says:
I love long train journeys – really high quality time. By shortening the London-Brum time, are we making it so short that it’s barely worth getting my laptop out to do work stuff (like the Heathrow Express), so I’ll spent my time reading a book instead?
14th of January, 2012robbieC says:
The problem the HS2 debate is the inconvenient truth there is a HS1:there is nothing being said, that was not said when this was built – except to note that the Chilterns are hugely inferior to the North Downs! I think all the calculations and assumptions in the world are inferior to observation – HS1 is busy and now carries most ppl to London from Ashford (not me now – priced off but find the now un-busy clockwork train less stressed).
14th of January, 2012Ken says:
The overcrowding of London & Birmingham trains at extortionate fares indicates that more capacity is demanded.
Capacity is available at the cost of despoiling the Chilterns.
How on earth are we to determine whether it is worth it or not? At a storming 250mph my guess is that if HS2 is built we will wonder how we ever did without it.
14th of January, 2012Benoit says:
2026!? By then, even the Sagrada Familia will be completed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia).
14th of January, 2012Julian says:
In an interview with Alison Munro from HS2 on the BBC More or Less show, they addressed this point and she basically argued that you can value time in different ways, which changes other assumptions, and the numbers come out roughly the same in either case. (That’s a terrible summary I’ve made there but I thought she came across as being able to defend the modelling reasonably well). Here’s the podcast http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0196v3z
14th of January, 2012= = =
[TH Comment: Indeed, Julian - I was the interviewer.]
CdrJameson says:
The lot of the individual commuter sounds like a red herring to me – surely the benefit of faster trains is that they can go back and forth more times in one day, which increases capacity. The reduced time (journey and waiting) for each individual is just a pleasant side-effect. Or an excuse to charge you more.
14th of January, 2012Nick says:
The overwhelming evidence suggests that shortening journey times actually increases the time spent travelling rather than reduces it because it causes/allows some people to make journeys that they would not otherwise have made at all.
15th of January, 2012Joe D says:
@CdrJameson: not that simple. Trains can take a long distance to stop. You therefore need to make sure that there is always enough distance between trains that one can’t ever crash into the back of the train in front of it. The higher the speed, the longer it takes to slow down, the bigger the gap that has to be left between trains, and so fewer services can be timetabled and capacity is therefore relatively low. (It’s actually not even *this* simple, but that’s the basic idea…)
At its most basic, it’s pretty much the same reason that the M25 now has variable speed limits: when traffic is heavy you can lower the speed limit, the 2 second rule will mean that vehicles will bunch up closer together, and so more of them will fit on the road.
15th of January, 2012Stew Green says:
- There seem to be very strong arguments that passenger rail has never been profitable, so it’s not sustainable .. & they are only really viable as an add-on to profitable freight routes. – You guys should get to the bottom of the maths sometime.
16th of January, 2012Andreas Moser says:
I love to read on trains, so I really don’t mind the length of the journey that much, as long as I don’t have to change trains too often.
18th of January, 2012Andreas Moser says:
If you want to enjoy train journeys, don’t get married: http://andreasmoser.wordpress.com/2011/03/26/why-dont-you-get-married/
18th of January, 2012