Beleben’s post, “HS2 and construction inflation”, dated 22nd May 2014 provides the cost of the Great Central Line, built at the end of the 19th C, as £11.5 million for 153 route-km yielding £75,000 per km. A multiplier of 110 converts to current prices, providing £8.25 million per km. In comparison HS2 to Leeds and Manchester would provide 531 route-km at a cost of £42.6 billion, equivalent to £80 million per route-km; nearly ten times that of the GCL.

We go on to point out that the cost of a dual three-lane motorway is circa £20 million per km or £3.3 million per lane-km. That is 12 times less than HS2’s £40 million per track-km. Meanwhile a single motorway lane dedicated to 75-seat express coaches has four times the capacity of HS2′s supposed eighteen 1,000-seat trains per hour…….

Of course an urban motorway would cost more than the value cited above, but the way to create such facilities at a fraction of the cost of new construction is to pave the railways and to manage the resultant network to avoid congestion. Estimates based on actual conversions, available in Facts Sheet 12 of the Transport-Watch web site, suggest a conversion cost of circa £500,000 per lane or track-km or circa one sixth of new motorway construction costs.

“Do not be silly”, I hear you say, “How would London’s rail commuters get there if the railway were converted to a road”?

Well, in central London, and at peak times, the replacement express coaches would occupy only one seventh of the capacity available if the railway were paved, see topic 15 at http://www.Transport-Watch.co.uk where there is a map and some pictures to enjoy. Alternatively peg through the following and miss the map and pictures.

250,000 crushed surface rail passengers enter the centre of London in the morning peak hour. There are at least 25 pairs of tracks. Hence we have 10,000 passengers per inbound track. The 10,000 would all find seats in 150 75-seat coaches, sufficient to occupy one seventh of the capacity of one lane of a motor road the same width as required by a train. (1, 000 coaches per hour at a speed of 100 kph would have average headways of 100 metres).

Furthermore, for all but the longest journeys the express coach would match rail for journey time, while costing perhaps four times less and using a fraction of the fuel. Additionally countless lorries and other vehicles would transfer from the unsuitable rural roads and city streets which they now clog and the endless acres of nearly derelict railway land which abuts so many of our stations would become intensely valuable.