In 2010, when a high-speed rail line from London to the north – HS2 – was proposed by the outgoing Labour government, I wrote an article arguing that the numbers didn’t add up. The environmental benefits had been inflated by a series of blatant accounting tricks and concocted figures. What the government called the “business case” for the scheme was in fact a cost-benefit analysis, in which the supposed economic benefits had been amplified by outright assaults on common sense. The case for HS2 always was a baggage train of bullshit.
After reading all available documents and finding no justifications for the assumptions the Department for Transport had made, I pressed it for an explanation. After a flurry of panicked phone calls, it eventually told me there was a model for justifying its analysis, but this was “frightfully complicated”. It did not volunteer to send me a copy. The books, it seemed to me, were cooked – thoroughly and fatally.
