Government misses project to benefit all from money saved by scrapping HS2 West Midlands-Manchester line

This week, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that the HS2 West Midlands-Manchester line will be scrapped, saving £36 billion, in response to the soaring cost of building HS2. He has redirected the funding from building this line to projects in the North, Midlands and the rest of the country. However, he has left out one important transport project that would have benefited everyone in the country.

According to the official Government press release 1, £19.8 billion will be reinvested in the North, including a new station at Bradford and a new connection to Manchester, a new mass transit system in West Yorkshire, upgraded and electrified lines between Manchester and Sheffield, Sheffield and Leeds, Sheffield and Hull, and Hull-Leeds and funding for various road and rail projects across the North.

The Government announced that £9.6 billion will reinvested in the Midlands, including the Midlands Rail Hub, reopened train lines and new stations and some other transport projects in the West Midlands. The Government said that £6.5 billion will be allocated for the rest of the country to be spent on rail improvements in the Southwest, keeping the £2 bus fare until the end of December 2024, road schemes, road repairs and greater connectivity for Scotland and Wales by improving the A75 and the electrification of the North Wales Main Line.

There is one project that was planned over 50 years ago, was cancelled by a previous Conservative Government and never reinstated. This project did not appear in the list of transport projects to be funded from the money saved by scrapping the HS2 West Midlands-Manchester line. One thing is certain about this project is that it would cost a small fraction of the £36 billion saved from the scrapped HS2 line to Manchester. This project is the metrication of road signs.

The benefit of this project is that the whole of society would no longer need to learn two systems of measurement. All drivers would benefit as they would no longer need to know anything about miles, fractions of miles, yards, feet and inches. The Highway Code would be simpler as short distances will all be expressed in metres and long distances in kilometres. International travel between the UK and other European countries would be more convenient when the UK uses the same units of measurement on its roads as the rest of Europe. The UK would finally be joining the modern world.

Imperial distance signage can be replaced with metric distance signage over a period of 10 years. Restriction signs (i.e., those signs specifying maximum vehicle height, width and length) can be replaced with metric versions (i.e., showing metres only) over the same period. Since the lifetime of most road signs is also 10 years, this means that there is virtually no cost to this conversion. So that just leaves speed signs. Ireland and Wales have shown that speed limit signs can be changed cost effectively. As previous Metric Views articles have explained, the actual costs of changing signs are substantially lower than the DfT cost estimates for the metric conversion of road signs.

Why wasn’t the metrication of road signs considered when allocating the money saved from scrapping the northern HS2 link? Why hasn’t the Government asked why other Commonwealth countries and Ireland have considered the metrication of road signs worthwhile whereas the UK has not? Why has the UK failed to convert its road signs to metric units over the last half century? The most visible sign that the UK is still living in the past is the antiquated units that appear on British road signs. The irony is that everything else about British roads, including design, construction and even every feature of the design of the road signs and road markings themselves are exclusively metric. Only the numbers that appear on the road signs are in imperial units.

Sources:

  1. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-redirects-hs2-funding-to-revolutionise-transport-across-the-north-and-midlands

Further reading:

4 thoughts on “Government misses project to benefit all from money saved by scrapping HS2 West Midlands-Manchester line”

  1. A Conservative government will never introduce metric road signs. Not in my lifetime at least.

    Like

  2. If the general election comes sooner rather than later, there may well be a window of opportunity to convince Labour (the presumed new government) to metricate road signs. Given the experience of Ireland and Canada after road sign conversion, that step will likely be the last nail in the coffin for Imperial units in everyday life.

    Like

  3. “All drivers would benefit as they would no longer need to know anything about miles, fractions of miles, yards, feet and inches.”

    Road signs are the only place where you officially encounter this antiquated non-system of measurement. Why are the roads (completely designed and built in modern metric units of measurement) treated as though they are not connected to the rest of the world of measurement?

    Liked by 3 people

  4. I don’t believe that the cost of converting road signs is the real issue – just a lame excuse. After all, we know that this cost is peanuts compared with other road funds. We must remember that we are dealing with politicians, too many of whom cling on to outdated standards. Look at the biassed way in which the public consultation on sale of goods was presented – and still no government response well over a year later.

    And how much of the money “saved” by scrapping HS2 will be allocated to other transport funds, anyway?

    Our response should be to demonstrate that the cost is not an issue. Don’t expect too much from the Government over the next year. It is more concerned about surviving the next Election than anything else. And it the results of two by-elections last Thursday are anything to go by, the prospect of having some new mindsets in Parliament in a year’s time look highly likely.

    There is hope yet. Let us get our case set out for the appropriate time.

    Liked by 1 person

Leave a comment