Andrew Barr, president of Hitachi Europe, says completing the full route from Euston to Manchester is ‘absolutely vital’ - Eddie Mulholland
Scaling back the troubled HS2 rail project “is not the right thing to do” and will make it harder for Britain to cut its carbon emissions, a top executive of Japanese manufacturing giant Hitachi has claimed.
Andrew Barr, president of Hitachi Europe, said the main benefits of the troubled scheme would only be realised if the line runs all the way into London and on to northern cities such as Manchester.
He added that high-speed rail services needed to become an attractive and credible alternative to domestic air travel if Britain is to successfully reduce its carbon footprint.
Hitachi has been awarded a £2bn joint contract with French train manufacturer Alstom to build and maintain the fleet of 52 trains that will eventually run on the HS2 network.
They will be partly based on Japan’s Shinkansen “bullet trains” – which Hitachi is involved in making – and have a top speed of 225mph.
Hitachi is also in the running to supply signalling infrastructure.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Barr said: “We should be getting on with it [HS2].
“The southern end is a key part of that, but you can only really enhance it by continuing to extend the network [into the North].”
His comments come as Rishi Sunak is weighing plans to scrap the northern leg of HS2 between Birmingham and Manchester and have the line terminate in the West London suburb of Old Oak Common – instead of Euston – to save money.
This has the potential to cause problems, Mr Barr warns, as Old Oak Common “isn’t set up to manage the volume of people that you’re going to have”.
The proposals, which Downing Street has not denied, face opposition from senior Tories as well as major businesses. The Government insists no decisions have been made.
HS2 was originally approved as a Y-shaped route going from London to Birmingham and then on to Manchester and Leeds, with a price tag of around £30bn.
The PM is said to be alarmed by Whitehall estimates that the entire scheme could now breach the £100bn mark.
Speaking this week at Hitachi’s European headquarters in Slough, Mr Barr highlighted the benefits of high-speed rail on the Continent, where it is much more widespread.
The executive, who previously ran Hitachi’s trains division, said HS2 would also deliver a much-needed boost to rail capacity – including commercial freight.
“HS2 isn’t all about getting people from London to Birmingham more quickly, it’s also capacity increases – particularly on the West Coast Mainline, which is a main corridor for container traffic,” he said.
“Moving some of that passenger traffic creates extra capacity for [container traffic] and commuting.”
Completing the full route from Euston to Manchester was “absolutely vital to enable that to happen”, he added.
At the same time, he argued HS2 should be just the start of a national high-speed network stretching to Scotland, which would allow Brits to eschew flying.
The independent Climate Change Committee has said more domestic travel by train is key to aviation emissions hitting net zero by 2050.
“I’d love to see a situation where it actually replaces domestic air travel,” Mr Barr said. “It’s right from a sustainability point of view and I think it’s the right thing to do.
“If you look at Italy, which is the classic case, they’ve invested heavily in high-speed rail and it’s now a very credible alternative to air.”
He added that the rollout of digital technology, electrification and soon batteries will revolutionise the way railways are run, making them more efficient, easier to maintain and cheaper to expand without costly infrastructure.
For example, Hitachi is trialling intercity trains in Italy which can switch between using overhead electric wires and battery packs for power – removing the need to rely on a diesel motor.
Meanwhile, the UK’s Great Western Main Line is testing sensors mounted on trains that can detect track problems by monitoring tiny bumps absorbed by the suspension.
This could allow engineers to make repairs before serious problems develop, while potentially removing the need for Network Rail to run its yellow track monitoring trains as often.
Greater digitisation of signalling and other train infrastructure will eventually allow small numbers of staff at rail operators to run entire networks remotely from one control room. “It’s a bit of a game-changer,” Mr Barr added.
Developing software that can manage these types of complex systems, along with the hardware that powers them, is a growing line of business for Hitachi – a once-sprawling conglomerate that slimlined its offering after posting the biggest-ever loss by a Japanese manufacturer (787.3 billion yen, about £6.55bn at the time) during the financial crisis.
The company now concentrates on green energy and mobility, digital services and industrial machinery. In 2022, it reported sales of 10.9 trillion yen (£60bn) and profits of about 671 billion yen (£4bn).
Though his background is originally in rail, Mr Barr now represents all of these Hitachi divisions in Europe. Energy is shaping up to be a significant boon, as the Continent scrambles to switch to renewables and ditch Russian gas.
Hitachi’s speciality is huge transformers and high-voltage cables.
It built the North Sea Link interconnector between the UK and Norway and its future projects include the link between mainland Scotland and the Shetland Islands and the subsea cables that will bring power ashore from the Dogger Bank Wind Farm, off the coast of Yorkshire.
Hitachi was also once among the firms driving Britain’s nuclear power renaissance, with plans for projects in Wylfa, on the island of Anglesey, north Wales, and Oldbury, South Gloucestershire, but dropped proposals several years ago after failing to secure government funding.
Asked whether Hitachi would look at large-scale nuclear power again in the UK, Mr Barr said: “Unlikely. We still own those two sites though, and my view is that we need to release them to the industry for the best use.”
However, the company is a minority shareholder in a joint nuclear venture with General Electric, which has developed designs for a small modular reactor and is among those expected to enter a government competition for funding.
Separately, Hitachi is testing the use of green hydrogen in backup generators that could be used by data centres, many of which currently fall back on diesel.
Yet perhaps the most untapped potential, Mr Barr said, lies in digitising more services across both energy and transport.
In Italy, Hitachi is trialling bluetooth technology that could allow customers to automatically pay for bus and train tickets with their phones by simply stepping aboard public transport – rather than having to buy physical stubs or tap in using plastic cards.
“I’ve got a bugbear about buying a train ticket when you go to a station,” Mr Barr said. “You queue up at a machine to get a bit of card to prove you paid the money. It’s bonkers.
“Everyone’s got a smartphone in their pocket that could do that. So why don’t we?”
If they ever get to build it, perhaps it’s a suggestion the HS2 bosses can take up.
