As discussed earlier in Chapter 4, HSR is a unique opportunity in that it has the potential to shake up a prior competitive landscape enough to incentivize reconsideration of inter-
jurisdictional relationships. Thus far, we have highlighted three forms of cooperation:
• National-local: Incorporation of local knowledge and complementary initiatives into the national HSR planning process is necessary to achieve the full extent of benefits.
• Local-local, within a region: Within an HSR station’s region of influence, smaller cities have an incentive to cooperate so as to secure benefits of HSR without losing out to large metropolitan areas.
• Local-local, across a discontinuous region: Cities located relatively far from each other but sharing the same situation of a new HSR station may benefit from joint advocacy and learning from each other’s strategies.
In each case, certain efforts will be clearly identifiable at the beginning as needing inter-
jurisdictional coordination. Others, however, will emerge later, as demand for HSR service and new development materializes. As conditions change, the continuing strength of cooperative efforts will depend in part on the strength and clarity of their initial goals and objectives, as well
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as the level of buy-in achieved across stakeholder groups. Chapter 6 considered, in depth, the definition of goals and performance measures. The UK case brings us one more reminder of the importance of appropriately defined performance measures, this time with an intermodal
perspective. Up to this point we have concerned ourselves with other modes of transportation mostly as a means of transport to and from HSR stations. We focused on the level of integration of the HSR system with existing urban and regional mobility systems.
Regional stakeholders in the West Midlands of the UK are pushing for a more strategic view of intermodal HSR planning, extending beyond access modes, to consider the effects of released capacity on the conventional rail network. The Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Group (BCCG) highlights political tension across the region and argues for a broader scope of analysis in order to more intentionally distribute economic benefits from HSR investment, including to those areas not directly served:
The BCCG would like to take the opportunity to stress that within the West Midlands, a number of our members do question the local connectivity enhancements, in particular BCCG members in South Staffordshire. Lichfield District Council and Tamworth Borough Council have indicated that they fail to see how they will benefit from HSR.
As we understand it, Lichfield would tangibly benefit from the released capacity as they would see extra services from Lichfield Trent Valley and Tamworth to London. However, the Government needs to do more to increase awareness of these benefits, and it needs to encourage LEPs/Local Authorities to be innovative in proposing new services and routes as a result of released capacity.31
The question of what to do with released rail capacity may be a higher priority in the UK than in Portugal, because of faster overall growth and greater congestion in the UK. However, it raises a more general point about HSR: its implementation is an opportunity to take a step back and evaluate the state of a region’s transport (or planning) system, in general. This is equally true in Portugal. As interviews with Coimbra’s municipal public transit operator reveal, the Coimbra area struggles to coordinate mass transit for the region as a whole—given that inter-municipal bus service is managed by private operators with limited incentives or resources to cooperate.
31
"All Comments Submitted by Respondent 52184/Birmingham Chamber of Commerce/Other Representative Group." HS2 Ltd, http://highspeedrailresponses.dft.gov.uk/s2css/viewusercomments.asp?usr=52184 (accessed April 28, 2013). Emphasis added.
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Similarly, HSR planning highlights the struggles associated with coordinating
development and transport decisions in Portugal. Too often the link between land use and transit service planning is reactive. Sprawling growth makes it hard to serve the ever-expanding
commuter shed of Coimbra with public transit. HSR offers an opportunity to rethink the relationship between transport investment and land use strategies.
Using HSR as an opportunity to think strategically about the land use and transport system, as a whole, is one way to pursue the distribution of benefits of new HSR service beyond cities with a station to surrounding areas. Significant research is still needed to find the best approaches to managing the distributional impact of HSR. Nevertheless, clearly defining a set of objectives that includes equity impacts will be a step towards giving secondary HSR cities and cities not directly served by HSR the attention they require. This includes consideration of other modes and development strategies that can help deliver benefits from HSR throughout a region. Additionally, by leveraging the incentives for cooperation provided by HSR to work on wider regional issues, a broader and stronger coalition for change can be created. With more than HSR on the table, the HSR system has a better chance of achieving its potential—while at the same time the inter-jurisdictional partnerships needed to support HSR will gain durability from stakeholders interested in the broader vision of equitable, economically viable, and
environmentally supportive regional growth. This approach to HSR development will
undoubtedly require additional resources, beyond a bare-bones approach. Still, given the scope of the professed agenda for HSR, it would be inconsistent not to pursue the full extent of benefits that are the claimed target of such a large investment program.
8.4 Conclusions
This chapter uses case studies from the UK to investigate the ability of variety of policy mechanisms to facilitate inter-jurisdictional planning. The approaches fit broadly into two stages of a project: 1) initial design and evaluation, and 2) ongoing management. We observe the influence of evaluation on design. The prioritization of objectives and methods of measuring benefit influence what is ultimately selected as the preferred alternative for HSR system design. Earlier in Portugal we saw this in terms of station location: neglecting the needs of future
destination users and the impact of future development can lead to locating a station external to a city, where it is easiest to construct and to access by automobile from surrounding communities.
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In the UK, we observed how the uncertainty of local plans and land use changes makes it difficult to calculate future benefits from station-area development. Exclusion of such efforts from a project assessment runs the risk of producing a station design that is inadequately integrated into the local context.
Regarding ongoing management, we highlight the importance of initial conditions to decision makers’ ability to respond to future conditions that cannot be anticipated fully. Emergent strategies that ultimately guide implementation of a project are shaped by the
deliberate strategies created at the outset. Deliberate strategies can be formalized as plans or be institutionalized by means of rules and processes. This chapter focuses on structures that can be established at the outset for ongoing inter-jurisdictional collaborative management and
emphasizes the importance of appropriately defined performance measures in guiding these collaborations. We emphasize that leveraging the incentives for cooperation provided by HSR to work on wider regional issues is one approach to building a broader and stronger coalition for change.
Having completed our discussion of inter-jurisdictional HSR planning in both Portugal and UK, the next and final chapter provides a summary of this thesis and lists the major conclusions that can be drawn from this work.