HS2 spending to be reviewed amid concern costs underestimated by £10bn
Now that is a surprise.
Ministers to launch inquiry into railway line’s budget as Transport Secretary promises to ‘ensure taxpayers’ money is put to good use”
And that’ll be fun to watch, no?
Now, it’s possible that I’m a little extreme here but what if HS2 isn’t even worth £10 billion? Therefore we should abandon it. Yes, sunk costs and all that but making decisions upon them is a fallacy.
In fact, we might save a lot over the long term. A scar across the country could be a usefully informative warning about the vanity of political projects for generations to come…
I’ve just heard somebody on the radio say: “The problem with HS2 was the obsession with high speed”.
Really? The problem with HIGH SPEED TWO was obsession with HIGH SPEED????
HS2 only went ahead because Johnson was pressured into it by the construction firms who had invested vast amounts in collecting the men and materials together and faced ruin if it didn’t priceed. Once Brexit had happened, there was no need to confirm to the EU’s high speed network.
The claims about lightening the capacity on Western Mainline are of course just a desperate attempt to justify a totally pointless exercise.
“A scar across the country …”
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level fields stretch far away.
I think the 10 billion is overly optimistic, given the track record of HS2 and UK government projects in general.
But to go with the Life of Brian song….
It did give precious archeological data concerning early british history and development.
Digs that never would have taken place under current bureaucratic constraints and NIMBY interference…
Maybe apply for “World’s Largest Archeological Trench” in the famed Beery Book, and get something out of it?
It will not be cancelled as part of HS2 was to deal with capacity issues in London. Old Oak Common was added to provide additional servicing and depot capacity as well as additional capacity for Heathrow travel.
What London wants, London gets. Plus HS2 will allow part of Birmingham to be turned into a London commuter suburb.
Add to the mix the cost of meeting the cancellation charges in the contracts……..
HS2? I’m sure it’ll eventually make a perfectly nice cycle path. It even has leccy all along it for powering chargers for leccy bikes and scooters.
Given that nearly every rail journey in this country is subsidised, building more railways will just lead to more government spending on operating costs (ignoring the massive capital cost). So yes we’d be better off cancelling it now.
HS2 spending to be reviewed amid concern costs underestimated by £10bn
I think they need an extra zero in that headline.
It will not be cancelled as part of HS2 was to deal with capacity issues in London.
Move a bunch of the Whitehall jobsworths to Sheffield, a city on the move, and you solve London’s capacity problems.
Well, don’t take in a zillion “migrants” a year either.
There was never a convincing business case for this white elephant
ISTM that it is still possible to rectify the situation and adapt it into an express line, relieving pressure on the existing line but stopping the obsession with ‘high soeed’
There were a number of reasons for it being built as it has been. One of the reasons is the loading gauge. The loading gauge is how much weight a train carriage can carry as well as how wide and tall the carriage can be, The UK has it’s own loading gauge which is smaller than the European standard loading gauge.
The Eurostar trains and track has been built to meet the European loading gauge , which makes sense since trains have to work on the continent as well as in the UK. One of the ideas of HS2 was to allow Eurostar trains to travel all the way up to Manchester and Leeds, allowing passengers to take a single train all the way to Paris or Brussels. This ment that the HS2 loading gauge needed to be the European one and not the UK one.
The loading gauge really does impact the engineering of both the trains and the lines. For example, the size of the UK loading gauge means that you cannot have double decker trains like those on the continent.
@Grikath…
It might have made for “interesting archaeology” but as it appears to be costing something like £1million per metre, it’s bloody expensive archaeology!
“Now, it’s possible that I’m a little extreme here but what if HS2 isn’t even worth £10 billion?”
I think it’s an entirely reasonable thought. How many people actually care about travelling from Birmingham Curzon St to Euston in 48 minutes instead of 84? Who is actually doing that journey?
So, business people don’t care. You got to go see a client for a monthly meeting in London, you just write off the day as “See XYZ Ltd”. You aren’t coming back to the office. Maybe you have to get up a little earlier for the 84 minute train, or don’t get to see a thing, but you don’t care that much. You wouldn’t pay much more for it.
Day trippers shopping in London? Who cares if it takes 84 minutes? What are they going to do with the other 36 minutes? They’re sat with their best mate having a chinwag on the train,
Grannies, students doing long weekends? They would rather have it cheaper and longer (e.g. Megabus). Granny will read her Maeve Binchy like she would be at home. The Student has his Nintendo Switch to play with, just like if he was at home.
Families going to see Cats? They won’t take the train. They’ll drive to Barnet or Finchley and take the train in from there.
Which leaves commuters, but the problem is, how many commuters want to do a 48 minute journey? Not many. Assume 10+ minutes at each end, that’s a 68 minute commute which most people don’t want to do. Didn’t even want to do pre-Covid. This has been the biggest hit to commuting by rail, because remote work saves a lot more time and money when it’s a long journey.
And capacity? Where’s the demand for more capacity? The only rise is in leisure rail over the past 10 years, and that isn’t worth building capacity for.
A major issue is that transport capacity requires long term planning and investment. You cannot not just leave it and expand the capacity when the demand arrives. So you always end up with projections and spending billions trying to build infrastructure to meet those projections.
Salamander,
“The Eurostar trains and track has been built to meet the European loading gauge , which makes sense since trains have to work on the continent as well as in the UK. One of the ideas of HS2 was to allow Eurostar trains to travel all the way up to Manchester and Leeds, allowing passengers to take a single train all the way to Paris or Brussels. This ment that the HS2 loading gauge needed to be the European one and not the UK one.”
But who wants to go from Manchester to Paris by train?
Eurostar from Central London to Central Paris or Central Brussels works because of reduced faff time. Even though the train is slower, Air + faff is more than train. You get out to Manchester, the faff time is about the same but the plane goes a lot quicker. The flight time is barely longer than London. Direct Manchester to Paris by train would be 3:15. Easyjet Manchester to CDG is 1:30. Which gives you 1:45 for faff.
And all of that assumes someone living near Manchester Piccadilly and wanting to go to Gare du Nord.
Salamander,
“A major issue is that transport capacity requires long term planning and investment. You cannot not just leave it and expand the capacity when the demand arrives. So you always end up with projections and spending billions trying to build infrastructure to meet those projections.”
But this also requires this to be done well, and taken seriously. Which didn’t happen with HS2. The planners just took the current growth levels in 2013 and drew a line. And then no-one after was asking if that line was continuing.
We have the ORR doing an excellent job producing a ton of stats about the railways, but ministers don’t look at them. We knew in 2019, even before Covid that season ticket sales were falling, that people were working flexibly, that the main area of growth was leisure rail.
https://media.raildeliverygroup.com/news/decline-in-season-ticket-use-signals-passengers-want-flexibility
I doubt there’s any rail new rail required now, except airport links and around London.
Western Bloke,
All depends on who makes the long term projections and what motivations they have. In the case of wanting to be able to take a direct train from Manchester to Paris, I think the projections included political motivations of politicians who thought people would need to take the train more due to climate change considerations.
Many years ago I read a book about peak oil (remember that one?) that concluded that the UK did not need airport expansion as there would not be enough oil to produce aviation fuel and hence there would soon (as in about 10 years from the date of publication) loads of spare capacity at the countries airports. The author made the same claim about roads and cars.
The modes of transport that needed expansion? Trains and bicycles.
I recently saw a case for increasing rail capacity. Not London-Birmingham, obvs, but around Ely which is at present a bottleneck for goods trains from Felixstowe to the Midlands.
Sorting that out would also reduce the number of trains going Felixstowe-London-Midlands and thus reduce London-Midlands capacity limitations.
Much, much cheaper than HS2 apparently. We are run by fools and crooks.
how many commuters want to do a 48 minute journey? Not many.
On the contrary, a lot of people who work in the City would be delighted with a 48-minute journey – it takes that long from Putney.
But they’d have no interest in living in Birmingham.