Is this the secret plan to build HS2 to Manchester?

Known Facts + Wild Speculation = Cope

What a rebuilt Manchester Piccadilly station might look like.

POD! On The Abundance Agenda this week, Martin digs into the economics of Small Modular Reactors vs “Big Daddy” nuclear power stations, and we speak to Kirsty Innes from Labour Together about her proposal for a new form of digital ID. Listen on Spotify, Apple or Substack.

---

So it’s official. HS2 has been delayed from its planned 2033 opening date.

This is very annoying, but is sadly not surprising.

Essentially, the problem is that overly optimistic forecasts for how long different parts of the project would take have knocked plans off course, which is what has sent costs out of control. And on a big project like HS2, these forecasts can make a big difference.

For example, you might have one contractor responsible for the civil engineering – the actual digging of the tunnels, or construction of the track bed. But if this takes longer than expected, the separate company contracted to install the tracks, signalling systems and other railway equipment, may no longer be able to work with the new dates. And once you multiply problems like this across the entire project, and the thousands of stakeholders that entails, it results in a huge mess.

This has been clear for a while, which is why last year former Crossrail CEO Mark Wild was parachuted in to take over HS2, and he’s spent his time since conducting a “reset” of the project, that will eventually set out a new timeline for building what I’ve heard described as a “minimum viable product” approach – getting from where we are now, to HS2 trains running between Old Oak Common (the massive new station in West London), and the new Birmingham Curzon Street station.

So now the expectation is that at some point in the not-too-distant future, Wild will deliver a report to the government with a new delivery date on it – and, according to Rail magazine, it will likely be 2036 or 2039.

But I’ve written about this before. So why am I talking about it again?

Weirdly, it’s because I think there might also be some good HS2 news on the horizon. Maybe this is just cope, or perhaps I’m just doing some wild conspiracy theorising – but I think the pieces are slotting into place to revive the HS2 leg to Manchester, which was famously cancelled by Rishi Sunak in his 2023 conference speech from, er, Manchester.

So please don your tinfoil hat, and join me below the paywall, as we go down the rabbit hole and save HS2.