"And yes, we should put serious efforts into working out what has gone wrong so far, and do everything we can to stop HS3, HS4 and HS57 from suffering from the same problems." - spot on. HS2 is not unique at the moment with its high costs, we see it on many construction projects and the cost of proposals for new lines such as EWR and Cro…
"And yes, we should put serious efforts into working out what has gone wrong so far, and do everything we can to stop HS3, HS4 and HS57 from suffering from the same problems." - spot on. HS2 is not unique at the moment with its high costs, we see it on many construction projects and the cost of proposals for new lines such as EWR and Crossrail 2 have increased rapidly. The government needs to get a grip on the supply of materials and on energy prices that have fuelled much of this, as well as other factors.
We should learn from HS2: work out how we can get construction inflation under control, make sure we retain the experience of engineers for future projects, not just give up.
What can we learn from other countries? Lots of other countries which vaguely resemble the UK have different project outcomes, and very different costs, surely stemming from local differences in regulation and planning.
For example - France has lots of cool LGVs, but with some tradeöffs. And Norwegians (who did not previously have a reputation for low labour costs) managed to build the world's longest road tunnel for much less than UK government spent on *asking itself for permission* to build a tunnel under the Thames. How can the UK learn from those?
Framing this as a question, because writing a decent answer would take hundreds of hours of analysis, and I'm lazy :-)
Yes, there are multiple factors. Gareth Dennis did a good session on what drives the differences and one conclusion he drew was that we just don't do enough of these projects and we don't have a long term plan that we stick to that the supply chain can trust and invest in. We can see a good example of this where the last government managed to have 3 long term 20 year+ rail plans within 2 years. Even in the first whitepaper for HS2 in 2010, it mentions construction costs in the UK can be around double France due to an inefficient supply chain.
We also have to be careful what we are comparing with on the continent. For example, I very much like and support the vision of Britain Remade, but they make many mistakes with their costs and too often are not comparing apples with apples, even comparing costs directly calculated at very different base years. UK is densely populated requiring more expensive utility moves, more bridges, more expensive land, more local opposition requiring more mitigation, which are unavoidable elements. With HS2 too we were building for capacity and the line has to reach the inner cities with new stations, which are large portions of the cost, whereas the last couple of LGV lines are less complex extensions of existing LGVs, use existing rail to reach stations and so have no urban sections. Rolling stock not included in their costs either.
Nevertheless, they are still significantly cheaper and that's across the construction industry. Our super high industrial energy costs are not helping either.
"And yes, we should put serious efforts into working out what has gone wrong so far, and do everything we can to stop HS3, HS4 and HS57 from suffering from the same problems." - spot on. HS2 is not unique at the moment with its high costs, we see it on many construction projects and the cost of proposals for new lines such as EWR and Crossrail 2 have increased rapidly. The government needs to get a grip on the supply of materials and on energy prices that have fuelled much of this, as well as other factors.
We should learn from HS2: work out how we can get construction inflation under control, make sure we retain the experience of engineers for future projects, not just give up.
What can we learn from other countries? Lots of other countries which vaguely resemble the UK have different project outcomes, and very different costs, surely stemming from local differences in regulation and planning.
For example - France has lots of cool LGVs, but with some tradeöffs. And Norwegians (who did not previously have a reputation for low labour costs) managed to build the world's longest road tunnel for much less than UK government spent on *asking itself for permission* to build a tunnel under the Thames. How can the UK learn from those?
Framing this as a question, because writing a decent answer would take hundreds of hours of analysis, and I'm lazy :-)
Yes, there are multiple factors. Gareth Dennis did a good session on what drives the differences and one conclusion he drew was that we just don't do enough of these projects and we don't have a long term plan that we stick to that the supply chain can trust and invest in. We can see a good example of this where the last government managed to have 3 long term 20 year+ rail plans within 2 years. Even in the first whitepaper for HS2 in 2010, it mentions construction costs in the UK can be around double France due to an inefficient supply chain.
We also have to be careful what we are comparing with on the continent. For example, I very much like and support the vision of Britain Remade, but they make many mistakes with their costs and too often are not comparing apples with apples, even comparing costs directly calculated at very different base years. UK is densely populated requiring more expensive utility moves, more bridges, more expensive land, more local opposition requiring more mitigation, which are unavoidable elements. With HS2 too we were building for capacity and the line has to reach the inner cities with new stations, which are large portions of the cost, whereas the last couple of LGV lines are less complex extensions of existing LGVs, use existing rail to reach stations and so have no urban sections. Rolling stock not included in their costs either.
Nevertheless, they are still significantly cheaper and that's across the construction industry. Our super high industrial energy costs are not helping either.