If I recall correctly the original HS2 included branches to Liverpool, Wigan, Leeds, Sheffield, York and Newcastle. All these have been “traded out” of plans over the years. Personally extending to Glasgow and Edinburgh would also make sense.
I would argue these really make sense to gain the full network effect benefits and help shift the economic balance away from London and the SE. Especially if supported by branch lines to enable local towns to these cities.
Finally, a SW High Speed link (Cardiff (and Swansea?), Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth, both to London and a Birmingham “hub” would also aid economic growth and levelling up.
In a not too distant future (fingers crossed) of quality communications on trains (countering HMTs argument of not being productive whilst travelling!); combined with cheaper renewable/nuclear energy based grid, the benefits of being able to move people and freight efficiently around the country would I argue bring enormous benefit socially and economically, whilst being better for the climate!
However, this only becomes practical and affordable if planning rules and perhaps some of the improvements to contracts, enable an override of local objections and the associated costs. Similar to the proposed AI Growth Zones which are currently being identified.
But ultimately it requires some bold and integrated thinking and cross-political agreement so we stop muddling through national infrastructure.
God yes, the SW needs a fast line that doesn’t get washed into the sea every few years, and frankly west of Exeter it’s horribly slow. Also South Wales’ connection ought not to depend on a leaky tunnel either. And that’s before we get to the trans pennine routes, let alone Scotland!
That's a good point! There are definitely network effects here.
Although personally I think the current HS2 plans in the North are a terrible bodge; no doubt there's a good cost:benefit ratio to building it, but surely there are other route variations which could deliver much better connectivity, modal shift &c and leverage some of the other existing infra (and other planned developments).
For instance: Why build a second Manchester Airport station, in the fields, when there's already an existing Manchester Airport station which is surrounded by traffic generators and has lots of existing services to local/regional destinations?
"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.
I agree with most of the analysis here, but the idea that HS2 lays the groundwork for other (much needed!!!) improvements to the rail network is very much at the mercy of the willingness of present and future governments to spend the money needed. Of course they need to stop spending so much on roads too…
And it's hard to see how any of this helps the serious infrastructure deficiencies further North, like the West Coast Main Line North of Preston being just two tracks for much of its length. Never mind the state of trans-Pennine routes.
Main trans Pennine route is receiving a 11B upgrade for around 80 odd miles but thats going to be half way into next decade before finished. British Rail electrified and resignalled 200 miles from Weaver Jcn to Motherwell in less than four years 1970-1974 with far less technology and plant yet forty years on we are going backwards. We need leaders with drive and vision to push things forward in this country.
Contractors applying for government contracts should be made to include the cost of budget overrun insurance. The taxpayer should know the amount they'll be paying before they make their decision.
Much of the time, budget overruns are caused by the government deciding it wants to change the requirements partway through the project...? (Or, more often, finding/inventing constraints which weren't mentioned at the start). Didn't HS2 get landed with a requirement to fund planning consultants for local councils who would then think up creative new ways to object to construction work in their area?
We *could* compel contractors to get insurance against such risks, then in 2028 we'll be telling HS2 contractors that the insurance requirements have changed and they need meta-insurance against that too...?
3. Task is actually legitimately surprisingly hard
4. Winners curse
5. Perverse incentives
Budget overrun insurance would protect the taxpayer from reasons 2-5. Even if these benefits come at the expense of reduced ability of the government to change the terms midway, well, that would often be worth it.
The attempted reductio ad absurdum involving meta-insurance can be disoved by insisting that the government would have to renegotiate the contract to change its terms. (That is, by enforcing contracts as normal.) If the government want to increase the scope, they would have to pay up sufficiently for their counterparty to agree. Or they would have to find someone else to do the additional work. In the example of the HSR co
Do you believe that either the DfT or Buckinghamshire council will automatically write a large cheque to the builders each time the council belatedly objects to a drainage system?
Part of the problem is that real-world government isn't a monolith; UK public sector projects have to deal with multiple government bodies. Usually there's one customer department and lots of others who have to cooperate or permit; in the case of infra, the DfT might be the customer but there are local government bodies who have a monopoly on permission to actually build stuff in their area (or changes of land use, construction traffic &c). And because they serve NIMBYs more than Westminster, councils have a culture of finding creative new ways to object to construction.
Adding an extra requirement on the builders is missing the root cause of the problem, and like some other restrictions it's bound to have side-effects.
I'm saying "we should change the system in one specific way". You're saying "no, that's not the way it works".
I think we're talking past each other.
Budget overrun insurance wouldn't fix the NIMBY issues and it wouldn't fix the environmental agency issue; I'm not saying it would. What this small tweak to the greenbook would do is make the costs of these risks visible up-front for the taxpayer. By incorporating the expected costs from these not-totally-left-field-issues into the original bid, the proposal with the lowest cost *inclusive of these risks* gets picked. Lloyds of London, for instance, would bear the risk that NIMBYs, the environmental agency or some other modern day boogieman increase the cost of fulfilling the original project specification. The taxpayer can embark on these projects with both eyes open, well aware of the price they will pay.
In the example of the HS2 consultants, if the original contractors aren't willing to renegotiate in a way that the taxpayer can accept, then the taxpayer would have to pay for it itself.
There was also a rescheduling of work in early 2023 to keep yearly funding under £7bn. The govt would usually assume a 3% annual construction inflation, but it was ~12% in 2021/22 and has been around 5% since. Rescheduling means paying contractors penalties for delaying work as well as not getting as much work done. The NAO estimated this added £3.1bn in 2019 prices to the cost of HS2. The government has requested Euston to be redesigned twice and then delayed its construction, which also adds significant cost as well as looking after a construction site with little activity for years. Any further delay to delivery also causes added costs for administration of the project.
Cancellation has added costs, with contractors paid for cancelled contracts, parts of what is being built for phase 1 will need to be redesigned and they may still need to upgrade Crewe which was covered under phase 2a.
In my opinion, there was an element of sabotage by the Sunak government. Andrew Gilligan was rehired as an adviser around the time the decision was taken to reschedule so it may have been an intentional decision to add costs to make a case for cancellation. Obviously not the whole story as there are other substantial failures in execution, but these could have been identified and mitigated.
The end plan they came up with didn't even cancel all of phase 2, because some of it was needed for the new Liverpool-Manchester route and it was one of the most expensive sections of phase 2 that was kept. Their plan was to put a 50 mile gap in the line, one of the cheapest and easiest to build sections, and tried to rush to sell off the land for it.
And how many people will choose the slower cheaper train instead of HS2? Current experience on LNWR says many! Even more so if HS2 enables higher frequency and fewer delays on the existing WCML.
HS2 would need to flood the market with cheap fares and capacity to prevent this.
Did we need to build a relief express line? Yes.
But the missed "minimal viable product" would have been a 140mph max line with tilt trains (what we have today) as adequate. The design was gold plated in a mixture of "gaming" the business case and enabling prime ministerial "legacy" building. We could have had good enough at a fraction of the cost,time, and disruption , with money left over for northern powerhouse rail and adressing other bottlenecks in the network like Ely junction and increasing capacity on HS1
Something is fundamentally wrong here the project isn't difficult engineering yet they can't forecast completion or cost. This project has had the countries best brains on it yet it well the most expensive cost and planning consultants how can this be. No one seems to know and im sure Wilde will get on top of it but yet again taxpayers money has been wasted and more importantly the rail industry has been damaged by this. Its also now consuming a vast annual budget which has denied funding for other enhancement projects but its to far gone now to stop it. If anything I would be telling Wilde to get works accelerated and get it open before end of the decade. Chinese would have built it by now but we need to double time allowance for UK rules and regulations.
It would be quite refreshing if the Combined Authorities in the West Midlands, and Manchester, were to follow up on their ideas to press ahead and commission the infrastructure elements which the HS2 Northern leg cancellation removed, introduce the additional capacity between regions and not particularly worry about whether or when HS2 services to & from London actually come on stream.
Trains go in both directions and the redevelopment happening in Birmingham is evidence of what is possible.
The point of HS2 was not just for London bound expresses - by moving them to their own lines and stations, it frees up the lines into the city centres HS2 would serve - that allows new connections, higher frequencies, better reliability for local services. The effect of that is far more widespread than would initially appear.
The best thing I have that highlights the value of HS2 to local economies/links is the Ordsall Cord in Manchester. Previously there was no direct rail links between the two main stations in Manchester, Victoria and Piccadilly. The Ordsall Cord was a small bit of track built a few years ago that meant there is now a connection.
One of the reasons for this being built was that trains from Yorkshire tend to go to Victoria, and trains to the airport only go via Piccadilly, so with the Ordsall Cord there is now the possibility for direct trains from Yorkshire to the biggest airport in the region.
However, Piccadilly is running at capacity. While there is now the potential for those Yorkshire-Manc Airport trains, there simply isn't the space at Piccadilly to accommodate extra services. As the article mentions, HS2 would add extra space at Piccadilly, thus creating the possibility for extra local services.. HS2 therefore would definitely boost local links
If I recall correctly the original HS2 included branches to Liverpool, Wigan, Leeds, Sheffield, York and Newcastle. All these have been “traded out” of plans over the years. Personally extending to Glasgow and Edinburgh would also make sense.
I would argue these really make sense to gain the full network effect benefits and help shift the economic balance away from London and the SE. Especially if supported by branch lines to enable local towns to these cities.
Finally, a SW High Speed link (Cardiff (and Swansea?), Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth, both to London and a Birmingham “hub” would also aid economic growth and levelling up.
In a not too distant future (fingers crossed) of quality communications on trains (countering HMTs argument of not being productive whilst travelling!); combined with cheaper renewable/nuclear energy based grid, the benefits of being able to move people and freight efficiently around the country would I argue bring enormous benefit socially and economically, whilst being better for the climate!
However, this only becomes practical and affordable if planning rules and perhaps some of the improvements to contracts, enable an override of local objections and the associated costs. Similar to the proposed AI Growth Zones which are currently being identified.
But ultimately it requires some bold and integrated thinking and cross-political agreement so we stop muddling through national infrastructure.
Easy to say, but we can do this!
God yes, the SW needs a fast line that doesn’t get washed into the sea every few years, and frankly west of Exeter it’s horribly slow. Also South Wales’ connection ought not to depend on a leaky tunnel either. And that’s before we get to the trans pennine routes, let alone Scotland!
That's a good point! There are definitely network effects here.
Although personally I think the current HS2 plans in the North are a terrible bodge; no doubt there's a good cost:benefit ratio to building it, but surely there are other route variations which could deliver much better connectivity, modal shift &c and leverage some of the other existing infra (and other planned developments).
For instance: Why build a second Manchester Airport station, in the fields, when there's already an existing Manchester Airport station which is surrounded by traffic generators and has lots of existing services to local/regional destinations?
"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.
I agree with most of the analysis here, but the idea that HS2 lays the groundwork for other (much needed!!!) improvements to the rail network is very much at the mercy of the willingness of present and future governments to spend the money needed. Of course they need to stop spending so much on roads too…
And it's hard to see how any of this helps the serious infrastructure deficiencies further North, like the West Coast Main Line North of Preston being just two tracks for much of its length. Never mind the state of trans-Pennine routes.
Main trans Pennine route is receiving a 11B upgrade for around 80 odd miles but thats going to be half way into next decade before finished. British Rail electrified and resignalled 200 miles from Weaver Jcn to Motherwell in less than four years 1970-1974 with far less technology and plant yet forty years on we are going backwards. We need leaders with drive and vision to push things forward in this country.
Contractors applying for government contracts should be made to include the cost of budget overrun insurance. The taxpayer should know the amount they'll be paying before they make their decision.
Much of the time, budget overruns are caused by the government deciding it wants to change the requirements partway through the project...? (Or, more often, finding/inventing constraints which weren't mentioned at the start). Didn't HS2 get landed with a requirement to fund planning consultants for local councils who would then think up creative new ways to object to construction work in their area?
We *could* compel contractors to get insurance against such risks, then in 2028 we'll be telling HS2 contractors that the insurance requirements have changed and they need meta-insurance against that too...?
Budget overruns happen for several reasons:
1. Changed specifications
2. Increased cost of goods or labour
3. Task is actually legitimately surprisingly hard
4. Winners curse
5. Perverse incentives
Budget overrun insurance would protect the taxpayer from reasons 2-5. Even if these benefits come at the expense of reduced ability of the government to change the terms midway, well, that would often be worth it.
The attempted reductio ad absurdum involving meta-insurance can be disoved by insisting that the government would have to renegotiate the contract to change its terms. (That is, by enforcing contracts as normal.) If the government want to increase the scope, they would have to pay up sufficiently for their counterparty to agree. Or they would have to find someone else to do the additional work. In the example of the HSR co
"If the government want to increase the scope, they would have to pay up sufficiently for their counterparty to agree"
That is not true. HS2 has plenty of real world examples for us to consider. For instance:
https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/civils/hs2/hs2-faces-multimillion-pound-hit-after-planning-permission-rejection-23-04-2025/
Do you believe that either the DfT or Buckinghamshire council will automatically write a large cheque to the builders each time the council belatedly objects to a drainage system?
Part of the problem is that real-world government isn't a monolith; UK public sector projects have to deal with multiple government bodies. Usually there's one customer department and lots of others who have to cooperate or permit; in the case of infra, the DfT might be the customer but there are local government bodies who have a monopoly on permission to actually build stuff in their area (or changes of land use, construction traffic &c). And because they serve NIMBYs more than Westminster, councils have a culture of finding creative new ways to object to construction.
Adding an extra requirement on the builders is missing the root cause of the problem, and like some other restrictions it's bound to have side-effects.
I'm saying "we should change the system in one specific way". You're saying "no, that's not the way it works".
I think we're talking past each other.
Budget overrun insurance wouldn't fix the NIMBY issues and it wouldn't fix the environmental agency issue; I'm not saying it would. What this small tweak to the greenbook would do is make the costs of these risks visible up-front for the taxpayer. By incorporating the expected costs from these not-totally-left-field-issues into the original bid, the proposal with the lowest cost *inclusive of these risks* gets picked. Lloyds of London, for instance, would bear the risk that NIMBYs, the environmental agency or some other modern day boogieman increase the cost of fulfilling the original project specification. The taxpayer can embark on these projects with both eyes open, well aware of the price they will pay.
In the example of the HS2 consultants, if the original contractors aren't willing to renegotiate in a way that the taxpayer can accept, then the taxpayer would have to pay for it itself.
There was also a rescheduling of work in early 2023 to keep yearly funding under £7bn. The govt would usually assume a 3% annual construction inflation, but it was ~12% in 2021/22 and has been around 5% since. Rescheduling means paying contractors penalties for delaying work as well as not getting as much work done. The NAO estimated this added £3.1bn in 2019 prices to the cost of HS2. The government has requested Euston to be redesigned twice and then delayed its construction, which also adds significant cost as well as looking after a construction site with little activity for years. Any further delay to delivery also causes added costs for administration of the project.
Cancellation has added costs, with contractors paid for cancelled contracts, parts of what is being built for phase 1 will need to be redesigned and they may still need to upgrade Crewe which was covered under phase 2a.
That was plain daft the project should have been built as quickly as possible
In my opinion, there was an element of sabotage by the Sunak government. Andrew Gilligan was rehired as an adviser around the time the decision was taken to reschedule so it may have been an intentional decision to add costs to make a case for cancellation. Obviously not the whole story as there are other substantial failures in execution, but these could have been identified and mitigated.
The end plan they came up with didn't even cancel all of phase 2, because some of it was needed for the new Liverpool-Manchester route and it was one of the most expensive sections of phase 2 that was kept. Their plan was to put a 50 mile gap in the line, one of the cheapest and easiest to build sections, and tried to rush to sell off the land for it.
So to build a train platform in Manchester we should spend many billions on trains, tracks and stations south of Birmingham?
And how many people will choose the slower cheaper train instead of HS2? Current experience on LNWR says many! Even more so if HS2 enables higher frequency and fewer delays on the existing WCML.
HS2 would need to flood the market with cheap fares and capacity to prevent this.
Did we need to build a relief express line? Yes.
But the missed "minimal viable product" would have been a 140mph max line with tilt trains (what we have today) as adequate. The design was gold plated in a mixture of "gaming" the business case and enabling prime ministerial "legacy" building. We could have had good enough at a fraction of the cost,time, and disruption , with money left over for northern powerhouse rail and adressing other bottlenecks in the network like Ely junction and increasing capacity on HS1
Something is fundamentally wrong here the project isn't difficult engineering yet they can't forecast completion or cost. This project has had the countries best brains on it yet it well the most expensive cost and planning consultants how can this be. No one seems to know and im sure Wilde will get on top of it but yet again taxpayers money has been wasted and more importantly the rail industry has been damaged by this. Its also now consuming a vast annual budget which has denied funding for other enhancement projects but its to far gone now to stop it. If anything I would be telling Wilde to get works accelerated and get it open before end of the decade. Chinese would have built it by now but we need to double time allowance for UK rules and regulations.
It would be quite refreshing if the Combined Authorities in the West Midlands, and Manchester, were to follow up on their ideas to press ahead and commission the infrastructure elements which the HS2 Northern leg cancellation removed, introduce the additional capacity between regions and not particularly worry about whether or when HS2 services to & from London actually come on stream.
The problem with HS2 is that it will just allow more people to get to London, it won't actually foster any local economies or links.
Trains go in both directions and the redevelopment happening in Birmingham is evidence of what is possible.
The point of HS2 was not just for London bound expresses - by moving them to their own lines and stations, it frees up the lines into the city centres HS2 would serve - that allows new connections, higher frequencies, better reliability for local services. The effect of that is far more widespread than would initially appear.
I hope you are right. I am familiar with the theory.
My fear is that it will increase the pull of London while doing little for local economies.
It would allow me to get to Lancashire.
The best thing I have that highlights the value of HS2 to local economies/links is the Ordsall Cord in Manchester. Previously there was no direct rail links between the two main stations in Manchester, Victoria and Piccadilly. The Ordsall Cord was a small bit of track built a few years ago that meant there is now a connection.
One of the reasons for this being built was that trains from Yorkshire tend to go to Victoria, and trains to the airport only go via Piccadilly, so with the Ordsall Cord there is now the possibility for direct trains from Yorkshire to the biggest airport in the region.
However, Piccadilly is running at capacity. While there is now the potential for those Yorkshire-Manc Airport trains, there simply isn't the space at Piccadilly to accommodate extra services. As the article mentions, HS2 would add extra space at Piccadilly, thus creating the possibility for extra local services.. HS2 therefore would definitely boost local links