Much wailing about the future being cancelled. Yet it is barely reported that HS2 Manchester was not going to open before 2041. What were Northern politicians and business leaders planning to do about the long 18 years of “future” between now and 2041?
Like HS2’s inception, promotion, and eventual funding, HS2’s cancellation is just pure political point scoring for all sides. There’s no strategy, no plan that underpins any of the criticisms of its cancellation, just more rhetoric from MPs, government, mayors, lobbyists, political sponsors masquerading as business groups, and the media.
The only question not being asked is how a new railway with the modest objective of releasing capacity on the West Coast Main Line came to become the most expensive railway ever built, and possibly the most expensive standalone infrastructure system ever built by humanity?
The point of public infrastructure projects is not to produce public infrastructure. It’s to ladle pelf and jobs to a party’s loyal followers and those members of the body politic who can be bribed into voting for the party in forthcoming elections. I’m willing to predict, without particularly feeling like I’m going out on much of a limb here, that in terms of actually delivering high-speed rail that is A) efficient and B) widely used, HS2 will be an abysmal failure, and that anyone who thinks that it would have been delivered by 2041 is a pie-in-the-sky optimist. However, in terms of its true goals–that is, squandering huge amounts of taxpayer money in exchange for votes–it would have been a spectacular success. And the bureaucrats would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids!
So I suppose you think the same for ‘public infrastructure projects’ such as the M25, the Channel Tunnel, HS1, CrossRail and so on. Sorry of course, these are all south of Watford so they don’t count.
I live in Greater Manchester, not that this is relevant. Those investments you mention had strong economic cases because they met a transport need. There are similar opportunities in the North. HS2 is/was not one of them.
What Northern transport needs is/was HS2 meeting? End to end journey time savings are/were tiny. Its business case rests/rested on switching long distance intercity services off the WCML so that better services could be provided to towns between B’ham and London. HS2 will/would actually reduce direct connectivity between towns south of Birmingham and places like Manchester. And if that wasn’t bad enough, HS2 North was forecast to need an operating subsidy of close to £200m per year after spending many billions building it – whose budget was that coming from do you think?
In every way HS2 was a scheme conceived to benefit the South and fool everyone into thinking is was about connecting the North.
Let us assume that there is a will to finish HS2?
And let us assume also that there has been a serious study of why costs have ballooned the way they have?
The question is:
What has to be done to keep the costs right down to say infrastructure costs in France? (The report is: 8x less).
Do it.
Yes,
Some rail industry engineer said that tunneling under mountains to create railway and road tunnels between Courmayer in Italy and Chamonix in France was 4 times cheaper than Elizabeth Line work.
Problem is all the people responsible for multi billion budget overruns on uk infrastructure projects not only do not face investigations and possible criminal charges but are given knighthoods.
One of the main drivers of cost was the need for speed which David Cameron uprated to 2,000,000 mph without anyone pointing out that trains travelling really fast don’t go round bends and need flat tracks. Further, speed is only a real benefit over long distances: for instance, north to south France or the length of Japan.
France is a far larger country that is very sparsely populated outside of its major conurbations. Its geography also has large expanses of essentially flat land. France also doesn’t build 225mph railways – TGV has a top speed of 200mph and typical line speed is nearer 180mph. These factors all make a tremendous difference to railway construction costs.
HS2 costs ballooned because of the speed selected. Choosing 225mph over 140mph for less than 10 minutes of end-to-end journey time saving straightened the alignment to such an extent that almost the entire route is big bridges, big tunnels, big cuttings, and big embankments. This decision was never properly costed – deliberately so – but we now know it very nearly tripled construction costs.
A 140mph railway could have largely followed the old Great Central Railway route, be built in 15 years, and cost nearer £40bn in today’s prices (excluded trains), improve East-West connectivity, and offer very useful diversionary paths for the existing rail network. We know this because there was a private consortium willing to build this without public subsidy, initially as an intermodal freight route. Parliament refused to read the Act because it conflicted with the emerging plans for HS2.
Great post.
If proposed HS2 was at least best of available train technology, as available in Japan or China, it might made some sense.
All the claims about journey time saved are lies.
Unless you terminate Birmingham leg in Euston and not in Willesden and start in center of Birmingham and not require extra shuttle to get to HS2 station, there are no improvements in journey times.
Then, even if improvements happened, making journey time from Manchester to London quicker makes Manchester more commutable.
How does it help Manchester economy?
Surely any business which needs London exposure can achieve that with current 2hrs journey time?
What is unequitable in the North is terrible state of local rail network.
When I worked in Derby, I could get there within 90 minutes from London.
To get from Derby to Manchester it was well over 2hrs with change in Sheffield on much shorter journey.
That is what needs fixing.
To improve local economy requires, improve local transport- roads, rail; tram; buses: standards of top universities in engineering and applied science( Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham have declined ); improve academic standard of NVQ to NVQ 4 , turn ex polys and CATS such as Aston, Salford into Fraunhofer Institutes which undertake research for local companies and are not judged on publication by academics; improve maths and science standards in schools, return to nightschool education for degree standard training in science and engineering at Fraunhofer Institutes. Britain has been good at pioneering science and engineering research but very poor at the lower grade scientific and engineering devlopment needed by industry which in Germany is provided by Fraunhofer Institutes which publish very little . Funds largely come from industry. Fraunhofer Society – Wikipedia
The above is neither difficult or expensive , the resources, namely, buildings, equipment and staff are present. What is missing is the Swiss attitude to integrating craft, applied science and engineering training and working consistanly hard to produce work of the highest possible quality, best shown by the manufacture of watches. Rolex cn sell a watch fro £15k because they produce a watch of such quality because Switzerland produces people of such quality.
People who are uneducated,unskilled, have a sloppy, could not careless, near enough is good enough attitude, cannot produce a Swiss watch no matter how great the resources provided for them.
Everybody knows that,,,which is not to say time restating it is time wasted.
A proper line linking Leeds Bradford Manchester, properly tieing in East and West Coast lines, to pull in Newcastle, Sheffield etc, and extending to Liverpool (and port) and Hull (and port), would do more for the North than any other single thing.
Great point 1st par….and the other pars as well tbh.
UnHerd Reader
1 year ago
Funny that we never heard a positive word about HS2 prior to this. For years the media was concerned only with the views of displaced residents and environmental campaigners.
Sunak floats the prospect of cancelling this colossal waste of money and suddenly we’re bombarded with hot takes from business owners and regional mayors.
Having had mixed views on the subject, it seems that most commentary on it has, and continues, to lack nuance. We’ve gone from “awful waste of public money” to “betrayal of Northern tax payers,” in record time. Although it probably doesn’t help that the route to as far as Birmingham is going ahead.
Why bother? Coal has all the desirable thermal properties required and we have long since learned to deal with its emission side effects.
Steven Carr
1 year ago
The building of a modern high-speed railway that will shorten the journey from Manchester to London to just over an hour’
SO then , once people have arrived at their destination, they can lengthen their journey times by entering 20mph zones.
It costs 100 billion to shorten journey times and only 50 pounds for councils to paint ’20’ on a road surface and lengthen them again.
If they both offer value for money ( which according to DfT economic appraisal criteria they do) then both should be approved and funded subject to budget constraints and provided both projects eithet dont counteract each other’s benefits or they reinforce each other’s benefits
By 2041 control over transport infrastructure and operation will be in the hands of the World Transport Organisation just as health (sickness) policy will be governed by the WHO and international trade by the WTO. National politicians like Sunak and Starmer will then be officially acknowledged for what they have already become – puppets.
Upvotes?
1/ If you journey by train from Manchester to London (or presumably vice-versa) you are unlikely to then get in a car.
2/ Have you driven in London recently? 20mph is an unattainable dream road speed! I suspect that the centre of Manchester is much the same.
Matt M
1 year ago
Remote working has killed the demand for HS2.
The plan was to allow professionals to live in the sticks but work in the cities to allow our population to spread out around the country and cool the Home Counties housing market.
But no one is going to be commuting from Manchester to Birmingham or Birmingham to London as was envisaged 10 years ago. By and large, white collar workers work from home most days and travel into offices for a longer period of time to do face-to-face work with their colleagues.
When you are travelling to the capital to stay there for a week, you don’t care if the train journey takes a couple of hours more – you are usually coming down on Sunday evening anyway.
All true.
But as I told my old IT colleagues who think that home working is marvelous:
“If job can be done from your home in uk, it can be done from home in India or Poland”.
So do not complain when you are spending more time with your family in 5 years time but on a dole.
“and free up the full-to-bursting West Coast Main Line to carry more regular and reliable local and freight services — seems to be a matter of when rather than if. Sure, we can kick it down the track for a few years, but the cost of doing so will only rise. And, in the meantime, local train services will continue to share tracks with faster intercity rail, and hordes of travellers will have to put up with the dismal services of Avanti West Coast, a company that sometimes charges us more to visit London than it would cost to fly to Italy, and then makes us stand up for two hours to drive home the humiliation.”
It’s quite well written. You really should read it.
Michael Lipkin
1 year ago
We do not care what any of these people say or think. Whether they call themselves PM, exPM or lord god almighty. Facts come first.
There are such things as facts and the facts are that this high speed rail is costing several times what anyone else is paying for their high speed rail.
Every article about HS2 must start with this fact.
The article (and the author) are a direct demonstration of the game playing political class destroying the country.
AC Harper
1 year ago
You can argue that the Manchester HS2 link will deliver infrastructure benefits eventually. But will it be the best way, and at what future cost? I am no expert but I wonder if improving existing signalling to permit more trains and a bit of judicious track duplication would have achieved greater benefit more cheaply.
Yes.
But idea is to delivered imagined benefits much more expensively.
Just think about covid policies.
We, people, taxpayers, wastes over 400 billions on non existent pandemic, so friends of Boris and other government ministers could make billions on pointless projects like Track and Trace.
What about Track and Trace project to see where money went?
It would be cheap and great value for money.
It would not happen though, would it?
Charles Stanhope
1 year ago
The original London to Birmingham Railway took 20,000 Navvies,4 years, 10 months to complete. It ran for 112.5 miles from London (Euston) to Birmingham (Curzon St.)*
A few years later the even ‘wider’ Great Western Railway was completed at a similar speed.
Considering the Navvies used picks, shovels wheelbarrows and some explosives, one has to ask why are we so SLOW?
(*November 1833 -September 1838.)
ps. Corrected at 1443 BST thanks to Rob C & Andrew Dalton.
Problem is not with work taking too long, it is all the planning permissions, constant appeals etc.
Some people argue that Nimbysim is a reflection of robust local democracy.
It probably is, but it will eventually lead to destruction of this great country.
Simple when an Act of Parliament was passed it was full steam ahead. In Britain we have planning laws and compensation is very mean. France have a better technical civil service where promotion is based upon success of the job. The Civil Servant in charge of the Miallau Bridge was in charge of the Normandie Bridge Home (leviaducdemillau.com) Ponts de Normandie Tancarville CCI Seine Estuaire Le Havre (pontsnormandietancarville.fr)
In the France, the Civil Service , is staffed by graduates of the École des ponts ParisTech – Wikipedia
In Britain we had a Permenant Under Secretary with a degree in Theology. Also civil servants are moved at least every two years so none have responsibility for results. Selection of civil servants via the CS Board, employing people lacking the technical skills and frequent postings explains much of the post WW2 mistakes by British Governement.
In France, once a project is declared a Grande Project which is for the benefit of the country compensation is paid at 5- 10% above the value of the land and often the whole farm is bought. Friends lost 120 acres to reservoir out of 220 acres which made their farm uneconomic at 90 cres but were only compensated for 120 acres and at very low rates. Also compensation is paid greater distances away from project. This is why line from Paris to Channel was completed faster than from Channel to London.
I would say much of the decline of Britain post WW2 is because we have been run by people who have not examined how other counties run technically advanced systems, whether it is health service, education, training, nationalised companies, defence procurement and development of infrastructure. Those people with the expertise have largely worked abroad or British companies providing expertise for foreign countries and companies. While the disasters of council owned tower blocks were being built from the late 1950s onwards, much of the best British Craftsmen and Engineers being employed building infrastructure in developing countries; an example would be the Dubai Dry Dock and much of the oil infrastructure in Persian Gulf. Dubai Drydocks – Wikipedia
In France the technical civil service is run by graduates of the technical Grandes Ecoles and promotion is based upon delivering projects on time. In Britain, The Civil Service Selection Board chooses arts graduates who are moved at least every two years so noone has responsibility for completion. École des ponts ParisTech – Wikipedia
The Civil Servant reposnible for the Millau Bridge was respnsible fro the Normandie Bridge. Home (leviaducdemillau.com) Ponts de Normandie Tancarville CCI Seine Estuaire Le Havre (pontsnormandietancarville.fr)
In France, owners of land and businesses are paid 5 to 10 % above market rate so there are few objections and land is aquired quickly. Hence Paris Channel to Paris railway line was built quicker than Channel to London railway line.
Vauxhall actually, as in Vox all the vay vare and vox all the vay back. Curzon Street came a bit later.
Last edited 1 year ago by Max Beran
Malcolm Webb
1 year ago
Sunak is a manager not a leader and lacks the conviction and guile to beat off Labour However, that is possibly no bad thing as a strong right of centre realignment could then follow and offer a real alternative to the electorate after Labour has spent five years on infighting and making things even worse – whilst the Net Zero fiasco continues to unfold. Who knows? – we might even then see the sense in developing our significant remaining oil and gas resources ( onshore as well as offshore) and also in encouraging our nuclear industry to invest and become a world leader in SMRs. Better late than never?
However, Labour win means giving votes to 16 years old morons and to EU residents to drag us back into Fourth Reich (sorry EU).
When that happens, win for Conservatives in subsequent elections is unlikely.
Even if it happened, all the decisions will be taken by Brussels.
Sunak will not be here nor his non dom wife.
As immigrant myself, I wonder why natives of this country feel they need foreigners to run it?
RALPH TIFFIN
1 year ago
HS2 was ill-conceived –there is a need for better (planet saving!!) local transport. Something that taxpayers might find useful – this might even win votes
Do read an excellent article form International Rail Journal – titled “Spain urged to re balance high-speed and suburban rail investment” – based on a report from Spain’s Independent Fiscal Responsibility Authority (AIReF)
some telling commentary –
High-speed rail
– – also contributed to an increase in provincial disparity, with no observable increase in social cohesion.
An assessment using the cost-profit analysis method
– found socio-economic yields between zero and minimal in all corridors.
social benefits do not offset the fixed construction costs and did not offer security in scenarios subject to uncertainty where the opportunity cost of public funds is high
Our leaders know little – they obviously don’t even search the web, the DfT and consultants maybe have to do as they are bid.
There is much sentiment and ignorance around rail and especially the very limited place for HS rail globally. What folk forget is that UK supremacy in rail in Victorian days was driven by need and REVENUE – supporting economic growth not causing it. HS2 is a negative project in every way. Billions of sunk costs, insufficient revenue for operation, revenue extracted from existing routes – how is the operation of these useful routes to be paid for?
Abandon HS2 – Carry out a full appraisal of existing UK rail which has to be supported by the tax payer. Spend any money on useful and viable projects.
All true.
But HS2 and similar, always over budget, project have nothing to do with logic, economic necessity and value for money.
It is asset stripping exercise by politically connected parties to transfer as much money as possible from taxpayers to them.
Andrew Dalton
1 year ago
all astonished to be buying pints of Spanish lager for less than £4
Guess they weren’t out in the Northern Quarter or Deansgate then.
Exactly, there are many great breweries in Manchester like Track or Marble, so drinking Spanish piss water 465 years after Spanish Armada was destroyed is treason.
Drinking Spanish industrial urine and thinking it is beer, shows their ignorance and lack of taste.
Geoff Wilkes
1 year ago
Ah, so it’s a brilliant rebranding exercise devised by a genius political advisor – so brilliant, in fact, that we need well-connected insiders like Herrmann to reveal the truth of it to us.
And there was I thinking that it was just further evidence of the British government’s – Tory or Labour, doesn’t matter – inability to build anything useful. Whereas most of the perfidious Continentals have run quality, fast rail networks for years.
BTW, has Sunak actually made the announcement yet? If not, why is he letting his potential PR triumph be overshadowed by repeated refusals to say anything definite, which just make him look like a gutless plonker? But no doubt it’s all a part of Demonic Disrupter Dominic’s cunning plan.
A much better way to do what Cumming is alleged to have suggested would have been to use the conference to announce that fracking will go ahead in the Trough of Bowland. That puts clear blue water between Rishi and the entire establishment and offers voters in the North West the prospect of a massive economic stimulus at the same time.
Don’t be ridiculous. I’m all for sensible fracking, but not in the bloody Forest of Bowland, or any upland moorland landscape. It’s a vital green lung and stunning AONB that shouldn’t be industrialised.
Maybe out nearer Fylde might be more suitable.
On a wider level, there seems to be a whole subsection of the Tory party that deludedly believes the way to show they are “non-establishment” and on the side of the people is to gun for us so-called NIMBYs (I’m proud to be one, it’s a sine qua non of being a good citizen), unleashing armies of bulldozers and other Weapons of Moss Destruction in order to shamelessly trash our countryside.
I would posit that a far better way for the Conservatives to show their difference from the “blob” is to reclaim the word “green” from all things to do with the climate/Net Zero BS, and instead return to the true and pure meaning of the word “green”: ie chlorophyll – conserving our fields, meadows, forests, moorlands as a priority.
As someone else who lives in the North West, I have not heard anybody in my acquaintance support HS2.
Manchester City Region is more than adequately served by local business and financial services as well as an increasingly less than adequate international airport (but that is another story). We would all benefit from further decentralisation of bureaucracy and oversight.
In fact, the best thing any government could do is to rebalance the public sector spending so that the £13k+ spent per capita in London is closer to the English average of £11.5k.
In Anthony Sampson’s Anatomy of Britain Today published in 1965 he lists a table where number of pupils winning scholarships ( not just entry ) divided by number in sixth form to give a percentage – p210 . Top was Dulwich at 5.9% , Winchester second ( but did not include closed scholarships ). Birkenhead was 18th and Liverpool Institution 25th. There was also Quarry Bank Grammar and Liverpool College. Livperpool University used to win Nobel Prizes and was a major leader in Chemistry. Labour Councils have closed down Liverpool Institution and Quarry Bank plus stopped paying fees to those who passed entrance exams to Birkenhead.
The consequence is many professional parents have moved to Cheshire where grammar schools still exist.
If one looks at those who created the Florentine Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution it was a critical number of high skilled craftsmen, scientists and engineers: today it is no different.
Alan Colquhoun
1 year ago
It’s all most concerning. I had no idea that our political classes drank Spanish lager.
Yes, bloody traitors….
They don’t even know what great lager is (basically Czech and some, well, German).
Tyler Durden
1 year ago
The calculation being made by the Tories is that their Northern voters in the so-called Red Wall are mostly retired and/or home-owners who have a ‘local’ life in smallish towns and villages. For them, a Birmingham-Manchester bullet train doesn’t mean a great deal. They might well prefer investment in local services. HS2 has been a corporatist feeding frenzy for consultants as well as contractors.
Richard North
1 year ago
“The building of a modern high-speed railway that will shorten the journey from Manchester to London to just over an hour.” Really? Where do you get this stuff?
This is official claim from HS2 website.
Journey time would be cut by 54min to 1 hr 11min.
Even if it happened, it would not help Manchester economy.
It would make London more commutable from Manchester, thus draining ambitious people from it.
There is no sensible way to fix disparity between London being global city and attracting talent and provincial cities like Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool.
Other countries have less of an issue because of size and different histories (like Germany or France).
I do find it an interesting question why some country’s second tier cities have more cultural, commercial and political clout than others. And how this evolves. In Victorian times and a little later Birmingham and Manchester had considerable status. But nowadays I feel neither match up to, say, Milan, Barcelona, Lyons, Hamburg, or Geneva on the world scene.
James Kirk
1 year ago
Stopping HS2 will force many skilled, unskilled and admin people to relocate. To what? Will the money saved build schools, retirement homes, mend potholes?? I doubt it because of contract penalties and a general inability to divert and allocate funds where they are needed. Smart motorways and their expensive information and camera gantries for one example. A waste but the steel’s cut and the paint ordered, the electricians booked. They’ve started so must finish.
As many say, how many and how often do people travel from Manchester to Birmingham to London? So important they can’t fly or even drive? And what do Starmer and Davey have to say? Whatever the government do, do the opposite for some perceived voting advantage?
These huge projects remind me of future apocalyptic Hollywood. Glittering cities built on top of slums, home for a near criminal underclass. Suits Burnham and Khan. That’s where their votes lie. Along the route, disaffected Nimbys and trainspotters.
Jeff Carr
1 year ago
Is this investigatative journalism or speculation?
David Francis
1 year ago
I remember when in 2007ish HS2 said UK Ultraspeed was lying about it’s 30 billion pound costing and HS2 went onto win the bid. look were we are now.
Jeff Dudgeon
1 year ago
Odd. I thought Cummings loved grand state built projects. May be he judged it on value for money terms although it was cheaper than the foolish lockdown he imposed. Tories might of course lose seats in Manchester. Worth the risk?
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago
Yes, and who travels in fancy-pants high-speed rail? Only the fancy-pants set. And you know who you are.
j watson
1 year ago
Got some reservations about HS2, esp since pandemic and explosion in remote working. But having just travelled on west coast line down from NW – standing room only – I’m beginning to wonder.
Anyway the Article less about HS2 and more about Tory/Sunak tactics. Forget what’s right and just go for ‘mental stuff’ etc. What an epitaph. Only thing is they’d been doing the ‘mental stuff’ for last 13yrs already. Utter jokers.
John Galt Was Correct
1 year ago
What has Cummings ever been involved with that wasn’t a disaster? I can’t thing of anything that has been even remotely a success. Politicians can’t see past the end of the next hour, and the tories are utterly inept. What I have wanted for a very long time is Northern English devolution, based on a lifetime of watching London get everything and expecting the rest of the country to be grateful for scraps, or to be told it is being kept by London after it has had the benefit of massive public funded infrastructure and reaps the agglomeration it helps to bring. It’s the biggest ‘pissing in someone’s pocket and telling them it is raining’ act ever. I am not a Labour fan at all. But, next election I am voting Labour and doing so even if it means the UK goes back into the EU (and I voted Brexit). The reason being that the North of England has nothing to lose and probably more to gain than it ever will with a UK tory government. What the ‘North’ has to do is stop the regional rivalry and work together. Sunak and the tories have no idea of what they have done in terms of loss of trust. That ‘red wall’ they gloated about knocking down at the last election will bury them at the next.
Total nonsense.
London subsidises rest of the country.
I am happy for your Northern devolution if you pay your way.
But it will never work, unless you expect another form of Burnett formula?
Much wailing about the future being cancelled. Yet it is barely reported that HS2 Manchester was not going to open before 2041. What were Northern politicians and business leaders planning to do about the long 18 years of “future” between now and 2041?
Like HS2’s inception, promotion, and eventual funding, HS2’s cancellation is just pure political point scoring for all sides. There’s no strategy, no plan that underpins any of the criticisms of its cancellation, just more rhetoric from MPs, government, mayors, lobbyists, political sponsors masquerading as business groups, and the media.
The only question not being asked is how a new railway with the modest objective of releasing capacity on the West Coast Main Line came to become the most expensive railway ever built, and possibly the most expensive standalone infrastructure system ever built by humanity?
The point of public infrastructure projects is not to produce public infrastructure. It’s to ladle pelf and jobs to a party’s loyal followers and those members of the body politic who can be bribed into voting for the party in forthcoming elections. I’m willing to predict, without particularly feeling like I’m going out on much of a limb here, that in terms of actually delivering high-speed rail that is A) efficient and B) widely used, HS2 will be an abysmal failure, and that anyone who thinks that it would have been delivered by 2041 is a pie-in-the-sky optimist. However, in terms of its true goals–that is, squandering huge amounts of taxpayer money in exchange for votes–it would have been a spectacular success. And the bureaucrats would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids!
I always learn so much more about any given issue from the commenters than from the article itself.
So I suppose you think the same for ‘public infrastructure projects’ such as the M25, the Channel Tunnel, HS1, CrossRail and so on. Sorry of course, these are all south of Watford so they don’t count.
I live in Greater Manchester, not that this is relevant. Those investments you mention had strong economic cases because they met a transport need. There are similar opportunities in the North. HS2 is/was not one of them.
What Northern transport needs is/was HS2 meeting? End to end journey time savings are/were tiny. Its business case rests/rested on switching long distance intercity services off the WCML so that better services could be provided to towns between B’ham and London. HS2 will/would actually reduce direct connectivity between towns south of Birmingham and places like Manchester. And if that wasn’t bad enough, HS2 North was forecast to need an operating subsidy of close to £200m per year after spending many billions building it – whose budget was that coming from do you think?
In every way HS2 was a scheme conceived to benefit the South and fool everyone into thinking is was about connecting the North.
Let us assume that there is a will to finish HS2?
And let us assume also that there has been a serious study of why costs have ballooned the way they have?
The question is:
What has to be done to keep the costs right down to say infrastructure costs in France? (The report is: 8x less).
Do it.
Yes,
Some rail industry engineer said that tunneling under mountains to create railway and road tunnels between Courmayer in Italy and Chamonix in France was 4 times cheaper than Elizabeth Line work.
Problem is all the people responsible for multi billion budget overruns on uk infrastructure projects not only do not face investigations and possible criminal charges but are given knighthoods.
One of the main drivers of cost was the need for speed which David Cameron uprated to 2,000,000 mph without anyone pointing out that trains travelling really fast don’t go round bends and need flat tracks. Further, speed is only a real benefit over long distances: for instance, north to south France or the length of Japan.
France is a far larger country that is very sparsely populated outside of its major conurbations. Its geography also has large expanses of essentially flat land. France also doesn’t build 225mph railways – TGV has a top speed of 200mph and typical line speed is nearer 180mph. These factors all make a tremendous difference to railway construction costs.
HS2 costs ballooned because of the speed selected. Choosing 225mph over 140mph for less than 10 minutes of end-to-end journey time saving straightened the alignment to such an extent that almost the entire route is big bridges, big tunnels, big cuttings, and big embankments. This decision was never properly costed – deliberately so – but we now know it very nearly tripled construction costs.
A 140mph railway could have largely followed the old Great Central Railway route, be built in 15 years, and cost nearer £40bn in today’s prices (excluded trains), improve East-West connectivity, and offer very useful diversionary paths for the existing rail network. We know this because there was a private consortium willing to build this without public subsidy, initially as an intermodal freight route. Parliament refused to read the Act because it conflicted with the emerging plans for HS2.
Great post.
If proposed HS2 was at least best of available train technology, as available in Japan or China, it might made some sense.
All the claims about journey time saved are lies.
Unless you terminate Birmingham leg in Euston and not in Willesden and start in center of Birmingham and not require extra shuttle to get to HS2 station, there are no improvements in journey times.
Then, even if improvements happened, making journey time from Manchester to London quicker makes Manchester more commutable.
How does it help Manchester economy?
Surely any business which needs London exposure can achieve that with current 2hrs journey time?
What is unequitable in the North is terrible state of local rail network.
When I worked in Derby, I could get there within 90 minutes from London.
To get from Derby to Manchester it was well over 2hrs with change in Sheffield on much shorter journey.
That is what needs fixing.
To improve local economy requires, improve local transport- roads, rail; tram; buses: standards of top universities in engineering and applied science( Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham have declined ); improve academic standard of NVQ to NVQ 4 , turn ex polys and CATS such as Aston, Salford into Fraunhofer Institutes which undertake research for local companies and are not judged on publication by academics; improve maths and science standards in schools, return to nightschool education for degree standard training in science and engineering at Fraunhofer Institutes. Britain has been good at pioneering science and engineering research but very poor at the lower grade scientific and engineering devlopment needed by industry which in Germany is provided by Fraunhofer Institutes which publish very little . Funds largely come from industry.
Fraunhofer Society – Wikipedia
The above is neither difficult or expensive , the resources, namely, buildings, equipment and staff are present. What is missing is the Swiss attitude to integrating craft, applied science and engineering training and working consistanly hard to produce work of the highest possible quality, best shown by the manufacture of watches. Rolex cn sell a watch fro £15k because they produce a watch of such quality because Switzerland produces people of such quality.
People who are uneducated,unskilled, have a sloppy, could not careless, near enough is good enough attitude, cannot produce a Swiss watch no matter how great the resources provided for them.
West to east and east to west is best
Bulldoze those pesky Pennines.
Everybody knows that,,,which is not to say time restating it is time wasted.
A proper line linking Leeds Bradford Manchester, properly tieing in East and West Coast lines, to pull in Newcastle, Sheffield etc, and extending to Liverpool (and port) and Hull (and port), would do more for the North than any other single thing.
Great point 1st par….and the other pars as well tbh.
Funny that we never heard a positive word about HS2 prior to this. For years the media was concerned only with the views of displaced residents and environmental campaigners.
Sunak floats the prospect of cancelling this colossal waste of money and suddenly we’re bombarded with hot takes from business owners and regional mayors.
I’ve been thinking this myself.
Having had mixed views on the subject, it seems that most commentary on it has, and continues, to lack nuance. We’ve gone from “awful waste of public money” to “betrayal of Northern tax payers,” in record time. Although it probably doesn’t help that the route to as far as Birmingham is going ahead.
Good point
A much better way to improve the economy of the North West would be fracking.
Or nucular power.
Is that similar to twerking?
Only if you f@rt whilst doing it.
Totally agree, along with Underground Coal Gasification. Methane produced can be converted to Hydrogen.
Why bother? Coal has all the desirable thermal properties required and we have long since learned to deal with its emission side effects.
The building of a modern high-speed railway that will shorten the journey from Manchester to London to just over an hour’
SO then , once people have arrived at their destination, they can lengthen their journey times by entering 20mph zones.
It costs 100 billion to shorten journey times and only 50 pounds for councils to paint ’20’ on a road surface and lengthen them again.
Which is better value for money?
If they both offer value for money ( which according to DfT economic appraisal criteria they do) then both should be approved and funded subject to budget constraints and provided both projects eithet dont counteract each other’s benefits or they reinforce each other’s benefits
By 2041 control over transport infrastructure and operation will be in the hands of the World Transport Organisation just as health (sickness) policy will be governed by the WHO and international trade by the WTO. National politicians like Sunak and Starmer will then be officially acknowledged for what they have already become – puppets.
Upvotes?
1/ If you journey by train from Manchester to London (or presumably vice-versa) you are unlikely to then get in a car.
2/ Have you driven in London recently? 20mph is an unattainable dream road speed! I suspect that the centre of Manchester is much the same.
Remote working has killed the demand for HS2.
The plan was to allow professionals to live in the sticks but work in the cities to allow our population to spread out around the country and cool the Home Counties housing market.
But no one is going to be commuting from Manchester to Birmingham or Birmingham to London as was envisaged 10 years ago. By and large, white collar workers work from home most days and travel into offices for a longer period of time to do face-to-face work with their colleagues.
When you are travelling to the capital to stay there for a week, you don’t care if the train journey takes a couple of hours more – you are usually coming down on Sunday evening anyway.
All true.
But as I told my old IT colleagues who think that home working is marvelous:
“If job can be done from your home in uk, it can be done from home in India or Poland”.
So do not complain when you are spending more time with your family in 5 years time but on a dole.
From the article above:
“and free up the full-to-bursting West Coast Main Line to carry more regular and reliable local and freight services — seems to be a matter of when rather than if. Sure, we can kick it down the track for a few years, but the cost of doing so will only rise. And, in the meantime, local train services will continue to share tracks with faster intercity rail, and hordes of travellers will have to put up with the dismal services of Avanti West Coast, a company that sometimes charges us more to visit London than it would cost to fly to Italy, and then makes us stand up for two hours to drive home the humiliation.”
It’s quite well written. You really should read it.
We do not care what any of these people say or think. Whether they call themselves PM, exPM or lord god almighty. Facts come first.
There are such things as facts and the facts are that this high speed rail is costing several times what anyone else is paying for their high speed rail.
Every article about HS2 must start with this fact.
The article (and the author) are a direct demonstration of the game playing political class destroying the country.
You can argue that the Manchester HS2 link will deliver infrastructure benefits eventually. But will it be the best way, and at what future cost? I am no expert but I wonder if improving existing signalling to permit more trains and a bit of judicious track duplication would have achieved greater benefit more cheaply.
Yes.
But idea is to delivered imagined benefits much more expensively.
Just think about covid policies.
We, people, taxpayers, wastes over 400 billions on non existent pandemic, so friends of Boris and other government ministers could make billions on pointless projects like Track and Trace.
What about Track and Trace project to see where money went?
It would be cheap and great value for money.
It would not happen though, would it?
The original London to Birmingham Railway took 20,000 Navvies,4 years, 10 months to complete. It ran for 112.5 miles from London (Euston) to Birmingham (Curzon St.)*
A few years later the even ‘wider’ Great Western Railway was completed at a similar speed.
Considering the Navvies used picks, shovels wheelbarrows and some explosives, one has to ask why are we so SLOW?
(*November 1833 -September 1838.)
ps. Corrected at 1443 BST thanks to Rob C & Andrew Dalton.
Navvies, according to Wikipedia.
20,000 navies does seem a lot, and an unusual endeavour for a maritime institute.
Amusing typos aside, Charles is correct in his observation that nothing gets done anymore.
Mea culpa!
Charles, you’re the only ‘poaster’ of note on UnHerd. I wasn’t joking when I said you should have a column here.
Diversity Impact Assessments and the grown of HR “professionals”, not to mention the elephant in the room, The Equality Act.
Why don’t you explain to everyone exactly how these things have slowed the building of railways?
This should be funny.
Problem is not with work taking too long, it is all the planning permissions, constant appeals etc.
Some people argue that Nimbysim is a reflection of robust local democracy.
It probably is, but it will eventually lead to destruction of this great country.
Simple when an Act of Parliament was passed it was full steam ahead. In Britain we have planning laws and compensation is very mean. France have a better technical civil service where promotion is based upon success of the job. The Civil Servant in charge of the Miallau Bridge was in charge of the Normandie Bridge
Home (leviaducdemillau.com)
Ponts de Normandie Tancarville CCI Seine Estuaire Le Havre (pontsnormandietancarville.fr)
In the France, the Civil Service , is staffed by graduates of the
École des ponts ParisTech – Wikipedia
In Britain we had a Permenant Under Secretary with a degree in Theology. Also civil servants are moved at least every two years so none have responsibility for results. Selection of civil servants via the CS Board, employing people lacking the technical skills and frequent postings explains much of the post WW2 mistakes by British Governement.
In France, once a project is declared a Grande Project which is for the benefit of the country compensation is paid at 5- 10% above the value of the land and often the whole farm is bought. Friends lost 120 acres to reservoir out of 220 acres which made their farm uneconomic at 90 cres but were only compensated for 120 acres and at very low rates. Also compensation is paid greater distances away from project. This is why line from Paris to Channel was completed faster than from Channel to London.
I would say much of the decline of Britain post WW2 is because we have been run by people who have not examined how other counties run technically advanced systems, whether it is health service, education, training, nationalised companies, defence procurement and development of infrastructure. Those people with the expertise have largely worked abroad or British companies providing expertise for foreign countries and companies. While the disasters of council owned tower blocks were being built from the late 1950s onwards, much of the best British Craftsmen and Engineers being employed building infrastructure in developing countries; an example would be the Dubai Dry Dock and much of the oil infrastructure in Persian Gulf.
Dubai Drydocks – Wikipedia
In France the technical civil service is run by graduates of the technical Grandes Ecoles and promotion is based upon delivering projects on time. In Britain, The Civil Service Selection Board chooses arts graduates who are moved at least every two years so noone has responsibility for completion.
École des ponts ParisTech – Wikipedia
The Civil Servant reposnible for the Millau Bridge was respnsible fro the Normandie Bridge.
Home (leviaducdemillau.com)
Ponts de Normandie Tancarville CCI Seine Estuaire Le Havre (pontsnormandietancarville.fr)
In France, owners of land and businesses are paid 5 to 10 % above market rate so there are few objections and land is aquired quickly. Hence Paris Channel to Paris railway line was built quicker than Channel to London railway line.
Vauxhall actually, as in Vox all the vay vare and vox all the vay back. Curzon Street came a bit later.
Sunak is a manager not a leader and lacks the conviction and guile to beat off Labour However, that is possibly no bad thing as a strong right of centre realignment could then follow and offer a real alternative to the electorate after Labour has spent five years on infighting and making things even worse – whilst the Net Zero fiasco continues to unfold. Who knows? – we might even then see the sense in developing our significant remaining oil and gas resources ( onshore as well as offshore) and also in encouraging our nuclear industry to invest and become a world leader in SMRs. Better late than never?
No onshore wind. It’s a non-starter. NO means NO.
I was rather referring to onshore gas / certainly not wind.
However, Labour win means giving votes to 16 years old morons and to EU residents to drag us back into Fourth Reich (sorry EU).
When that happens, win for Conservatives in subsequent elections is unlikely.
Even if it happened, all the decisions will be taken by Brussels.
Sunak will not be here nor his non dom wife.
As immigrant myself, I wonder why natives of this country feel they need foreigners to run it?
HS2 was ill-conceived –there is a need for better (planet saving!!) local transport. Something that taxpayers might find useful – this might even win votes
Do read an excellent article form International Rail Journal – titled “Spain urged to re balance high-speed and suburban rail investment” – based on a report from Spain’s Independent Fiscal Responsibility Authority (AIReF)
some telling commentary –
High-speed rail
– – also contributed to an increase in provincial disparity, with no observable increase in social cohesion.
An assessment using the cost-profit analysis method
– found socio-economic yields between zero and minimal in all corridors.
social benefits do not offset the fixed construction costs and did not offer security in scenarios subject to uncertainty where the opportunity cost of public funds is high
Our leaders know little – they obviously don’t even search the web, the DfT and consultants maybe have to do as they are bid.
There is much sentiment and ignorance around rail and especially the very limited place for HS rail globally. What folk forget is that UK supremacy in rail in Victorian days was driven by need and REVENUE – supporting economic growth not causing it. HS2 is a negative project in every way. Billions of sunk costs, insufficient revenue for operation, revenue extracted from existing routes – how is the operation of these useful routes to be paid for?
Abandon HS2 – Carry out a full appraisal of existing UK rail which has to be supported by the tax payer. Spend any money on useful and viable projects.
All true.
But HS2 and similar, always over budget, project have nothing to do with logic, economic necessity and value for money.
It is asset stripping exercise by politically connected parties to transfer as much money as possible from taxpayers to them.
Guess they weren’t out in the Northern Quarter or Deansgate then.
True. Plus, proper Mancs drink from the myriad of cask ale offerings in the economically thriving centre.
Exactly, there are many great breweries in Manchester like Track or Marble, so drinking Spanish piss water 465 years after Spanish Armada was destroyed is treason.
I also wondered where these £4 pints of Spanish lager were obtained. Certainly not within walking distance of G-Mex.
Drinking Spanish industrial urine and thinking it is beer, shows their ignorance and lack of taste.
Ah, so it’s a brilliant rebranding exercise devised by a genius political advisor – so brilliant, in fact, that we need well-connected insiders like Herrmann to reveal the truth of it to us.
And there was I thinking that it was just further evidence of the British government’s – Tory or Labour, doesn’t matter – inability to build anything useful. Whereas most of the perfidious Continentals have run quality, fast rail networks for years.
BTW, has Sunak actually made the announcement yet? If not, why is he letting his potential PR triumph be overshadowed by repeated refusals to say anything definite, which just make him look like a gutless plonker? But no doubt it’s all a part of Demonic Disrupter Dominic’s cunning plan.
A much better way to do what Cumming is alleged to have suggested would have been to use the conference to announce that fracking will go ahead in the Trough of Bowland. That puts clear blue water between Rishi and the entire establishment and offers voters in the North West the prospect of a massive economic stimulus at the same time.
Don’t be ridiculous. I’m all for sensible fracking, but not in the bloody Forest of Bowland, or any upland moorland landscape. It’s a vital green lung and stunning AONB that shouldn’t be industrialised.
Maybe out nearer Fylde might be more suitable.
On a wider level, there seems to be a whole subsection of the Tory party that deludedly believes the way to show they are “non-establishment” and on the side of the people is to gun for us so-called NIMBYs (I’m proud to be one, it’s a sine qua non of being a good citizen), unleashing armies of bulldozers and other Weapons of Moss Destruction in order to shamelessly trash our countryside.
I would posit that a far better way for the Conservatives to show their difference from the “blob” is to reclaim the word “green” from all things to do with the climate/Net Zero BS, and instead return to the true and pure meaning of the word “green”: ie chlorophyll – conserving our fields, meadows, forests, moorlands as a priority.
I bow to your superior knowledge of the region.
As someone else who lives in the North West, I have not heard anybody in my acquaintance support HS2.
Manchester City Region is more than adequately served by local business and financial services as well as an increasingly less than adequate international airport (but that is another story). We would all benefit from further decentralisation of bureaucracy and oversight.
In fact, the best thing any government could do is to rebalance the public sector spending so that the £13k+ spent per capita in London is closer to the English average of £11.5k.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/country-and-regional-analysis-2022/country-and-regional-analysis-november-2022
I am sorry, but London subsidises most of the country.
Reality is without London subsidies your public sector spending would be much lower.
In Anthony Sampson’s Anatomy of Britain Today published in 1965 he lists a table where number of pupils winning scholarships ( not just entry ) divided by number in sixth form to give a percentage – p210 . Top was Dulwich at 5.9% , Winchester second ( but did not include closed scholarships ). Birkenhead was 18th and Liverpool Institution 25th. There was also Quarry Bank Grammar and Liverpool College. Livperpool University used to win Nobel Prizes and was a major leader in Chemistry. Labour Councils have closed down Liverpool Institution and Quarry Bank plus stopped paying fees to those who passed entrance exams to Birkenhead.
The consequence is many professional parents have moved to Cheshire where grammar schools still exist.
If one looks at those who created the Florentine Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution it was a critical number of high skilled craftsmen, scientists and engineers: today it is no different.
It’s all most concerning. I had no idea that our political classes drank Spanish lager.
Yes, bloody traitors….
They don’t even know what great lager is (basically Czech and some, well, German).
The calculation being made by the Tories is that their Northern voters in the so-called Red Wall are mostly retired and/or home-owners who have a ‘local’ life in smallish towns and villages. For them, a Birmingham-Manchester bullet train doesn’t mean a great deal. They might well prefer investment in local services. HS2 has been a corporatist feeding frenzy for consultants as well as contractors.
“The building of a modern high-speed railway that will shorten the journey from Manchester to London to just over an hour.” Really? Where do you get this stuff?
This is official claim from HS2 website.
Journey time would be cut by 54min to 1 hr 11min.
Even if it happened, it would not help Manchester economy.
It would make London more commutable from Manchester, thus draining ambitious people from it.
There is no sensible way to fix disparity between London being global city and attracting talent and provincial cities like Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool.
Other countries have less of an issue because of size and different histories (like Germany or France).
I do find it an interesting question why some country’s second tier cities have more cultural, commercial and political clout than others. And how this evolves. In Victorian times and a little later Birmingham and Manchester had considerable status. But nowadays I feel neither match up to, say, Milan, Barcelona, Lyons, Hamburg, or Geneva on the world scene.
Stopping HS2 will force many skilled, unskilled and admin people to relocate. To what? Will the money saved build schools, retirement homes, mend potholes?? I doubt it because of contract penalties and a general inability to divert and allocate funds where they are needed. Smart motorways and their expensive information and camera gantries for one example. A waste but the steel’s cut and the paint ordered, the electricians booked. They’ve started so must finish.
As many say, how many and how often do people travel from Manchester to Birmingham to London? So important they can’t fly or even drive? And what do Starmer and Davey have to say? Whatever the government do, do the opposite for some perceived voting advantage?
These huge projects remind me of future apocalyptic Hollywood. Glittering cities built on top of slums, home for a near criminal underclass. Suits Burnham and Khan. That’s where their votes lie. Along the route, disaffected Nimbys and trainspotters.
Is this investigatative journalism or speculation?
I remember when in 2007ish HS2 said UK Ultraspeed was lying about it’s 30 billion pound costing and HS2 went onto win the bid. look were we are now.
Odd. I thought Cummings loved grand state built projects. May be he judged it on value for money terms although it was cheaper than the foolish lockdown he imposed. Tories might of course lose seats in Manchester. Worth the risk?
Yes, and who travels in fancy-pants high-speed rail? Only the fancy-pants set. And you know who you are.
Got some reservations about HS2, esp since pandemic and explosion in remote working. But having just travelled on west coast line down from NW – standing room only – I’m beginning to wonder.
Anyway the Article less about HS2 and more about Tory/Sunak tactics. Forget what’s right and just go for ‘mental stuff’ etc. What an epitaph. Only thing is they’d been doing the ‘mental stuff’ for last 13yrs already. Utter jokers.
What has Cummings ever been involved with that wasn’t a disaster? I can’t thing of anything that has been even remotely a success. Politicians can’t see past the end of the next hour, and the tories are utterly inept. What I have wanted for a very long time is Northern English devolution, based on a lifetime of watching London get everything and expecting the rest of the country to be grateful for scraps, or to be told it is being kept by London after it has had the benefit of massive public funded infrastructure and reaps the agglomeration it helps to bring. It’s the biggest ‘pissing in someone’s pocket and telling them it is raining’ act ever. I am not a Labour fan at all. But, next election I am voting Labour and doing so even if it means the UK goes back into the EU (and I voted Brexit). The reason being that the North of England has nothing to lose and probably more to gain than it ever will with a UK tory government. What the ‘North’ has to do is stop the regional rivalry and work together. Sunak and the tories have no idea of what they have done in terms of loss of trust. That ‘red wall’ they gloated about knocking down at the last election will bury them at the next.
In fairness to them they were never going to get any seats in Manchester central anyway.
With the exception of London, the north east and west receive most government funding in England. I suggest we level up the rest of the country.
Total nonsense.
London subsidises rest of the country.
I am happy for your Northern devolution if you pay your way.
But it will never work, unless you expect another form of Burnett formula?