Why is high speed rail in the UK so expensive to construct?

[SynthD]

I expect that Hs2 is not being billed for the main line station. OOC will have more platforms than SFA.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

There was a piece on Newsnight tonight about HS2's prospects.
It was reported that "the DfT and the Treasury have lost confidence in HS2 Ltd as a delivery company".
The political demand is to redefine the delivery vehicle to be more in tune with northern/midlands needs, and to reorient the project accordingly with new terms of reference.
The suggestion is that the Integrated Rail Plan, far from being ready to publish, is causing a major re-evaluation of the project and its purpose, and its links with NPR.
I presume all this relates to HS2 Phase 2b (west and east legs) and not Phase 1/2a (London-Birmingham-Crewe) which are already approved.

 

[The Ham]

There was a piece on Newsnight tonight about HS2's prospects.
It was reported that "the DfT and the Treasury has lost confidence in HS2 Ltd as a delivery company".
The political demand is to redefine the delivery vehicle to be more in tune with northern/midlands needs, and to reorient the project accordingly with new terms of reference.
The suggestion is that the Integrated Rail Plan, far from being ready to publish, is causing a major re-evaluation of the project and its purpose, and its links with NPR.
I presume all this relates to HS2 Phase 2b (west and east legs) and not Phase 1/2a (London-Birmingham-Crewe) which are already approved.

It would certainly make it political easier to deliver the 2b and beyond schemes if it doesn't have the association with the HS2 brand.

For issuance if those opposed to HS2 rock up trying to gain support for opposing (say) Birmingham Leeds (via whatever route) if it's called East West 2 they would gain much less support than if it was still HS2.

The government could claim that they have listened to those opposed to HS2 by striping then of further elements, whilst still allowing improvements to the rail network.

I suspect that many who want improvements and were happy to support HS2 as it was delivering what was needed, wouldn't suffer a.loss of sleep over such a move. With some actually being glad (as the debate wouldn't revolve around senior staff's pay, if there's been miss management of land purchasing, etc.).

It could also allow other elements to be proposed with an expected timeline. For instance reductions to journey times for non tilting trains North of Crewe to further reduce journey times to Scotland, HS line to Liverpool, junction at Birmingham to allow services from the SW/South Wales to join the HS line(s) north of there, and the like.

As there were often arguments along the lines of HS2 isn't going to [insert city, country, area which isn't directly benefiting from HS2] so why should we pay for it?

 

[snowball]

The suggestion is that the Integrated Rail Plan, far from being ready to publish, is causing a major re-evaluation of the project and its purpose, and its links with NPR.

Indeed, when the latest delay to the IRP was announced, my first conclusion was that the govt was still arguing about what is to go in it.

 

[edwin_m]

There was a piece on Newsnight tonight about HS2's prospects.
It was reported that "the DfT and the Treasury has lost confidence in HS2 Ltd as a delivery company".
The political demand is to redefine the delivery vehicle to be more in tune with northern/midlands needs, and to reorient the project accordingly with new terms of reference.
The suggestion is that the Integrated Rail Plan, far from being ready to publish, is causing a major re-evaluation of the project and its purpose, and its links with NPR.
I presume all this relates to HS2 Phase 2b (west and east legs) and not Phase 1/2a (London-Birmingham-Crewe) which are already approved.

HS2 Ltd now has two roles:

• Delivering Phase 1 and 2a whose routes are defined and under or near construction, so essentially a construction management and integration role.
• Working towards whatever happens in later phases, which is a planning, consultation and design role.

It possibly makes sense to split those two roles, combine the second one with the equivalent for NPR and create a new agency to develop the high speed network for the North and East Midlands. However the mention of "delivery company" suggests it is the first one, not doing any work north of Crewe, that is seen as the problem.

 

[Bald Rick]

I expect that Hs2 is not being billed for the main line station.

Not sure where you get that idea from. HS2 are doing the work, it’s in their budget.

 

[Ianno87]

Not sure where you get that idea from. HS2 are doing the work, it’s in their budget.

Presumably because the core purpose of the station is to make HS2 workable, by offloading a proportion of passengers onto Crossrail so they're not clogging up Euston.

Everything else the station does is a bonus.

 

[Taunton]

There was a piece on Newsnight tonight about HS2's prospects.
It was reported that "the DfT and the Treasury have lost confidence in HS2 Ltd as a delivery company".
The political demand is to redefine the delivery vehicle to be more in tune with northern/midlands needs, and to reorient the project accordingly with new terms of reference.
The suggestion is that the Integrated Rail Plan, far from being ready to publish, is causing a major re-evaluation of the project and its purpose, and its links with NPR.
I presume all this relates to HS2 Phase 2b (west and east legs) and not Phase 1/2a (London-Birmingham-Crewe) which are already approved.

It does actually get back to the Original Poster's question, about costs, the way that estimates constantly skyrocket with no seeming reason why they are doing so, especially where the scope is not changing. Either the initial estimators do not have a clue, or there are all sorts of changes etc being slipped in. When Mark Wild, head of Crossrail, says that Crossrail was too gold plated * and thus too difficult [ Crossrail chief advises HS2 boss to keep designs simple | New Civil Engineer ] , and when the principal staff from the one are moving on to the other, then there's a major concern.

I see, by the way, that DfT have had to set up independent auditors of Crossrail progress, doubtless feeling that the lies (word chosen carefully) perpetrated about Crossrail progress do not get repeated in the years ahead by the same staff [ HS2 construction inspectors put in place to avoid Crossrail-style delays and cost hikes | New Civil Engineer ]

Specifically as an organisation, HS2 should also have been kept under control so key staff from Crossrail did not get poached, leaving the latter project under-resourced. At the end of the day any money wastage on one side or the other is all out of DfT's pocket.

It is however disappointing to hear that it is to be "more in tune with ... needs", as this implies basic redesign, and yet more scope for consultants to fritter away yet more funds on redesign after redesign - which is one of the key cost overrun issues.

* : What a few of us have been saying for 15 years, it has finally got through.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Some other points raised in the Newsnight piece (some of them by John Armitt, chair of NIC, and Henri Murison of Northern Powerhouse):

1. Network Rail needs to take the lead in the planning and integration of HS2 and NPR with the classic network
2. Northern leaders (eg Mayors) need to be on the supervisory board
3. Funding should be region-led (ie budgets held locally)

I'm not sure NR has cost control of mega-projects as one of its specialities.
If HS2 management is dumped, has the UK got another high-powered team (with no Crossrail baggage) to take over?
The Mayors see an opportunity to grab control/funding away from Whitehall - that's quite a battle, which I don't think they will win.
If locals get the funding, there will be epic fights between east and west over priorities - ie Liverpool/Manchester v Leeds/Bradford/Sheffield.
Lord Berkeley also had his say on diverting the money to upgrade existing routes rather than building a new one.

The politico in the discussion was MP Andrew Bridgen (NE Leics).
He wanted, predictably, money spent on the MML via Leicester, not on an out of control vanity project with no business case, as he put it.
I see he has form over HS2, having already sold his house near the proposed route to HS2 Ltd.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak was said to be still in favour of both HS2 and NPR, but not with the current delivery setup.

It's all very well to blame the management team of HS2 Ltd for the project's ills, but they were appointed and their terms of reference set by Conservative ministers.

 

[HSTEd]

It's all very well to blame the management team of HS2 Ltd for the project's ills, but they were appointed and their terms of reference set by Conservative ministers.

HS2 is, ultimately, a Labour project - the project specification that led to this mess was largely decided before 2010?

 

[stuu]

That's pushing it, it was originally proposed by the Labour government but only as a very rough idea. The full proposal and all the technical detail has been developed since 2010. And if there was anything in the original proposal that was a mistake, there has been plenty of time to correct it since

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

HS2 is, ultimately, a Labour project - the project specification that led to this mess was largely decided before 2010?

That's true, and HS2 Ltd was set up by Labour in January 2009 (with cross-party support for the scheme).
The project was then reviewed by the Coalition in 2010, reapproved in 2012 and the first parliamentary approval of funding was in 2013.
The Y-shaped network, and phasing (Phase 1 to Birmingham/Lichfield, Phase 2 onwards to Manchester/Leeds), was confirmed in 2012.
The current HS2 Ltd management team was appointed since real money started to be spent from 2013.
As far as I can tell the key Phase 2b team members came from the HS1 and London Olympics programmes, and in one case from BR/Network Rail.

 

[quantinghome]

HS2 is, ultimately, a Labour project - the project specification that led to this mess was largely decided before 2010?

The Conservatives have been in power for 11 years. At some point they need to step up and take responsibility for their decisions. I know it's traditional to blame previous governments but pointing fingers at Labour this far down the line is really stretching it.

Particularly when the consensus on HS2, at least among people who understand the project, is that the overall concept is good and addresses key problems with the rail network, but has been managed at best indifferently and rather poorly in a number of cases. The lack of a consistent champion for the project in the cabinet has been a significant problem, and I sometimes get the impression that key government ministers really don't understand the project's purpose, hence a lack of drive in explaining the project to the public to get general buy-in.

 

[squizzler]

Unfortunately the website you linked to won’t load properly for me so I can’t judge. What I do know is that the cost of HS2 ‘per mile’ is significantly affected by Euston, OOC and Birmingham Curzon St, the first two of which are an order of magnitude more expensive than their cousins at St Pancras and Ebbsfleet respectively, because their scope of work is similarly larger.

Fair point! I subsequently discovered it is possible to download PNG of the graphs from Transit Costs, so here is table 4, 5 and 10. On the site you can mouseover to show more data, and most of the scatter graphs are useless without that feature.

A a bit of a taster, here are the three most relevant graphs which don't require mouseover in order to loosely interpret:

4. Cost/km, projects grouped for each country, in order of the cost based on the cheapest line​

Here, we see the range of costs within each country, and the colors show the tunnel percentage for each project. We show unknown tunnel % as 0%.
Costs/km stay within a consistent range for some countries such as Spain, Germany and South Korea, whereas they vary quite a bit in Turkey, Italy, China and UK. The tunnel percentage raise the costs as expected, in France, Spain, Italy, South Korea and Austria. (We lack tunnel % data for most of the Chinese lines, but the lines that are mostly elevated aren’t the most expensive, in the Chinese case.)

5. Average cost/km per country (with tunnel %)​

Here are the countries ordered by costs, based on the weighted average cost of the projects in our database. The colors represent the weighted average of percentage of tunnel for the projects in each country, and the number of projects our database covers per country can be seen by hovering over each bar. We show unknown tunnel % as 0%.
Based on this and the following chart, we can tell that percentage of tunnels and elevated sections raise costs to some extent. Austria, South Korea and Japan build a lot of tunnels. Netherlands, Taiwan and UK don’t but are more expensive (but Taiwan builds elevated). On the other hand, Switzerland and Norway build tunnels, but their km costs are low.

10. A Heat map of costs per country in years​

This chart shows how costs per country have changed over time. Colors indicate the square root of the Cost/km in $ M.
Each square represents the start of one or more projects in that country, and if there is more than one, the cost seen when hovering on it is the weighted average km costs of the projects that started that year.
In this chart we see that costs increased over the years for almost all countries, while Turkey, Spain and France were able to keep their costs lower. Looking at their most recent projects in our database, Japan and UK saw significant increases in their costs.

 

[Mikey C]

As between 2010 and 2015 we were governed by a coalition, can we blame the Lib Dems as well as Labour and the Conservatives

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

As between 2010 and 2015 we were governed by a coalition, can we blame the Lib Dems as well as Labour and the Conservatives

Yes, except the top job in DfT was always a Conservative (Philip Hammond/Justine Greening/Patrick McLoughlin).
Hammond then went on to be Chancellor, another key post for HS2 policy.
The Lib Dems mostly had the junior DfT post (dealing with rail franchises etc), and Chief Sec to the Treasury (deputy to the Chancellor, effectively).

In terms of poor HS2 Ltd governance, I'd have thought the Grayling/Shapps period was the most culpable (from 2016).
But they did get Phase 1/2a through parliament.

 

[camflyer]

HS2 really makes no sense if it only links London and Birmingham. Of course east-west cross-Pennine links need to be massively improved (if anything "NPR" isn't ambitious enough) but Phase 2 of HS2 is needed to link everything together.

 

[Grumpy Git]

McLoughlin was my MP for a number of years, I wouldn't have employed him as a bog cleaner.

His biggest claim to fame was reminding us (often) of how he'd once been a coal miner.

 

[Geezertronic]

HS2 really makes no sense if it only links London and Birmingham. Of course east-west cross-Pennine links need to be massively improved (if anything "NPR" isn't ambitious enough) but Phase 2 of HS2 is needed to link everything together.

HS2 has never been solely about linking London and Birmingham, no matter how the HS2-anti brigade try to plant the idea. Even phase 1 would be expected to remove the long distance services north of Birmingham served by the WCML South thus freeing up capacity

 

[The Ham]

HS2 has never been solely about linking London and Birmingham, no matter how the HS2-anti brigade try to plant the idea. Even phase 1 would be expected to remove the long distance services north of Birmingham served by the WCML South thus freeing up capacity

The irony is that often the "alternative" pushed by those opposed to HS2 is hyperloop which would only link those two.

 

[plugwash]

HS2 has never been solely about linking London and Birmingham, no matter how the HS2-anti brigade try to plant the idea. Even phase 1 would be expected to remove the long distance services north of Birmingham served by the WCML South thus freeing up capacity

Though this creates a bit of an issue when phase 2 comes in, what do you do about places like macclesfield, stockport, wilmslow etc? do you continue running some trains to crewe on HS2 and then Manchester on the classic lines? do you serve those places using the classic WCML? do you take away those places direct services to London?

 

[The Ham]

Though this creates a bit of an issue when phase 2 comes in, what do you do about places like macclesfield, stockport, wilmslow etc? do you continue running some trains to crewe on HS2 and then Manchester on the classic lines? do you serve those places using the classic WCML? do you take away those places direct services to London?

I suspect that some such stations probably have fairly few people going to London (especially those with less than 2 million passengers a year using them), as even if 10% were to be heading to/from London you're looking at (assuming 2 million) about 335 a day in each direction.

As such, and to provide a direct service for those unwilling to change your could run 6 trains a day in each direction and not fill a single coach (56 passengers, assuming everyone used them).

I suspect that such arguments are over exaggerating the issue. As whilst passengers prefer direct trains, few don't travel due to changes and mostly as the frequency is poor so that it risks a long journey.

From such places as long as there's a reasonable frequency service to a HS2 station then many such locations could (even if they had a change time of 30 minutes) could still see faster journey times.

As such the potential for loss of passengers if direct services were lost would likely be fairly small.

Does that mean that I think that such locations should not have direct services or if they do that they should be much slower? No, just that such whatever happens is going to make a very small difference overall.

I suspect that in reality a 20 minute longer journey time (connecting to more places) for the retained services (likely with cheaper than today tickets) and faster journey times (even allowing for connection timed) via HS2 and passenger numbers would be broadly the same, if not higher (with the potential for more local services) than if HS2 wasn't built.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The intention is to run one hourly HS2 train serving (Stafford?), Stoke and Macclesfield, via the WCML connection at Handsacre.
What services will remain on the classic route is yet to be decided.

 

[edwin_m]

It probably makes sense to continue to run services on the classic line between London and Birmingham/Manchester/etc, because splitting them at some intermediate station would remove through journeys for some passengers. The split station would probably also need extra platforms etc to cope with the extra terminators. So I think these destinations will still have London trains via the classic route but making some extra stops. This also means the intermediate stations, where many of the trains currently pass through without stopping, would have more frequent if somewhat slower services to major cities (not just London).

The situation for Scotland may be different, because of the capacity issues of adding extra trains on the two-track northern WCML. So all London-Scotland or Birmingham-Scotland trains would probably use HS2 south of Golborne, with a few passengers having to make an extra change at Crewe or Preston.

 

[HSTEd]

The irony is that often the "alternative" pushed by those opposed to HS2 is hyperloop which would only link those two.

Whilst hyperloop is silly, I have some sympathy with the conception of rather than trying to build a tree like hybrid high speed/classic network, we should just build a very high speed metro style system.

Run as many trains as possible to a single high speed only stopping pattern.

If HS2 was (for example), 18 trains per hour all stops, it would be notionally slower stop-to-stop, but journey times would not be much longer because average wait time would be about two minutes.

Although changing is, in some ways, a pain, with tube style frequencies it becomes much less of one.