How could the UK reduce the cost of large infrastructure projects?

[MatthewHutton]

How are you proposing to put multiple levels into Edinburgh Waverley? It's in the bottom of a valley so going underneath would be problematic, and it's grade A listed so you're not going to be able to mess with the roof.

Maybe you can’t. Still the running speed on the approaches looks pretty decent.

 

[Noddy]

I would have thought if you are approaching from the east that doing an Antwerpen Centraal style station in Edinburgh before continuing to Glasgow would be quite a strong option.

Completely hypothetically as the crow flies a Newcastle to Edinburgh (91 miles) to Glasgow (133 miles) line is about 133 miles total construction. A hypothetical line Newcastle-West Linton-Edinburgh (102 miles) and Newcastle-West Linton-Glasgow (122 miles) is 137 miles in total (for construction). Obviously the second route is 4 miles longer in total but has the advantage of not have a penalty stop for Glasgow.

I would add Edinburgh Waverley is in the middle of world heritage site so you’re not going to be able to change it. If you were going build or adapt an existing station for GC gauge trains Haymarket (just outside the WHS) and coming in from the south west may be a better option.

*obviously this is entirely speculative and not likely to happen in any of our life times but if the Victorians had thought more holistically we wouldn’t have spent billions fixing capacity and loading gauge issues in the 21st century.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Completely hypothetically as the crow flies a Newcastle to Edinburgh (91 miles) to Glasgow (133 miles) line is about 133 miles total construction. A hypothetical line Newcastle-West Linton-Edinburgh (102 miles) and Newcastle-West Linton-Glasgow (122 miles) is 137 miles in total (for construction). Obviously the second route is 4 miles longer in total but has the advantage of not have a penalty stop for Glasgow.

I would add Edinburgh Waverley is in the middle of world heritage site so you’re not going to be able to change it. If you were going build or adapt an existing station for GC gauge trains Haymarket (just outside the WHS) and coming in from the south west may be a better option.

*obviously this is entirely speculative and not likely to happen in any of our life times but if the Victorians had thought more holistically we wouldn’t have spent billions fixing capacity and loading gauge issues in the 21st century.

Ok I am persuaded that considering splitting the train is a reasonable thing to do. But assuming it’s the only option for all three proposals is still a bit much.

It looks like on openrailwaymap that the approaches into Edinburgh are pretty fast as it is, and in a train splitting scenario Glasgow, as the smaller destination, would get the second train out of the split.

And if you ran through you’d get local intercity passengers as well, boosting ridership.

 

[Bald Rick]

Sure. But not many.

I mean calls at even relatively small stations like Motherwell, Lockerbie, Oxenholme and Penrith each with 1tp2h is going to provide far more extra passengers than those you would lose to Edinburgh and Glasgow by trips taking 4 minutes longer.

How do you know? And what is the relevance of that comparison?

But this hasn’t been communicated with even well connected people in the Thames valley such as myself.

You can’t proactively communicate everything. Sometimes the seeker pf the information needs to find it themselves.

And I have heard that many observers believed the A3/M25 junction should have originally been built better - Like the M23/M25 and M4/M25 junctions were ?.

Included old father BR, who, 42 years later is still cross about it.

I think broadly the line is pretty straight and was built to support 4 tracking.

As you can see from HS1 and almost every high speed line everywhere, a line built 100+ years ago with an alignment suitable for a High Speed line is generally left alone, and the new line built entirely separately, but alongside.

The challenges to my mind are the West Wycombe curve and the one north of Princes Risborough, the latter of which would be easy to cut, the former of which might have to be in the High Wycombe tunnel.

It woudl have meant a lot of tunnelling. The topography does not help.

95% of the population aren’t “NIMBYs”

95% are not nimby’s right up to the point that someone proposes to put a bulldozer over your back hedge.

But in every other country with high speed rail it would be.

Germany, Italy, Netherlands ?

 

[FMerrymon]

Assuming the ongoing subsidies required to operate these services, when stripped of their primary farebox income, is forthcoming.
And that that subsidy is provided forever.

A lot of people don't really believe that that will happen.

There's latent demand even now: open access applications are being rejected, freight depots were built with HS2 expectations, you have the growth expected from the extra housing from oxcam arc (whatever its called this year). Higher frequencies lead to growth.

There is absolutely no evidence it wouldn't happen, its the primary reason for hs2, multiple plans that say not only that it will and demonstrated need. Those people needn't worry. Anyway... costs of infrastructure...

 

[Peter Sarf]

........................
You can’t proactively communicate everything. Sometimes the seeker pf the information needs to find it themselves.

Ideed. A statge is reached where there is too much detail and people only want to look in more depth when it directly affects them.

It does mean the NUMBYs that are affected don't get to see all the alternatives - they only want enough to clutch at straws.

Included old father BR, who, 42 years later is still cross about it.
...........

Argh. I finally went and looked online. It (A3/M25) is still a roundabout !. I think the two bridges over the M25 were replaced and it is obvious that there are separate lanes segregating the four left turns. Oh and longer slip roads I feel. All that work but still the four conflicting right turns !. I was naively thinking it was looking like (from the M25 while trying to not look away from the traffic too much) the result would be similar to the M11/M25 junction that looks like an attempt to segregate all conflicting moves but in the space of a roundabout - silly me !.

I remember the A33/M4 junction getting enhanced with extra bridges across the M4 rather than replacements. People tell me its very confusing, I see it from the Victoria to/from Cardiff coach and there is a lot of signage up at the roundabout !.

How long before it gains at least one enormous right turn flyover - like the A2/M25 junction for Westbound A2 traffic to join the Northbound M25.
(another 42 years ?).

 

[FMerrymon]

No, it was cancelled for political reasons,and one individual specifically who had (and retains) a passionate dislike of the whole principle of HS2.

Exactly and he was the originator of the 20 minute myth in the national press.

All stations proposed in the south and midlands would be looking at well over a million passengers a year, likely well over 2 million.

And a ten minute delay is an exaggeration, 5-6 minutes per stop on a high speed section is a reasonable range depending on speed given modern rail performance.

That's why the improved service on the existing lines for intermediate stations will happen, contrary to what @HSTEd says about subsidy. There's demand and the higher frequencies and better service will support increased housing. They do not need hs2 specific stations.

Thankyou for taking the time to post this. I eventually got through it despite interruptions !.

Lots to digest in there. I think civil engineering resources are tight made worse by the lack of a rolling project. You are never going to have good efficient construction if you are forever having to train new staff and have suppliers tooling up for a short term demand (they need payback for the investment quickly). For HS2 Phase 2a should have benefited from the struggles to establish phase 1 construction. But no Phase 2 (a and B) is going to be stalled and thus lose all the chances of economy. The word sabotage springs to mind. Certainly no sense of security.

Your very last paragraph. Reminds me that if HS2 had been all done outside of political parties, so like HS1 (ie more as a private enterprise), then perhaps the project could have plodded on regardless ?.
Compared to M6 toll ?.

Thank you! The NIC report is well worth reading which I pasted here:

I appreciate the question about costs here is general rather than focused on HS2. HS2 had/has its own issues of course, but the biggest issues we have with costs are systemic, HS2 just reveals them more. We can see the issue with costs on other projects - Crossrail 1 might have been delivered for £18.9bn, but Crossrail 2 is estimated at £45bn in current prices - yes, the scope is different, but it gives some idea of scale of costs. Lower Thames Crossing is 14 miles and is now estimated to be £11bn. Houses of parliament refurbishment could be up to £40bn. EWR Bedford-Cambridge is 31 miles of new track and is over £5bn, for 100mph not electrified and isn't significantly cheaper than the expected cost of HS2 phase 2a. A428 Back cat to Caxton Gibbet is £1bn for 10 miles of upgrade.
There's a narrative forming, particularly from the media, that only blames hs2 as a project - speed+tunnels+bat shed+incompetence. Whilst they may be factors, its an over simplification of the issues and misses crucial context and the environment of operating in the UK.

The NIC report from 2024 is well worth reading: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/NIC-Costs-Report-Final-Oct-2024.pdf
The Fingleton nuclear regulatory review has insights and recommendations that covers other types of infrastructure projects and worth taking a look at: https://majorprojects.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/nuclear-regulatory-review-2025.pdf
The NAO produced this report on lessons learnt from large projects: https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/u...-decision-making-on-mega-projects-summary.pdf

Before we look at HS2 more closely, we should consider the issues affecting all projects.

Lots of chatter here about HS2 design decisions and whether hs2 should stop at the end of your driveway, but if we are serious about issues around cost, we first need to look at how any project is currently very expensive to build here. As I said, the thread's question is general and that is correct if we really want to understand why hs2 was expensive. Speed etc is a far smaller factor.

Phase 2b Crewe to Manchester is still progressing (albeit extremely slowly) through parliament under the guise of NPR!

Yep, which only goes to prove the decision was political. Phase 2b west had a cost per mile more than double phase 2a due to tunnelling into and station in Manchester (factors in no other european hs line to my knowledge). A further 6bn at 2019 prices for phase 2a, design done, a phase created because it was recognised that phase 1 was difficult to operate alone and they not only cancel it, but then, in an unprecedented move, speedily try to dispose of the land. At the same time of progressing bits of the line further north. Sabotage.

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Ideed. A statge is reached where there is too much detail and people only want to look in more depth when it directly affects them.

It does mean the NUMBYs that are affected don't get to see all the alternatives - they only want enough to clutch at straws.

Detail has not been reported properly by the media. The government/dft produced detailed whitepapers, but the information from these was not relayed and you get some know-nothing journalist spouting nonsense. It wasnt until I saw someone post in a reply to someone the link to one of them that I realised they existed.

 

[HSTEd]

There's latent demand even now: open access applications are being rejected, freight depots were built with HS2 expectations

Both of which are rail operations that receive substantial indirect subsidies (as essentially all rail operations today do), although they are routed through the network grant.

Anyway... costs of infrastructure...

Yes, back on track!
(Should I get my coat?)

But I think trying to pick political fights that could be avoided with a bit more spent on tunnels and the like is a big problem.

Tunneled construction has probably got cheaper relative to surface construction in a big way in recent decades, and perhaps our infrastructure planning is simply not keeping up with the times?

After all you can just order 19m diameter tunnel boring machines now!

We could probably also simplify things by giving up on attempting to make rail or road schemes have minimum net spoil production/fill consumption. That in itself can put major constraints on designs and also requires more (temporary) land take than might otherwise be necessary to spread out spoil. If we could provide a centralised disposal site (like a giant Samphire Hoe) and just use it forever that might help things.

EDIT:
Plus, the less you interact with the surface, roads, watercourses, utilities and the like, the less impact planning and 'enabling works' that have to be done.
You can avoid a project sprawling into a monster that has way too many moving parts.

EDIT #2:
Just to demonstrate how large a 19m class tunnel boring machine is, you're getting to the point where it is borderline whether you can put two or four platform lines in the same bore. A two platform bore would have platforms the size of Crossrail station platforms. That could make complex underground stations much less expensive in the long run.

 

[Bald Rick]

Wouldn't it be easier to retime the connections?

Which connections at, say, Glasgow Central would you retime?

 

[MatthewHutton]

95% are not nimby’s right up to the point that someone proposes to put a bulldozer over your back hedge

So compensate small businesses and homeowners to a sufficient degree that they aren’t bothered by the disruption.

You can’t proactively communicate everything. Sometimes the seeker pf the information needs to find it themselves

So where is the full information that makes clear why they picked the route they did?

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How do you know? And what is the relevance of that comparison?

The relevance is

The claim was that a 4 minute increase in journey time reduced the BCR by 15%. I find that hard to believe.

Which is absolute nonsense. But it also explains HS2‘s obsession with skipping intermediate stops.

Right now Avanti accepts a 4 minute delay on every other train to call at Motherwell which has 30,000 annual London trips, 9,000 Preston trips and a few thousand to the other stops where there are 700,000 London trips alone from Glasgow.

If you want to claim that for a given high speed line that an extra stop reduces ridership to subsequent stops by 1-2% or something that seems reasonable.

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But I think trying to pick political fights that could be avoided with a bit more spent on tunnels and the like is a big problem.

Tunnels have higher long term maintenance costs as well I believe.

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Crossrail 2 is estimated at £45bn in current prices - yes, the scope is different, but it gives some idea of scale of costs.

Crossrail 2 should be cheaper than Crossrail 1 actually given London is bigger east-west.

 

[Magdalia]

We could probably also simplify things by giving up on attempting to make rail or road schemes have minimum net spoil production/fill consumption.

This doesn't simplify things, it just changes the problem.

Anyone who visited the construction sites for the Elizabeth Line stations could see how disposing of large amounts of spoil constrained construction.

At the other extreme, one of the big challenges of building the Reservoir in the Fens is the amount of aggregate that's going to be needed to be brought in for construction.

 

[ABB125]

. I finally went and looked online. It (A3/M25) is still a roundabout !. I think the two bridges over the M25 were replaced and it is obvious that there are separate lanes segregating the four left turns. Oh and longer slip roads I feel. All that work but still the four conflicting right turns !. I was naively thinking it was looking like (from the M25 while trying to not look away from the traffic too much) the result would be similar to the M11/M25 junction that looks like an attempt to segregate all conflicting moves but in the space of a roundabout - silly me !.

I remember the A33/M4 junction getting enhanced with extra bridges across the M4 rather than replacements. People tell me its very confusing, I see it from the Victoria to/from Cardiff coach and there is a lot of signage up at the roundabout !.

How long before it gains at least one enormous right turn flyover - like the A2/M25 junction for Westbound A2 traffic to join the Northbound M25.
(another 42 years ?).

Welcome to Britain - "let's spend £300 million converting a signalised roundabout into... a slightly bigger signalised roundabout. That'll do it!"
If you think the rail industry is bad/infuriating/incompetent/[insert adjective of choice], just wait until you get to highways...

 

[Bald Rick]

So compensate small businesses and homeowners to a sufficient degree that they aren’t bothered by the disruption.

AIUI the HS2 compensation scheme is the most generous of any publicly funded transport project.

So where is the full information that makes clear why they picked the route they did?

Well there’s linked plenty on this thread. But, naturally, you won’t find every bit of work done everywhere.


Re the 4 mins and 15%; I’ve not seen that officially (that’s not to say it wasn’t said somewhere official), and it doesn’t sound right I agree.

However a 4 minute change on a 40 minute journey (London to Birmingham) has a much higher drag on demand proportionally than 4 mins on a 4 hour journey (London to Scotland).

Crossrail 2 should be cheaper than Crossrail 1 actually given London is bigger east-west.

How did you work that out? There’s more underground stations, 50% more tunnelling, and a lot more work on the national network. Have a look at the website.

 

[MatthewHutton]

How did you work that out? There’s more underground stations, 50% more tunnelling, and a lot more work on the national network. Have a look at the website

Still only 4 big stops (Euston-Kings Cross, Tottenham Court Road, Victoria, Clapham Junction) rather than 6 (Paddington, Bond Street, TCR, Farrington, Liverpool Street and Canary Wharf) And the others could be pared back I think? Also not sure 3 branches in the north are required.

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Well there’s linked plenty on this thread. But, naturally, you won’t find every bit of work done everywhere.

I think the stuff linked here which I have looked at is somewhat lacking.

AIUI the HS2 compensation scheme is the most generous of any publicly funded transport project.

That’s not how people on the ground feel. I wonder why there’s a disconnect?

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However a 4 minute change on a 40 minute journey (London to Birmingham) has a much higher drag on demand proportionally than 4 mins on a 4 hour journey (London to Scotland).

Fair

 

[Magdalia]

Welcome to Britain - "let's spend £300 million converting a signalised roundabout into... a slightly bigger signalised roundabout. That'll do it!"
If you think the rail industry is bad/infuriating/incompetent/[insert adjective of choice], just wait until you get to highways...

This happened twice at the Black Cat. Third time lucky it is being done properly with a fully grade separated junction.

 

[MatthewHutton]

This happened twice at the Black Cat. Third time lucky it is being done properly with a fully grade separated junction.

“Right sizing” stuff is something we are pretty bad at.

 

[Bald Rick]

Still only 4 big stops (Euston-Kings Cross, Tottenham Court Road, Victoria, Clapham Junction) rather than 6 (Paddington, Bond Street, TCR, Farrington, Liverpool Street and Canary Wharf) And the others could be pared back I think? Also not sure 3 branches in the north are required.

I wasn’t even including the branches in the north other than to Broxbourne.

Wimbledon is a massive job - the equivalent of more than 2 Paddingtons. Tooting is at the very edge of tunnelling / deep station engineering technology due to the geology snd size. Euston / StPancras is massive, much bigger than Liverpool St / Moorgate for example. Tottenham Court Road is much harder than the equivalent for Crossrail. Dalston is big. Tottenham Hale is a massive job too, albeit above ground. etc.

 

[MatthewHutton]

I wasn’t even including the branches in the north other than to Broxbourne.

Wimbledon is a massive job - the equivalent of more than 2 Paddingtons. Tooting is at the very edge of tunnelling / deep station engineering technology due to the geology snd size. Euston / StPancras is massive, much bigger than Liverpool St / Moorgate for example. Tottenham Court Road is much harder than the equivalent for Crossrail. Dalston is big. Tottenham Hale is a massive job too, albeit above ground. etc.

Difficult to get right I guess but I do still wonder if it’s overspecced. Do all the stations outside the centre really need to be “massive”?

EDIT: Also which stations post WW2 or whatever are undersized other than the central ones on the Victoria line?

 

[Bald Rick]

Difficult to get right I guess but I do still wonder if it’s overspecced. Do all the stations outside the centre really need to be “massive”?

EDIT: Also which stations post WW2 or whatever are undersized other than the central ones on the Victoria line?

As ever, a team of about 50 people worked on this for 4-5 years. I’m sure they considered everything that could be reasonably considered.

 

[MatthewHutton]

As ever, a team of about 50 people worked on this for 4-5 years. I’m sure they considered everything that could be reasonably considered.

Or they followed the standard modern model of wildly overspeccing it and no thinking outside the box.

 

[Bald Rick]

Or they followed the standard modern model of wildly overspeccing it and no thinking outside the box.

I think they would all find that comment somewhere between faintly amusing and offensive to their professions.

 

[FMerrymon]

We are not the only ones with issues around infrastructure delivery. The view from Germany: https://www.dw.com/en/why-german-building-projects-run-over-time-and-budget/a-75206468

 

[Peter Sarf]

So compensate small businesses and homeowners to a sufficient degree that they aren’t bothered by the disruption.

........................

Which is absolute nonsense. But it also explains HS2‘s obsession with skipping intermediate stops.

.......................

So spend even more money by upping compensation - that was arguably a cost problem there already, there has to be balance.
+

As ever, a team of about 50 people worked on this for 4-5 years. I’m sure they considered everything that could be reasonably considered.

Or they followed the standard modern model of wildly overspeccing it and no thinking outside the box.

Ouch. So on one hand HS2 designers/planners over specified HS2 and so over spent. But on the other hand they did not spend enough on compensation ?.

Or maybe we should have increased the size of the planning team to 500 just to make sure
Or spent longer than 3-5 years working on it.......
So they could all come to the similar conclusions multiple times and release their results even longer after (more) inflation had taken its toll.

There has to be a balance.

What the planners did wrong was build it in the UK. After all if we were in some other countries you would not need the tunnels unless nature dictated (big hills, rivers etc) and you would not need to pay much compensation at all (if any). I just realised what I said - that is outside the box ?.

 

[The exile]

So compensate small businesses and homeowners to a sufficient degree that they aren’t bothered by the disruption.

That's effectively saying "everyone has their price" - the problem is that everyone's price is different. It may well be one of the reasons why land purchase for big projects is so much harder here than in many other countries. It's much easier (and cheaper) to buy out property owners who don't actually live in the property and see it just as a source of income (which can be replaced with the compensation) than those who wish to die in the room they were born in.

 

[MatthewHutton]

I think they would all find that comment somewhere between faintly amusing and offensive to their professions.

It’s very clear from public statements that both Labour and the Conservative politicians accept their is an issue with costs. The planners should accept they have a role to play in that too.

Aside from the Victoria line rail projects built post-WW2 haven’t generally had issues with capacity.

What the planners did wrong was build it in the UK. After all if we were in some other countries you would not need the tunnels unless nature dictated (big hills, rivers etc) and you would not need to pay much compensation at all (if any). I just realised what I said - that is outside the box ?

And yet in the 1980s we had perfectly reasonable costs that was comparable to our peers.

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Or maybe we should have increased the size of the planning team to 500 just to make sure
Or spent longer than 3-5 years working on it

When they originally built the west coast mainline they considered 3 completely different routes. And planning was harder then as you had to do it on horseback.

That's effectively saying "everyone has their price" - the problem is that everyone's price is different

The French seem to manage it a lot better.

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So spend even more money by upping compensation - that was arguably a cost problem there already, there has to be balance.

And how much of the compensation money was spent arguing with the public over valuations?

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Or maybe we should have increased the size of the planning team to 500 just to make sure

There are only a dozen countries with high speed rail.

That the HS2 planners don’t appear to have even visited all of them on holiday (let alone organised any meetings) and read the relevant Wikipedia articles and looked at a map of the various countries is a pretty big criticism.

I mean it’s difficult to believe that with a couple of person years effort that someone couldn’t have visited all the countries with high speed rail and visited a sensible sample of the stops and had meetings with a bunch of people and written a report about it.

 

[Noddy]

And yet in the 1980s we had perfectly reasonable costs that was comparable to our peers.

Nimbyism began to become a major issue the 1980s…

 

[MatthewHutton]

Nimbyism began to become a major issue the 1980s…

Nimbyism also isn’t an issue unique to Britain and other countries haven’t had the same cost blowouts.

 

[The exile]

And yet in the 1980s we had perfectly reasonable costs that was comparable to our peers.




The French seem to manage it a lot better.

Selby Diversion apart, what major rail projects on virgin territory happened in the 1980s? I agree fully that the cost of 1980s stations (particularly the W Yorks variety) is dwarfed by the cost today - but a) requirements have changed and b) the low-hanging fruit has mostly been picked.

France is not a particularly good comparison - with a much lower rural population density than England in general and the bit of England between London and Birmingham in particular. We are threading HS2 on new alignments right into the heart of two enormous cities - something that the French and Germans have basically been able to avoid (OK - the Germans have done it in Berlin - but it's taken them 36 years to complete and that was with the help of an unbuilt strip right through the heart of the city). Probably about the only worse direction to be heading out of London than through the Chilterns would be ploughing straight out through Richmond Park, Runnymede and Windsor.

Yes, there are almost certainly things that can be done to speed up (and cut the costs of) major infrastructure projects of national interest, but I imagine that most people would suddenly stop being in favour of them were that project of national interest to be at the bottom of their garden.

 

[gc4946]

I'd design the next stages of HS2 for a maximum of 186 mph/300 kph.
It's unfortunate much of the powers for acquiring land for Birmingham-Crewe-Manchester have lapsed.
What I didn't know that passing the Act of Parliament for HS2 meant additional planning consents were required by all the local authorities affected by the line. That slowed design and construction up and added extra expense.
Maybe planning consents should be incorporated automatically into any future Acts of Parliament.

 

[MatthewHutton]

We are threading HS2 on new alignments right into the heart of two enormous cities - something that the French and Germans have basically been able to avoid

Fair, but HS1 had the same issues and was much cheaper.

And HS2 phase 2 to Crewe/the East Midlands is much more expensive than projects in developed Asia/continental Europe and doesn't involve big cities.

Selby Diversion apart, what major rail projects on virgin territory happened in the 1980s.

The Stansted Airport branch was only £44m.

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Maybe planning consents should be incorporated automatically into any future Acts of Parliament.

Its a good idea, but to be politically viable the project has to directly benefit the people affected by the construction.

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I agree fully that the cost of 1980s stations (particularly the W Yorks variety) is dwarfed by the cost today - but a) requirements have changed and b) the low-hanging fruit has mostly been picked.

The only requirement change is disabled access which is supposed to be a reasonable adjustment and ticket barriers I guess. That doesn't justify the difference between the £1.1m in today's money spent on Winnersh Triangle railway station and the £38.8m spent on e.g. Thanet Parkway. Nor does the need for a bridge/tunnel across the line which presumably Winnersh triangle avoided.