HS2 Reset: Evidence to Transport Committee - 9 July 2025 "Total overspend on high-speed rail could be as much as 100%"

[CastlebarKeith]

To those who are so confident about the (eventual) financial success of HS2, I would remind them that some of this presumed success will be because of fiscal leakage from the other London-Birmingham routes

Too many predictions of success that I have seen seem to think HS2 Passenger numbers will all be passengers new to rail. They won't be.

 

[AndrewE]

To those who are so confident about the (eventual) financial success of HS2, I would remind them that some of this presumed success will be because of fiscal leakage from the other London-Birmingham routes

Too many predictions of success that I have seen seem to think HS2 Passenger numbers will all be passengers new to rail. They won't be.

but surely the better services using the capacity released on the S WCML will attract more business? I am looking forward to the inter-regional semi-fasts again (e.g. feeling the loss of Rugby calls when going S to Northampton.)
Unfortunately I doubt I shall live to see them...

 

[cats_five]

Yes, there are few things I recognise from within my industry.

• Reliance on self employed workers, of which I am one, because in order to acheive a decent salary you have to be 'management'. technical excellence is not recognised, but then firms have to employ 'contractors' at similar rates to what they pay senior managers, but without gaining the benefit of loyalty in a lot of cases.
• Highly layed projects, which translates into every one blaming everyone else when things go wrong, instead of concentrating on putting right the original problem, which actually maybe quite minor.
• Multiple suppliers, always going for the cheapest, so further fragmentation and opportunity for buck passsing
• Lower investment in innovation, 'We've always done it that way'

I would also add multiple regulatory bodies, planning laws and the general sludge of bureaucracy

And I'm sure NIMBY-ism and gold plating have played their part. I am in no doubt we NEED HS2, all the way to Lancaster and maybe beyond, and a branch to Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds and York. However did we need one designed to be as fast as HS2 was? Does a small congested country need the fastest conventional railway in the world? I really don't think so.

 

[SynthD]

Ultimately, we need to make our own decisions on specifying our infrastructure and do so on rational grounds, not "big boys told me to".

This goes back to selectively taking advice from the people we want to copy.

So was the problem with HS2

Why use the past tense? We can see the upside of the Elizabeth line in use and judge it properly. We aren’t ready to do that for HS2. Even when it opens, from Euston, we will need to remind ourselves of the intended lifespan of the project, the future growth it is capable of. The Elizabeth line is already crowded, people can’t get a seat at Woolwich. HS2 won’t have that problem, but it could still match it in early success another way.

I hope OOC isnt similar in that regard, but 15000 homes were already dropped due to the failure to secure land owned by CarGiant and we ended up using depots in the area that could have been used to accommodate more development.

That is a huge shame, but that’s not related to the railway.

Too many predictions of success that I have seen seem to think HS2 Passenger numbers will all be passengers new to rail. They won't be.

I hadn’t seen any such prediction, but many saying the opposite, that moving London-Birmingham people from existing rail to HS2 is a huge benefit to other travellers and freight.

 

[miami]

And there isn't some legacy stock like Cl455 or Cl222 that can just be kept longer to provide customers with a service. You have a whole railway sitting unused apart from occasional test trains. This will support the white elephant/waste of money narrative.

Given the fiasco of east-west rail, which I'm surprised isn't in the national conscious, Wouldn't surprise me to see an empty HS2 run with staff trains only for years

 

[GRALISTAIR]

-----Could you realistically trim it back to anything smaller than Euston-Handsacre though? I don't see how.

At least once the core is done, any extensions can be done in smaller chunks. Handsacre-Crewe, Crewe-Manchester, Manchester-Golborne, Delta Junction-Toton, Toton-Erewash Valley, Toton-Leeds, Leeds (excl)-Church Fenton.

I totally agree. A bit like electrification - get key bits done and add on the rest in increments.

 

[Peter Sarf]

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

Why use the past tense? We can see the upside of the Elizabeth line in use and judge it properly. We aren’t ready to do that for HS2. Even when it opens, from Euston, we will need to remind ourselves of the intended lifespan of the project, the future growth it is capable of. The Elizabeth line is already crowded, people can’t get a seat at Woolwich. HS2 won’t have that problem, but it could still match it in early success another way.

I did deliberately use the past tense - being pessimistic.

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

I hadn’t seen any such prediction, but many saying the opposite, that moving London-Birmingham people from existing rail to HS2 is a huge benefit to other travellers and freight.

I do believe that the advantage of easing pressure on the West Coast Main Line is something that was not sold very well.

I totally agree. A bit like electrification - get key bits done and add on the rest in increments.

I am beginning to think that doing Phase 2a before Phase 1 was what needed to happen. Daft but get a cheap bit done first. The difficulty is that Phase 1 could not be broken down unless the delta junction and section to Handsacre was left out !.

The small easy bits are too small and the important expensive bit is too big !.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

but surely the better services using the capacity released on the S WCML will attract more business? I am looking forward to the inter-regional semi-fasts again (e.g. feeling the loss of Rugby calls when going S to Northampton.)
Unfortunately I doubt I shall live to see them...

Initially we might see 1 or 2 paths freed up from change to Birmingham services but with Coventry still to be served and Milton Keynes a key destination to travel to/from will we even see that. It will the longer distance services that will produce most spare paths I imagine but that could be nearly a decade still. Maybe then some pendos can be switched to take over LNWRs medium distance services to free up stock for the outer suburban service in/out of London & Birmingham.

 

[Gerald Fiennes]

Re-use of released capacity on the WCML is clearly a thing, but recalll that some of this is already in the numbers put together at the business case stage. Not much is a 'new benefit'.

Currently, even with an assumed high capacity on/off ramp at Handsacre (not yet funded) there's really not much 'new capacity' because of the assumption that places that HS2 bypasses (Coventry, Rugby, Stafford?) should continue to retain some sort of Pendo-style journey time and frequency post HS2. (A reminder of how much of an improvement the 2002/08 West Coast upgrade provided....) Only if these services are slowed down a bit and stepped down to eg. every 30 mins to Coventry (which has already substantially happened post-Covid) is there much new capacity released, ie. perhaps 1 - 2 x 100mph paths max 7from Birmingham (or perhaps they would be used to even out the Rugby-New St LNWR services? All helps, but not a game changer?

 

[Snow1964]

This weeks announcements seem to have to some extent pushed the questions 6 months away. Consider reducing train speed isn't actually a change at this stage. The reset so far is about getting bits done.

There will be quite a bit extra work over the next 6 months which will make some bits look more like a trackbed than an earthquake zone, and some big highlights like moving Bellingham bridge over tracks in Birmingham. The north side of delta viaducts should reach M6. Further south many overbridges that are nearly complete should open.

The drier summer months usually sees better progress with earthworks, and it is likely lot more sections will be completed, and temporary stockpile sites, levelled and landscaped.

Then there is there potential political shakeup if May elections are even worse than predicted for Labour. If Green Party does well might be move towards more priority for electrified railways.

Basically a reset looking at where HS2 has got to by the autumn, might look seriously different to where HS2 is today, and long way from pre-reset version.

Link to the 6 monthly report, next one hopefully will have lots of reset inspired progress.

HS2 6-monthly report to Parliament: March 2026

Review of High Speed Two (HS2) including: update on the programme reset, delivery progress, community impacts, land and property.

www.gov.uk

 

[NCT]

Putting aside all the arguments about what should or could have been built, I see the biggest problem as being the impact on any future rail infrastructure priojects. The huge overspend, scope reduction and delays are an ongoing PR disaster. This means that it is very unlikely that future politicians from any of the main parties would sign off on another large rail project in the foreseeable future, as no one would want to be associated with another failure on the scale of HS2. Dont get me wrong, it will address the southern WCML capacity issue eventually, but in terms of value for money and as an advert for rail in the UK its a huge disaster.

Going forward I see that as the biggest problem, there are other projects which are probably worthy of investment, that would improve the rail network, but they have been cut off because of the disaster that is HS2. Its not just the overspend, which is taking investment away from other projects, it is the ongoing bad publicity. It has also killed off any future possible HSR projects in the UK for at least a generation.

I am going to make a prediction, the Beeching cuts of the early 60s are still talked about today, over 60 years later. I believe the HS2 project will similarly enter the historical memories, and will still be discussed long after a lot of us on here are no longer around.

This feels far too fatalistic.

HS2's c0ckups aren't trivial, but I think you give too much credit to people's memories.

HS2's initial timescale of 2026 phase 1 and 20233 phase 2 was over-optimistic in hindsight.

LGV Atlantique to Tours was open in 1990. The extension to Bordeaux wasn't open until 2017 - a full 27 years later. HS2 Phase 2 has plenty of time.

 

[The Ham]

And I'm sure NIMBY-ism and gold plating have played their part. I am in no doubt we NEED HS2, all the way to Lancaster and maybe beyond, and a branch to Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds and York. However did we need one designed to be as fast as HS2 was? Does a small congested country need the fastest conventional railway in the world? I really don't think so.

The thing with the Eastern arm is that a chunk of the distance (from London to the HS2 junction for it) would be shattered with other services, so the costs of that are shared between 17tph, so an uplift from 300kph running to 400kph alignments (but chiefly not running speeds) is going to be insignificant per train over a 60 year period.

From that junction to the stations served it's a different matter, as there's fewer trains. However, we're still taking about a lifetime of at least 60 years (and even then it's difficult to justify the benefits over such long timelines).

Also, unless building 2 railways of 140mph (given the number of people who call for line speed improvements to the ECML to this, it's not unreasonable to assume that 140mph should be the design speed vs 125mph) works out cheaper than HS2 (remembering the second line would need a new route into London and that's the very costly bit), the theory of building one very fast line rather than 2 fast lines makes sense.

Especially given that two lines wouldn't have provided the links to Birmingham which HS2 provides (so even if the two lines are a little cheaper they may still not be better value).

Given the fiasco of east-west rail, which I'm surprised isn't in the national conscious, Wouldn't surprise me to see an empty HS2 run with staff trains only for years

As I understand it part of the issue is DDO being proposed for East West Rail (even though the head of RSSB has said that the evidence is that it's safer, although he also said that wasn't to say that there wasn't a role for a second person on the train - that's not a cue to start a debate about it, just stating that the organisation responsible for rail safety has made their position clear) I'm not sure that HS2 would be looking to do that.

However, even if they are and it does result in further delays, 10 years after opening such things would likely be forgotten by most people.

 

[The Planner]

I am beginning to think that doing Phase 2a before Phase 1 was what needed to happen. Daft but get a cheap bit done first. The difficulty is that Phase 1 could not be broken down unless the delta junction and section to Handsacre was left out !.

The small easy bits are too small and the important expensive bit is too big !.

That couldn't be done without some sort of redesign as there is no junction facing the correct way at the southern end. You would need to build part of phase 1 into Birmingham for that to be able to be usable.

 

[Ian Hardy]

Some good points within this document, that applies to all projects https://assets.publishing.service.g...international-benchmarking-study-document.pdf. Many of the problems for HS2 are not HS2 specific - Hinkley Point C's budget doubled too.

View attachment 201041

What the diagram doesn't say is anything about government departments (and Treasury) involvement. No government project is given to a single major contractor because the Treasury is scared stiff of being bamboozled and overcharged. Easy for a thoroughly competent big contractor to do with the clueless bureaucrats and clerks in government departments and, of course, the Treasury.

 

[cats_five]

<snip>
I do believe that the advantage of easing pressure on the West Coast Main Line is something that was not sold very well.
<snip>

To me that is THE reason for HS2.

 

[mike57]

HS2's c0ckups aren't trivial, but I think you give too much credit to people's memories.

I know HS2 has been compared to Crossrail in terms of over spend and disasters, but Crossrail was pretty much delivered in full as planned, OK late and over budget. HS2 is not being delivered in full, if you take the original Y shaped route, way less than half of what was originally planned is being delivered. Anyone living in the 'North' is going to miss out on the benefits, (OK so people living in Manchester and suroundings will see some reduction in journey times, but not much, and anyone to the east, Yorkshire and the NE will see no benefit at all). This was not how it was originally pitched.

Its hard to tell what ends up forming a 'long term memory', but I could see this being one of those things.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Supposedly, the cancellation of HS2 East meant that MML and ECML upgrades would happen to improve journey times/capacity.
Except that even the MML full electrification has been "paused" (though maybe Leeds-Sheffield will now happen under the NPR banner).

 

[mmh]

but surely the better services using the capacity released on the S WCML will attract more business? I am looking forward to the inter-regional semi-fasts again (e.g. feeling the loss of Rugby calls when going S to Northampton.)
Unfortunately I doubt I shall live to see them...

Where's this new business going to come from? The south WCML is predominantly "commuter" journeys. There are relatively few leisure destinations. The days of forever increasing commuter traffic to London will be over, not least as a result of the normalisation of office workers working from home and online business meetings.

 

[NCT]

I know HS2 has been compared to Crossrail in terms of over spend and disasters, but Crossrail was pretty much delivered in full as planned, OK late and over budget. HS2 is not being delivered in full, if you take the original Y shaped route, way less than half of what was originally planned is being delivered. Anyone living in the 'North' is going to miss out on the benefits, (OK so people living in Manchester and suroundings will see some reduction in journey times, but not much, and anyone to the east, Yorkshire and the NE will see no benefit at all). This was not how it was originally pitched.

Its hard to tell what ends up forming a 'long term memory', but I could see this being one of those things.

A 30-minute journey time reduction, about 20% of the existing, is not 'not much'.

 

[AndrewE]

Where's this new business going to come from? The south WCML is predominantly "commuter" journeys. There are relatively few leisure destinations. The days of forever increasing commuter traffic to London will be over, not least as a result of the normalisation of office workers working from home and online business meetings.

I'm sure there is suppressed demand. We (one example) used to travel regularly from the NW taking our kids to see grandparents in the N of the home counties. It's how I know Rugby used to be a good interchange point.

This is where we have the old debate (again) about whether the economic wellbeing and modal shift/decarbonisation options of the rest of the country might improve if we could have public transport a bit closer to the standard available in the former NSE area.

 

[Bletchleyite]

A 30-minute journey time reduction, about 20% of the existing, is not 'not much'.

Quite. It's worth noting what a massive increase in passenger numbers a decrease of that magnitude already produced with West Coast Route Modernisation.

Before that London-Manchester was 1tph of Mk3s with peak extras. I think they were 9 car sets of 3 first, 1 buffet first, 5 Standard? That would have given (3 * 48) + (5 * 76) + whatever seats a buffet first had, I think 24, so a total of about 550 seats per hour. With 3tph there are now a minimum (assuming the Wikipedia seat numbers for a 9 car) of 1407 seats per hour, with up to 1821 per hour if all 3 are 11-car which they sometimes are. That's a huge increase and these trains are not empty or even close to it - it in effect killed domestic aviation on that route except connecting passengers. It's inconceivable that a similar decrease again wouldn't significantly up numbers further unless you price people off.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 25 Mar 2026 ==

Where's this new business going to come from? The south WCML is predominantly "commuter" journeys. There are relatively few leisure destinations.

There's one very big one at one end though. Possibly the biggest tourist destination in the world?

While the Tring semifasts tend to be quiet at leisure times, the rest of the south WCML operation is heaving, pretty much all the time. And commuter traffic IS returning, at least for three days a week!

 

[absolutelymilk]

Quite. It's worth noting what a massive increase in passenger numbers a decrease of that magnitude already produced with West Coast Route Modernisation.

Before that London-Manchester was 1tph of Mk3s with peak extras. I think they were 9 car sets of 3 first, 1 buffet first, 5 Standard? That would have given (3 * 48) + (5 * 76) + whatever seats a buffet first had, I think 24, so a total of about 550 seats per hour. With 3tph there are now a minimum (assuming the Wikipedia seat numbers for a 9 car) of 1407 seats per hour, with up to 1821 per hour if all 3 are 11-car which they sometimes are. That's a huge increase and these trains are not empty or even close to it - it in effect killed domestic aviation on that route except connecting passengers. It's inconceivable that a similar decrease again wouldn't significantly up numbers further unless you price people off.

Not to mention the increased reliability and avoiding the current Euston rush!

But we're getting a bit off topic here, so I'm going to suggest we pause the thread here until there is more detail in the summer.

 

[The Planner]

Where's this new business going to come from? The south WCML is predominantly "commuter" journeys. There are relatively few leisure destinations. The days of forever increasing commuter traffic to London will be over, not least as a result of the normalisation of office workers working from home and online business meetings.

Business travel is still growing year on year, so is commuting though to a smaller extent.

 

[Krokodil]

it's not unreasonable to assume that 140mph should be the design speed vs 125mph

Bald Rick has made the point before that 140mph requires the extra expense of swing-nose crossings for only a fairly small cut in journey times. If you're going to go to that expense then look at upgrading to 155mph (250km/h).

Business travel is still growing year on year, so is commuting though to a smaller extent.

And that's in spite of decades of pricing numbers off.

 

[Snow1964]

Business travel is still growing year on year, so is commuting though to a smaller extent.

Commuting has to some extent changed, a number of large businesses have relocated offices to regional centres where costs are lower (Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Leeds etc).

The shortened version of HS2 is not very well positioned for say a commuter from Sheffield to Leeds, or one from Swindon now going to Bristol, or one from St Albans now going to Birmingham etc. It is really designed for city centre to city centre users only, not for commuters in random towns to/from big cities.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The shortened version of HS2 is not very well positioned for say a commuter from Sheffield to Leeds, or one from Swindon now going to Bristol, or one from St Albans now going to Birmingham etc.

It isn't intended to do anything for the first two and never was intended to do anything for GWML passengers at all. For Snorbens to Brum it is possible that going via London* would be quicker, and it would certainly be more frequent - either way you're going to require a change of train unless driving to Watford Jn.

* Connections from MML/ECML to HS2 are one of the reasons why it needs to run to Euston!

 

[NCT]

The released capacity on WCML south will enable a very attractive commuter offer for London - Watford - MK (- Northampton) - Coventry - International - Birmingham, a string of high population and high employment locations.

 

[Snow1964]

It isn't intended to do anything for the first two and never was intended to do anything for GWML passengers at all. For Snorbens to Brum it is possible that going via London* would be quicker, and it would certainly be more frequent - either way you're going to require a change of train unless driving to Watford Jn.

* Connections from MML/ECML to HS2 are one of the reasons why it needs to run to Euston!

You have managed to highlight a different problem of commuters finding their work has moved to another city, they might need to drive to a different station now. But hasn't really been any encouragement to do so by enlarging station car parks over last 5 years

 

[NCT]

Where's this new business going to come from? The south WCML is predominantly "commuter" journeys. There are relatively few leisure destinations. The days of forever increasing commuter traffic to London will be over, not least as a result of the normalisation of office workers working from home and online business meetings.

The London office market disagrees.

The great central London office crisis

Far from being killed off by the pandemic, the office is back — so much so that the City is running out of space...

www.standard.co.uk

Also,

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/22/take-it-from-me-a-lone-wolf-office-life-best-education/

You have managed to highlight a different problem of commuters finding their work has moved to another city, they might need to drive to a different station now. But hasn't really been any encouragement to do so by enlarging station car parks over last 5 years

I think the 'driving to the station' argument is a bit of a red herring. With high employment concentration in city centres driving a car in becomes less attractive with rail being the only viable mode beyond a certain distance. The home end of access should be primarily by walking, cycling and bus, and most authorities are making good progress on that front. Parking should only be targeted at those coming from surrounding villages.

 

[PLY2AYS]

The shortened version of HS2 is not very well positioned for say a commuter from Sheffield to Leeds, or one from Swindon now going to Bristol

Aren’t those served by direct trains 1 or 2 stations apart?