After today's news, your take on HS2 might be a little stretched even for the optimistic among us.
Yes, people have a habit of accepting things once completed, as proved by HS1, but HS2 is a whole different story.
HS1 wasn't decimated.
Neither did it go over budget by several hundred percent.
Nor was it delayed for years. And years. And years.
By the time HS2 is opened, many of us who had looked forward to using it will be past having the need to do so. And we'll be suffering financially as successive Governments try to claw back its ever increasing costs.
It will be a fair bit harder to be so forgiving of earlier doubts with a scheme that has been so incredibly badly managed.
Two of the specific elements which were part of the issue are mentioned in the reporting from the BBC (note; the quotes are not in the same order as the article has them, but in an order which suits me):
"There's a fundamental problem in the UK with the cost of building anything," says one insider. Then there are questions about the planning system
www.bbc.co.uk
1) that planning reform was needed as without it a council could block approvals almost on a whim, for example blocking planning due to 60 lorries in a 12 week period, at 10 a fortnight that's only about double what we have for waste collection over a fortnight (1 general waste, 1 glass, 2 food waste and 1 other recycling) and even without food waste is only about 3 times thenumber from a very low base.
That's something we've got to live with ongoing and not just for 12 weeks (note I'm not suggesting our waste collection is an issue, rather that what was being asked wasn't much more than household waste collection and we couldn't object to the volume of waste collection):
The final vote for the first leg of HS2 between London and Birmingham was won by more than 350 votes in October 2013. The bill was supported across the main parties, and ministers understood HS2 had a clear road ahead.
"I was told that [the bill] basically gave the planning approval," says Patrick McLoughlin, who was the Transport Secretary between 2012 and 2016.
"Of course, it subsequently turns out that that was not the case."
MPs backed the first part of HS2 with cross-bench support from Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems
In reality, the hybrid bill only offered "deemed planning permission" - HS2 say they have since needed to acquire more than 8,000 further permissions from councils and other agencies.
It hasn't always been given.
Take the case of Dobbins Lane in Buckinghamshire. In April, the local council considered planning permission for HS2 to upgrade a farm track running into a nearby field. This work was needed in order to build an underground box to monitor groundwater levels, which in turn was a requirement of a tunnel being dug through the nearby hills. Without it, HS2 warned, delays could cost tens of millions.
But more than 800 local residents signed a petition against works because of a temporary increase in road traffic: 60 lorries would need to reach the site during a 12 week period.
And the request for planning permission was rejected - another potential cost added.
Ed Lister, who worked as Deputy Mayor of London and later as Boris Johnson's chief of staff, says the planning system is to blame
Ed Lister, who was Deputy Mayor of London between 2011 and 2016 and later served as Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, blames the UK's planning system.
"You've got to break that log-jam," he argues. "If these are your big projects, then they have to go through."
He wants changes to the judicial review system to make it harder to frustrate projects such as HS2 through the courts.
2) that costs associated with getting MP's on side appeared to have no limit, with "£100 million being added in an afternoon":
Much of the route cut through rural constituencies, represented mostly by Conservative MPs, who made it clear to then-Prime Minister David Cameron that their approval for the project would require serious negotiation and compromise.
Ministers picked something unusual to make it happen: a hybrid bill, only the third of its kind enacted since 1992.
These allow MPs to vote on whether a piece of infrastructure should go ahead, but those directly affected are given the right to petition against it and ask for details to be changed.
HS2 had to run through mostly Conservative rural constituencies, where many MPs told David Cameron they'd only support it if major compromises were made
Councils, businesses and individuals made their case in front of a government committee asking for everything from noise barriers to financial compensation for communities losing green space. Last-minute negotiations often took place in the corridors outside.
The approach meant the bill was flexible - but critics have argued it was also needlessly complex and expensive.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown was a Conservative MP and was one of the committee members who heard out petitions. "I remember very clearly one of the Secretaries of State for Transport, after an afternoon session, say, well done, Geoffrey, you've just cost us another couple of hundred million this afternoon."
A spreadsheet shows the thousands of assurances which were added as a result - among them, £250,000 to insulate a church, £500,000 for a new park (on top of an extra £10m for a community fund), as well as £10,000 to renovate a listed drinking fountain.
Vast cost was added in order to avoid or compensate for individual inconvenience.
One of the most expensive parts of these measures were the tunnels. Through public consultation and the hybrid bill, the design now features so many of them - along with noise barriers and cuttings, where track is laid below ground level - that on a 49-minute journey from London to Birmingham passengers will only have a view of the countryside for nine.
HS2 Ltd, the company created by the Department for Transport, accepts it failed to keep overall costs under control and says delivery has not matched what it describes as the unrealistic early expectations.
In another BBC article it picks up two other points:
A new reviews confirms the high-speed rail line's "original sins" include a technical design, changing political priorities and ballooning costs.
www.bbc.co.uk
3) more planning time, with good project management being design slow build fast:
The chair of the Transport Committee, Ruth Cadbury, said the problem with HS2 was "not just the speed, but also that spades were in the ground before the project had been fully designed, permits granted and so on".
"It broke the mantra of major projects, which is 'plan slow and build fast'," she told the BBC's Today programme.
Cadbury said that from the start "there was such an urgency from politicians of the time to get on with it" that the full specification of the project and all the risks associated with it had not been worked out.
4) less political interference, or changing political priorities, which have been reported over the years with each change resulting in more design costs often with the goal of saving money but most likely after (say) 3 design changes the cost savings would likely be limited:
This latest report, set to be published this week, is authored by former National Security Adviser Sir Stephen Lovegrove and has considered the implications for the civil service and public sector.
It is expected to agree with a previous review, external that HS2's so-called "original sins" included changing political priorities and ballooning costs.
let's look at what was said in the post you quoted:
HS2 is a great idea, and I wouldn’t change the route. It just needed the planning permission reforms first, a tighter oversight on cost, more planning time and less political interference.
Once it’s completed, everyone will think it’s an obviously great idea that we’ll be proud of for decades, unless they throw the baby out with the bath water and cut too many costs and benefits.
1 planning reforms
2 tighter control of costs
3 more planning time
4 less political interference
That covers the main elements in the reporting, as such, hardly a stretched view, arguably, with those elements in place from the start HS2 could have been much closer to the original budget, and much more likely to have been delivered closer to the original timeline.
Yes, it's happening in the UK, so would have been late and over budget, that's taken as read, but not by the margins we are currently seeing.
For example, planning for national infrastructure projects should be assumed to be given, planning authorities may ask for clarification and then if there's still significant concerns of significant risk or harms they can request review by the planning inspectorate - i.e. the impact of 5 lorry movements a week isn't likely to be significant and even if it was isn't likely to cause significant risk or harms (it may do, in the right circumstances, hence the right to request a review, but that would likely require the council to justify why the review was required - and so the onus is on them to explain why).
Likewise, set a budget for the
bribes support packages to get the MP's and communities on side. For example, reviewing the costs for one constituency and if it reached a certain threshold (based on population size within a given distance) accept that MP isn't going to support it and walk away without spending anything (ideally start somewhere where the MP was likely to oppose any change anyway and so their "loss" wouldn't be more of an issue than was expected).
Yes, there'll be a political cost, however, the remaining MP's and communities would want something rather than nothing and so would keep their wish lists limited.
Likewise, have full designs, which at the very least least included ground investigation. The designs are the expected design, but the tender is a design, build and operate one with any cost savings for the term of the operation being split 60:40 in favour of the operator over the government. Whilst extra costs would be covered 60:40 on the same ratio split.
In doing so, true cost savings are rewarded but building cheap to build twice would harm the contractor's profit margins.
