Rory Sutherland's view: HS2 should be abandoned

[Kingston Dan]

I haven't justified the cost of HS2. It has been inflated by political meddling, poorly written contracts, a planning system not fit for national infrastructure projects, and external factors beyond the control of the DfT (materials inflation caused by covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine).

That doesn't mean that the basic premise behind the project - that the WCML is full (something you deny in spite of all of the evidence produced by the experts) and that the best way to solve this collar on our economic growth is to build a new line - was wrong.

Exactly!

 

[MatthewHutton]

Exactly!

I think letting HS2 limited off the hook for the cost rising to £1bn a mile is really pretty unreasonable.

Especially when HS1 was delivered for a much more reasonable price and the planning system etc wasn’t any worse.

 

[35B]

Pretty much every station on the network outside city centre ones is utilitarian. It’s only in modern times we have decided to make them prettier, it’s a waste of money.

I am not sure it’s different in other countries.

I think you need to look more broadly - until after WWII, there was a serious focus on railway architecture being attractive, not just utilitarian. And if you are looking at wastes of money, then I'd suggest the purely utilitarian building (CLASP, 1960s brutalism, Euston) hasn't aged that well in its own terms.

 

[MatthewHutton]

I think you need to look more broadly - until after WWII, there was a serious focus on railway architecture being attractive, not just utilitarian. And if you are looking at wastes of money, then I'd suggest the purely utilitarian building (CLASP, 1960s brutalism, Euston) hasn't aged that well in its own terms.

Attractive yes. And it’s a fair point about brutalism. But also all the Victorian stations do look the same and have simple designs.

 

[35B]

Most pre-WWI stations have standard designs.

Yes - but those standards involved consideration of form as well as function.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Yes - but those standards involved consideration of form as well as function.

Fair.

 

[35B]

Attractive yes. And it’s a fair point about brutalism. But also all the Victorian stations do look the same and have simple designs.

Can I suggest you get your hands on a copy of Gordon Biddle's "Britain's Historic Railway Buildings" and look at quite what a range of buildings there were, within individual companies. A look at Pevsner may also help

 

[MatthewHutton]

Can I suggest you get your hands on a copy of Gordon Biddle's "Britain's Historic Railway Buildings" and look at quite what a range of buildings there were, within individual companies. A look at Pevsner may also help

The victorians didn’t spend £40m on a basic station though. They probably spent a few thousand pounds or something like £1m in today’s money.

 

[Kingston Dan]

I think letting HS2 limited off the hook for the cost rising to £1bn a mile is really pretty unreasonable.

Especially when HS1 was delivered for a much more reasonable price and the planning system etc wasn’t any worse.

It's not £1billion per mile - the total cost includes stations and trains. It's a simple journalistic trick to divide one large number by a considerably smaller one and get a meaningless one. And no one is letting HS2 off the hook for the costs - but suggesting it has nothing to do with political meddling or bureaucratic incompetence is nonsensical.

 

[MatthewHutton]

It's not £1billion per mile - the total cost includes stations and trains. It's a simple journalistic trick to divide one large number by a considerably smaller one and get a meaningless one. And no one is letting HS2 off the hook for the costs - but suggesting it has nothing to do with political meddling or bureaucratic incompetence is nonsensical.

Euston and Old Oak Common plus the trains do not add £80bn of cost to the project. I doubt they even add £10bn

 

[JamesT]

Euston and Old Oak Common plus the trains do not add £80bn of cost to the project. I doubt they even add £10bn

Trains: £2bn
Euston: £7.5bn
Old Oak Common: £1.67bn
Birmingham Interchange: £370m
Curzon Street: £460m

 

[35B]

The victorians didn’t spend £40m on a basic station though. They probably spent a few thousand pounds or something like £1m in today’s money.

There are many reasons why the discrepancies exist. But I suggest you look at the costs overruns at some of the larger Victorian stations, and the challenges they faced getting them fit for purpose (arguably, they never finished the job properly at a number and always left a compromise). If you look at most of those stations, they were rebuilt significantly during their life, at significant cost and to require additional flexibility

Taking one at random, I've seen a figure (not verified) that the roof at St Pancras cost £53,000. Using the Bank of England inflation calculator, that's £5.4m in today's prices - without any of the other costs considered, and at Victorian labour rates, not modern.

The hotel, by the way, cost £450k - about £46m today.

Or for another, Kings Cross in the 1850s was £123.5k - £15.3m now.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Trains: £2bn
Euston: £7.5bn
Old Oak Common: £1.67bn
Birmingham Interchange: £370m
Curzon Street: £460m

The two London ones are more than a bit silly. Birmingham interchange should probably be less elaborate and less expensive too.

Euston should be able to in part at least cannibalise the existing station.

 

[InTheEastMids]

Sutherland was clearly on about improving the experience on trains. Not about making it better only for 1st class

Where he does have a point is that rail travel does not do much to make itself attractive and everybody has their own personal horror stories, and there are hundreds of threads: Overcrowding, delay, comfort, connections, accessibility, cost and the risk that honest mistakes with tickets leads to somebody with a name badge ripping up your ticket and treating you like a criminal.

Yes. Because building 320km/h high speed lines is standard whereas 360km/h or 400km/h is bespoke.

Going from 200km/h to what has been designed was apparently 9% saving in the design phase. We are saving 2-3% by descoping the train speeds. Collectively this is about £11Bn at current forecast. This is clearly not the major factor in the cost going from £35Bn to £100Bn.

I haven't justified the cost of HS2. It has been inflated by political meddling, poorly written contracts, a planning system not fit for national infrastructure projects, and external factors beyond the control of the DfT (materials inflation caused by covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine).

That doesn't mean that the basic premise behind the project - that the WCML is full (something you deny in spite of all of the evidence produced by the experts) and that the best way to solve this collar on our economic growth is to build a new line - was wrong.

Absolutely. One mistake this forum (and many others) keep making is comparing Actual HS2 to an imagined alternative scheme that was better. That is frankly magical thinking, because the issues with HS2 do not really relate to its design speed, or the route it has taken.

At the time people were learning from the French that it'd be good to future-proof higher speeds, Government was also failing to learn from the French about what an effective delivery approach to high speed rail looks like. Whilst HS2 Ltd was being stood up and thinking about design, the French were cracking on with LGV Tours-Bordeaux, delivering 300 km for €8Bn.

As @Krokodil says, the political meddling (desire for immediate tangible progress vs risk of summary cancellation), planning system and also government/supply chain inexperience of delivering projects like this led to a push to award main contracts when the designs and consenting were too immature. This led to badly written contracts, re-work, scope creep, delay, waste and cost.

Can the existing WCML really be improved to the point that 186mph would be possible? I would be interested to know how that could be done!

It would be quite easy to go through Berkhamsted this speed. You'd only do it once, mind and you'd literally be going through Berkhamsted, but hey the castle was already ruined, you just finished the job. Serious point is that getting much more speed out of the WCRM meant segregation (4/6-tracking) and getting rid of wiggly bits with bypasses as part of a structured, long-term programme. However, this still blends lots of online upgrades (see WCRM) and new-build (HS2). I do not understand why people just assert it'd have been delivered so much better than HS2.

Plus, said programme is much easier to cancel when it's half-baked, as MMLE was for the umpteenth time last year.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Going from 200km/h to what has been designed was apparently 9% saving in the design phase. We are saving 2-3% by descoping the train speeds. Collectively this is about £11Bn at current forecast. This is clearly not the major factor in the cost going from £35Bn to £100Bn.

According to a bunch of people who are utterly utterly incompetent.

 

[JamesT]

According to a bunch of people who are utterly utterly incompetent.

Likely the same people would have been involved with any other scheme to upgrade the railways...

 

[MatthewHutton]

Likely the same people would have been involved with any other scheme to upgrade the railways...

High speed one was much much better on cost grounds. As was everything done under Thatcher.

 

[JamesT]

High speed one was much much better on cost grounds. As was everything done under Thatcher.

HS1 cost three times per kilometre what a comparable French line did at the time. Despite being a replication of an LGV.
The owning company also went bust and had to be bailed out by the government.

 

[MatthewHutton]

HS1 cost three times per kilometre what a comparable French line did at the time. Despite being a replication of an LGV.
The owning company also went bust and had to be bailed out by the government.

This is true. But it’s also true that it goes through much more densely populated countryside with much more limited routing and with new urban approaches that would be unnecessary in France.

So it costing 3x more isn’t too bad.

Also the newest LGV - Bordeaux-Toulouse is something like £65m/mile - and the population density of that part of France is somewhat higher than the sections LGV Est and Sud Est were built through.

 

[SynthD]

Pretty much every station on the network outside city centre ones is utilitarian. It’s only in modern times we have decided to make them prettier, it’s a waste of money.

I am not sure it’s different in other countries.

That’s a personal judgement on architecture. I like both Hanwell and West Ealing, some only like one and not the other. Other countries also have surviving stations from most decades of rail.

Why would you do higher speeds than other high speed lines in larger countries when that was always going to drive up costs due to the lack of standardisation?

Why would the French say they should have built their lines faster? And why in a smaller country would it make sense either?

Not to stifle further conversation, but this has been well covered before. They built a network and know what they wished they’d done. Other countries had the exact same regret. Why is that only useful information if it sounds right to a self promoter on Shorts? How did we get 125mph or electrification without going beyond the standardisation of the time? HS1 is a good example of letting the expert (France) do it well and cheap, yet as quoted above a critic of it still had something to say. Maybe there will just always be critics.

 

[Krokodil]

Yes because you have bigger viaducts, bigger earthworks.

Plus it’s harder to avoid obstacles - so e.g more ancient woodland has been lost than would otherwise be the case. At 320km/h you could be further away from Wendover and Aylesbury for example as well - which would save money.

Perhaps. But do you know for certain that a cheaper route would have been chosen had the spec been for 320kph?

Also a higher speed train will cost more to buy and to operate.

Completely irrelevant when we're just talking about the alignment.

We have low ish birth rates, and ageing population and a political consensus moving away from large scale immigration.

Longer life expectancy is one of the reasons for population growth - people aren't dying as soon as they used to.

So when does lengthening trains stop creating capacity as I asked before. What do you do then?

One wag did once suggest that the way to boost capacity on the Great Western was to couple all of the Mk3s in a long line, stretching all of the way to Reading. Then you tell the commuters that there's empty seats down the front.

Why would the French say they should have built their lines faster?

Because it cost them a fortune to upgrade their original lines when technology improved.

 

[Harpo]

High speed one was much much better on cost grounds.

Agree entirely.

As was everything done under Thatcher.

Disagree with an absolute vehemence!

 

[Krokodil]

I think letting HS2 limited off the hook for the cost rising to £1bn a mile is really pretty unreasonable.

Good job that no one on here was letting them off of the hook then

 

[MatthewHutton]

Perhaps. But do you know for certain that a cheaper route would have been chosen had the spec been for 320kph

Of course it would have done, if only because you could have done smaller earthworks, smaller bridges, smaller tunnels and gone further away from houses and nature sites.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 22 May 2026 ==

Because it cost them a fortune to upgrade their original lines when technology improved

Is it ever really going to make sense to run trains at 400km/h so you could get to Edinburgh maybe 20 minutes quicker and Manchester/Leeds 10 minutes quicker? Especially when you can today get to Edinburgh in nearly 4 hours and would be able to do it in less than 4 hours with some pretty modest improvements - and where rail has a pretty good share on a 4 hour trip.

And at TGV speeds (I.e. 150mph average) you’d be doing London Edinburgh in 2h40.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 22 May 2026 ==

Good job that no one on here was letting them off of the hook then

I have seen a lot of people saying basically that it’s fine that HS2 costs many times more than our neighbours projects. Maybe not with the absolute latest cost increase, but before. And blaming the politicians and planning for the whole thing seems fairly unreasonable.

 

[yorksrob]

Attractive yes. And it’s a fair point about brutalism. But also all the Victorian stations do look the same and have simple designs.

That's not true at all. Different railway companies often had a house style, that resulted in a great deal of variety across the country.

Look at the architectural difference between Pluckley and Charing - next stops out of Ashford. Both Victorian station buildings but wildly different in architectural style.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 22 May 2026 ==

The victorians didn’t spend £40m on a basic station though. They probably spent a few thousand pounds or something like £1m in today’s money.

Probably not even that. Again, see Pluckley - the standard South Eastern Railway clap-board station.

 

[SynthD]

Is it ever really going to make sense to run trains at 400km/h so you could get to Edinburgh maybe 20 minutes quicker and Manchester/Leeds 10 minutes quicker?

It’s hard to answer that, as sense may be personal judgement. It depends on which experts or views are compelling or discredited.

But, while nobody was intending to run trains at 400km/h, I calculate the impact of that over 300km/h from Euston to Edinburgh at more like 50m, less with stops.

And blaming the politicians and planning for the whole thing seems fairly unreasonable.

The select committee did identify these as parts of the problem, along with project optimism and unforeseen problems that could be considered bad luck, eg intending to use Ukrainian resources. Maybe the minutes of those sessions would help you.

 

[MatthewHutton]

That's not true at all. Different railway companies often had a house style, that resulted in a great deal of variety across the country.

But it’s still true that for suburban and rural stations there was a shared style that was followed for lots of stations.

So with HS2 if Euston, Manchester Piccadilly and Curzon Street had custom design and Old Oak Common, Birmingham Interchange and any other additional stops had the house style that wasn’t utilitarian but wasn’t elaborate that would be fine.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 22 May 2026 ==

ut, while nobody was intending to run trains at 400km/h, I calculate the impact of that over 300km/h from Euston to Edinburgh at more like 50m, less with stops.

Ok so non stop with 1 minute per 100km/h acceleration and braking and 10% performance allowance it would be 110 minutes at 400km/h and 144 minutes at 300km/h - or 34 minutes. Clearly the gap would be smaller with stops - and there’s also a question about whether you can do 0-400-0 with a 4 minute delay over full speed like you can do 0-300-0 with a 3 minute delay on the Shinkansen.

 

[yorksrob]

But it’s still true that for suburban and rural stations there was a shared style that was followed for lots of stations.

So with HS2 if Euston, Manchester Piccadilly and Curzon Street had custom design and Old Oak Common, Birmingham Interchange and any other additional stops had the house style that wasn’t utilitarian but wasn’t elaborate that would be fine.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 22 May 2026 ==


Ok so non stop with 1 minute per 100km/h acceleration and braking and 10% performance allowance it would be 110 minutes at 400km/h and 144 minutes at 300km/h. Clearly the gap would be smaller with stops.

Indeed.

Railway companies have always been good at developing a house style for architecture. But for most of those railway companies, the style was a "brand" to promote the company.

Victorian stations with attractive buildings and canopies (see Tunbridge Wells Central), art deco modernism (Ramsgate), modern post war (Stafford).

Stations have always been a shop window to the railway.

 

[Falcon1200]

It literally is.

I know that perfectly well! I was responding to another contributor stating that there should be more stations on HS2.

 

[The Planner]

Why would the French say they should have built their lines faster? And why in a smaller country would it make sense either?

Watch Green Signals, that's what they claim.