Burnham proposes revival of HS2 Birmingham-Manchester funded by land value capture

[Magrar]

Whatever the pros and cons, It's certainly bizarre that he's even talking about something that wouldn't be completed for decades, given the context of his run at Starmer's job.

 

[camflyer]

Whatever the pros and cons, It's certainly bizarre that he's even talking about something that wouldn't be completed for decades, given the context of his run at Starmer's job.

One of the reasons is that we are incapable of big projects like HS2, nuclear and airport expansion is that the plans change every time there is a new PM or Transport Secretary.

I hope Burnham keeps Heidi Alexander in the job as she does seem to have a decent grasp of the brief and the transport sector could do with some political stability. Unless Louise Haigh wants her old job back as she is sure to be in Burnham's cabinet...

 

[josh-j]

Capacity, capacity, they shout. If capacity was such an urgent problem, HS2 would be built ASAP, not in ten years time, so that section is not so vital as you might think.

I've no idea how you can have such a high opinion of the way this country operates when it comes to the railway. There is major overcrowding on many routes, but no sign of anybody trying to solve that "asap", whether through infrastructure upgrades, additional trains or anything else.

TRU took decades of continued cancellation and revival before getting anywhere near construction. Oxford road corridor capacity improvement was cancelled after part of it "the Ordsall Chord) was already being built.

Unfortunately we can't rely on "well if it was that bad someone would have fixed it by now". We don't fix things in this country, we delay fixing things.

 

[MatthewHutton]

You are not going to raise anything clos to £36bn from Land value capture on this line.

It has barely any stations so barely any land affected by value increases!

You don’t need £36bn to do HS2 phase 2a to TGV standards. You don’t even need £3.6bn if it’s competently planned.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Jun 2026 ==

One of the reasons is that we are incapable of big projects like HS2, nuclear and airport expansion is that the plans change every time there is a new PM or Transport Secretary.

I hope Burnham keeps Heidi Alexander in the job as she does seem to have a decent grasp of the brief and the transport sector could do with some political stability. Unless Louise Haigh wants her old job back as she is sure to be in Burnham's cabinet...

Spain is a counter example for that - https://pedestrianobservations.com/2026/05/28/meme-weeding-regular-funding/

And Heidi Alexander is extremely weak and needs to go. She hasn’t even got East West rail opened - nor has she got costs down on HS2 or got sensible timelines.

She also hasn’t got road costs/standards down either. The roads we built in the 1930s are perfectly good enough for the 70mph top speeds of our roads and are likely generally good enough for ~90-100mph subject to multiple carriageways. It’s implausible that we will raise speeds so high.

 

[Magrar]

One of the reasons is that we are incapable of big projects like HS2, nuclear and airport expansion is that the plans change every time there is a new PM or Transport Secretary.

You've got that backwards I think. The plans of such things invariably have to change precisely because the ever changing faces in poltiical office results in slow, timid or even non-existent project management.

The change Burnham speaks of is clearly, ironically, about Labour not being so horrifically bad in the short term, they are in office long enough to give a project like HS2 the necessary stability and thus strong poltical management to not need major changes to the plans years down the line.

It's just bizarre he thinks this is a priority right now. Unless it really is a sign he's already confident of rebuilding Labour to become a serious, generational force.

 

[MatthewHutton]

You've got that backwards I think. The plans of such things invariably have to change precisely because the ever changing faces in poltiical office results in slow, timid or even non-existent project management.

The change Burnham speaks of is clearly, ironically, about Labour not being so horrifically bad in the short term, they are in office long enough to give a project like HS2 the necessary stability and thus strong poltical management to not need major changes to the plans years down the line.

It's just bizarre he thinks this is a priority right now. Unless it really is a sign he's already confident of rebuilding Labour to become a serious, generational force.

Phase 2a (or strictly at least 50% of phase 2a) is necessary to get reasonable benefits from HS2 as many people have said here.

I suspect Haigh realises this and has pushed it as she has always seemed competent.

 

[HSTEd]

You don’t need £36bn to do HS2 phase 2a to TGV standards. You don’t even need £3.6bn if it’s competently planned.

If you want a project for £3.6bn then I don't think much, if any, of the existing work is salvageable.
HS2 claimed "up to" £7bn for HS2 Phase 2A years ago, and they have consistently underestimated the outturn cost.

If you want a cheaper scheme, short of just truncating it to Hixon with the minimum possible "new" work, you are likely to have to start from scratch.
And that will be many years more delay given the glacial pace of planning and approvals in Britain today.

 

[MatthewHutton]

If you want a project for £3.6bn then I don't think much, if any, of the existing work is salvageable.
HS2 claimed "up to" £7bn for HS2 Phase 2A years ago, and they have consistently underestimated the outturn cost.

If you want a cheaper scheme, short of just truncating it to Hixon with the minimum possible "new" work, you are likely to have to start from scratch.
And that will be many years more delay given the glacial pace of planning and approvals in Britain today.

So don’t salvage anything, speed up the planning and bribe the people who live along the line in the midlands with stops. And also as London is a perfectly reasonable destination for those places you can do literally one service an hour and still add value for people living there.

We do need to solve these planning problems anyway to deliver a metro for Manchester and Leeds or Northern powerhouse rail in any form.

 

[JonathanH]

And Heidi Alexander is extremely weak and needs to go. She hasn’t even got East West rail opened - nor has she got costs down on HS2 or got sensible timelines.

So don’t salvage anything, speed up the planning and bribe the people who live along the line in the midlands with stops. And also as London is a perfectly reasonable destination for those places you can do literally one service an hour and still add value for people living there.

I'm not sure this is consistent. In one post you are mentioning costs not being under control then in another seeking to add costs for something that isn't in the current project scope.

 

[MatthewHutton]

I'm not sure this is consistent. In one post you are mentioning costs not being under control then in another seeking to add costs for something that isn't in the current project scope.

Stops are cheap and they give you more ridership as well. Even the French stops are profitable where the population density is much lower.

Don’t forget without stops you get higher costs on everything else as HS2 found with phase 1

 

[FMerrymon]

they have consistently underestimated the outturn cost

Mark Wild has said this is mainly due to not having mature designs before proceeding. Along with lessons learnt from contract procurement, proposed planning reform, an experienced workforce, far greater knowledge of the costs of moving soil, a smaller, less complex project that can be managed more effectively, a cheaper project that wouldn't be subject to changes in annual funding limits, no big terminus with a design change every couple of years, it may have a better chance of not going over it's budget.

There is also a 1.1bn in 2019 prices write down on phase 1's budget which may have work done that can be useful, the land is already acquired. Take off slab track, put the changes at Crewe on NR's budget and the cost for completion could be quite reasonable.

Stops are cheap

A stop in the country side will need additional roads, changes to the hybrid bill. There were plans for additional stops on existing lines as a result of the released capacity, such as in Stoke.

Don’t forget without stops you get higher costs on everything else as HS2 found with phase 1

We should forget it as that is not correct.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Jun 2026 ==

It's not a billion pounds a mile - the cost includes things like stations and trains that international comparisons exclude btw.

Exactly and why Britain remade figures a re deeply flawed in their recent report comparing directly to tours-bordeax. Plus it's not a billion pounds a mile anyway, phase 1 is 140miles.

 

[HSTEd]

There is also a 1.1bn in 2019 prices write down on phase 1's budget which may have work done that can be useful, the land is already acquired. Take off slab track, put the changes at Crewe on NR's budget and the cost for completion could be quite reasonable.

It's a common point used to attack HS2, but I doubt slab track will make any meaningful difference to the cost, and abandoning it would impose ongoing costs that would have to be covered by someone. Indeed abandoning it may force redesigns of infrastructure that was designed with the assumption that slab track would be installed.

Likewise trying to force NR to pay for Crewe out of the regular railway budget might allow you to quote a lower figure for political reasons, but concealing the cost doesn't actually make the cost go away. It still ends up on the public finances one way or the other.

A stop in the country side will need additional roads, changes to the hybrid bill.

New stations are regularly approved using the TWAO procedure without an act of parliament. So I doubt they would be any more difficult in planning terms than on the normal railway, and much easier to add given they would end being built at the same time as the regular railway.

Mark Wild has said this is mainly due to not having mature designs before proceeding. Along with lessons learnt from contract procurement, proposed planning reform, an experienced workforce, far greater knowledge of the costs of moving soil, a smaller, less complex project that can be managed more effectively, a cheaper project that wouldn't be subject to changes in annual funding limits, no big terminus with a design change every couple of years, it may have a better chance of not going over it's budget.

Mark Wild may indeed be correct, however we must remember he is a HS2 employee and is hardly likely to say "our company has failed utterly, scrap all further work, wind us up and sack everyone" is he?

 

[MatthewHutton]

We should forget it as that is not correct.

Every other project globally did more stops and every other project globally was cheaper.

A stop in the country side will need additional roads, changes to the hybrid bill. There were plans for additional stops on existing lines as a result of the released capacity, such as in Stoke.

There would clearly be some costs. An A38, A46 or M6 stop would need a new road junction for example. But that would be massively less than the fare revenue you would bring in assuming vaguely reasonable road costs.

Haddenham and Thame Parkway might be somewhat smaller than an HS2 stop in Buckinghamshire - but not by a massive margin (especially at peak as an HS2 stop would have flatter ridership) and the only road investment it got was a roundabout.

With a Buckinghamshire stop if you think the ridership would be say 3m or less than the Haddenham and Thame Parkway road investment - i.e very little - is perfectly adequate - and if it’s more than that then the £80-100m a year of revenue you’d bring in (which you’d get for 3m passengers a year) justifies significant further investment.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Jun 2026 ==

New stations are regularly approved using the TWAO procedure without an act of parliament. So I doubt they would be any more difficult in planning terms than on the normal railway, and much easier to add given they would end being built at the same time as the regular railway.

It’s difficult to see why an HS2 stop would need to be more expensive than maybe £10-20m. Yes it would need separate tracks or some sort of platform edge barriers (which aren’t that expensive) but also it isn’t on a live railway so it’s much closer to the “1m high wall plus driveway on top” cost that a train platform should be.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Jun 2026 ==

Exactly and why Britain remade figures a re deeply flawed in their recent report comparing directly to tours-bordeax. Plus it's not a billion pounds a mile anyway, phase 1 is 140miles

£750m a mile is still indefensibly ridiculous when HS1 was £100m/mile adjusted for inflation and pretty much every other project globally was cheaper.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Jun 2026 ==

Well, if as its proponents say HS2 will allow for improved local service to existing stations...

In some cases but not all. It’s not true south of Birmingham as there’s a different alignment and further north HS2 doesn’t really address the capacity constraints at Birmingham new street or Manchester Piccadilly

 

[AlexSJW]

I've no idea how you can have such a high opinion of the way this country operates when it comes to the railway. There is major overcrowding on many routes, but no sign of anybody trying to solve that "asap", whether through infrastructure upgrades, additional trains or anything else.

TRU took decades of continued cancellation and revival before getting anywhere near construction. Oxford road corridor capacity improvement was cancelled after part of it "the Ordsall Chord) was already being built.

Unfortunately we can't rely on "well if it was that bad someone would have fixed it by now". We don't fix things in this country, we delay fixing things.

Longer trains solves many of the problems. As I wrote: If capacity was such an urgent problem, HS2 would be built ASAP, not in ten years time.

 

[The Planner]

A flying junction just before Stone then new tack to north of Norton Bridge where another flying junction takes Liverpool, Lancs and Scots trains onto the WCML. Then HS2 reaches Stone, then Mcr trains branch via Stone and Liverpool, Lancs and Scots trains toward the WCML. It is in one of Network Rails Stafford bypass alternatives near enough.

Ok, so its not just building to Hixon. There weren't anywhere near that many flying junctions planned for the Stafford bypass.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Ok, so its not just building to Hixon. There weren't anywhere near that many flying junctions planned for the Stafford bypass.

There are lots of flying junctions on the bargain basement high speed lines in continental Europe. They aren’t or at least shouldn’t be hugely expensive.

 

[The Planner]

There are lots of flying junctions on the bargain basement high speed lines in continental Europe. They aren’t or at least shouldn’t be hugely expensive.

Thats not what I was replying about. The original Stafford bypass plans didnt have them. You can still see the space made for the junction feather on the down fast north of Rugeley.

 

[Manutd1999]

I see it as three options

A - build HS2 to Handsacre and stop

B - Build to Handsacre then extend further to Baldwins Gate (ie, Phase 2a without the Crewe bit)

C - Scrap Handsacre, build HS2 to Hixon + an extra Stone-WCML chord and 2x extra junctions with the Colwich-Stoke line.

Option A is cheapest but C is better value IMO and probably cheaper than B, with a very similar overall benefit.

 

[josh-j]

Longer trains solves many of the problems. As I wrote: If capacity was such an urgent problem, HS2 would be built ASAP, not in ten years time.

But we don't have longer trains. Surely if we needed them we'd have them?

 

[317 forever]

Oh opinions. Wow.
Perhaps he wants to be in the history books instead of Keir Starmer for leading this government to victory in 2029

Yes, that probably is his genuine reason for being after the premiership.

It's just I couldn't resist joking after you described HS2 as a vote loser

 

[MidlandMainlie]

I see it as three options

A - build HS2 to Handsacre and stop

B - Build to Handsacre then extend further to Baldwins Gate (ie, Phase 2a without the Crewe bit)

C - Scrap Handsacre, build HS2 to Hixon + an extra Stone-WCML chord and 2x extra junctions with the Colwich-Stoke line.

Option A is cheapest but C is better value IMO and probably cheaper than B, with a very similar overall benefit.

Could a combination of B and C be possible, ie extending HS2 to Baldwins gate (to bypass Stafford), but also building a cord to from HS2 to Hixton for Stoke on Trent and Manchester and not building the Handsacre link which would bypass the bottlenecks at Colwich Junction and Shughbrough?

 

[Manutd1999]

Could a combination of B and C be possible, ie extending HS2 to Baldwins gate (to bypass Stafford), but also building a cord to from HS2 to Hixton for Stoke on Trent and Manchester and not building the Handsacre link which would bypass the bottlenecks at Colwich Junction and Shughbrough?

I dont see why not - it would be a trade between extra track miles of HS2 vs extra junctions and upgrades around the Colwich-Stoke line.

Either option is better than building Handsacre IMO, which is poorly located and was never intended to be the main connection point to the WCML.

 

[MatthewHutton]

I see it as three options

A - build HS2 to Handsacre and stop

B - Build to Handsacre then extend further to Baldwins Gate (ie, Phase 2a without the Crewe bit)

C - Scrap Handsacre, build HS2 to Hixon + an extra Stone-WCML chord and 2x extra junctions with the Colwich-Stoke line.

Option A is cheapest but C is better value IMO and probably cheaper than B, with a very similar overall benefit.

B lets you do an M6 parkway which C doesn’t really.

 

[Krokodil]

Longer trains solves many of the problems.

How do you lengthen an 11 car Pendolino while making no changes to the infrastructure? Maybe we should build infrastructure that can take 400m trains. Oh wait...

As I wrote: If capacity was such an urgent problem, HS2 would be built ASAP, not in ten years time.

Have you got some kind of magic wand that can build things faster then? We'd all love for it to be open yesterday, but it's not physically possible.

 

[squingo44]

why isn’t the most realistic option to build phase 2a, in full, as planned?

 

[JonathanH]

Even if Mr Burnham was to commit to HS2 reaching Manchester, presumably this would be in the late 2040s or early 2050s, so outside the time of the current and next parliament. In that instance, the cost just sits on the government's plans, and presumably pushes other projects down the agenda. Effectively, it must just mean safeguarding the alignment for a bit longer, and not selling off the land.

 

[MatthewHutton]

How do you lengthen an 11 car Pendolino while making no changes to the infrastructure? Maybe we should build infrastructure that can take 400m trains. Oh wait...

The costs to get from 275m to 400m are pretty big…

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Jun 2026 ==

Even if Mr Burnham was to commit to HS2 reaching Manchester, presumably this would be in the late 2040s or early 2050s, so outside the time of the current and next parliament. In that instance, the cost just sits on the government's plans, and presumably pushes other projects down the agenda. Effectively, it must just mean safeguarding the alignment for a bit longer, and not selling off the land.

I think getting to even Crewe is relatively straightforward. But beyond that it’s much more difficult. So it depends what “gets to Manchester” means. You could argue getting to Crewe “gets to Manchester”

 

[Krokodil]

The costs to get from 275m to 400m are pretty big…

Have you got a cheap way to increase capacity then? The existing stations (particularly Euston, New Street and Piccadilly) have had their platforms lengthened as far as possible without major rebuilds to the stations. There's no doing that cheaply.

 

[MatthewHutton]

Have you got a cheap way to increase capacity then? The existing stations (particularly Euston, New Street and Piccadilly) have had their platforms lengthened as far as possible without major rebuilds to the stations. There's no doing that cheaply.

To be fair HS2 with 275m trains to north of Stafford increases capacity by a fair margin.

Beyond that it’s more difficult as clearly either you need new stations or possibly extend the platforms of the existing ones if that’s realistic to 400m to have acceptable stopping times. Given people can’t cope with being in the right section of the south eastern high speed services I am not sure partial door opening is sufficient.

But a high speed line on a new alignment into Manchester or Liverpool would basically have to be tunnelled under the entire city - and it’s probably not politically viable to do it cut and cover - if that even saves much money given utilities.

 

[Krokodil]

To be fair HS2 with 275m trains to north of Stafford increases capacity by a fair margin.

Only south from Stafford. Great for Birmingham, Milton Keynes, and various other stations. No good for Manchester, which is possibly the most profitable passenger flow in the UK. Also no good for Scotland, where airlines are ripe for poaching from.

I am not sure partial door opening is sufficient.

SDO is a fudge that is tolerable when a train is slightly longer than the platform at a secondary station, provided that it doesn't foul the station throat. Having 100m hanging off at the sort of stations HS2 services will call is obviously silly.