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

[rmHawk765]

Surely hour isn't an SI unit.

It's just the formatting - km/h or км/ч is universal, using a division symbol (/).

 

[quantinghome]

So what happens when a future government 30 years down the line announces a new project to connect HS2 to Scotland? You are now building a 400ish mile route and the bottom half is forever constrained because no one futureproofed it.

Already answered up-thread. At best a 360km/h line would save 11 minutes on the overall journey compared to 320km/h. It's really not the problem you seem to think it is.

And what gain is there overall? The longest distance of a potential high speed line in the UK being talked about is London-Scotland, around 400 miles (I don't think anyone's suggesting a direct Plymouth-Aberdeen high speed line). Assume a 320kph top speed over that distance (allowing 40km at each end to accelerate up to speed and decelerate down from that speed). That gives you a journey time of 2h15.

Now take the top speed up to 360kph, and you get a journey time of 2h04 - a saving of a whopping... 11 minutes!

That assumes there are no intermediate stops (which would limit the gains of higher speed running), AND also assumes that a 360kph alignment is feasible through the terrain of North of England and Scottish Borders - which it almost certainly isn't. None of the early-doors concepts to extend HS2 to Scotland were talking about running at those kinds of speeds.

Bear in mind that the purpose of building a high speed line to Scotland would be to transfer the large number of Scotland-London flights to rail. The rule of thumb is that you need to get below a 3 hour rail journey to take out air travel. So saving a few minutes to get the journey down from 2h15 to just over 2 hours doesn't really seem to have much of a point.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

And all this talking and discussing speed- surely you are making the points of the antiHS2 brigade. Its about capacity (and yes I know speed and capacity are related).

 

[Krokodil]

Savings on this scale seem surprising given alignment is set and civils so advanced. The biggest area must surely be in replacing slab track with ballasted track where suitable. Not sure your going to save anything on OLE and signalling. So perhaps just a UK gauge version of a Frecciarossa could save time and type testing but Hitachi/Alstom will want compensation.

It reads like the savings were purely down to only needing to test to 320km/h which reduces the risk of issues cropping up because this is a much more conventional speed for HSR. No mention by the minister of saving on the actual infrastructure itself.

 

[Taunton]

Mark Wild’s initial and provisional estimate is that a specification at reduced speeds could save in the low billions

I fear this, like all the other HS2 estimates, will progressively turn out to be fiction as well. Why will this be accurate when all the other ones have not been? Of course the project leader will tell the minister what they want to hear. Maybe next week, with talk of a reshuffle, it will be a different minister and starting yet again. But when it comes to starting again with contracts which have already been let for infrastructure and rolling stock, you can bet the suppliers have no thoughts about reducing what they quoted for. Variations are only for increasing margins. We can descope what we are supplying, but miraculously it will cost the same. And the areas for saving have already been done (we started 7 years ago) and will have to be scrapped.

 

[RichardAsh1981]

Where's the step change that makes 320kph okay and 360kph not?

I read somewhere that on the TGV the difference in electricity consumption, and so cost, was massive, way more than the revenue benefit. Power to overcome air resistance goes with the cube of speed, hence a doubling of power to get from 100mph to 125mph, which I have also seen quoted.

How much extra did building to a 400km/h alignment cost compared with a 200km/h alignment?

I would love to know - no one has ever been keen to talk about the costs in land purchase, historic site clearance and so on of doubling the minimum curve radius (horizontal and vertical), resulting in a railway which cannot go round but must plough through everything (this is a much more crowded landscape than much of France). How many of the things which had to be tunnelled or screened could have been avoided altogether with a slightly lower speed alignment?

 

[The Ham]

I read somewhere that on the TGV the difference in electricity consumption, and so cost, was massive, way more than the revenue benefit. Power to overcome air resistance goes with the cube of speed, hence a doubling of power to get from 100mph to 125mph, which I have also seen quoted.

Taking a TGV train running at 320kph and using 7,000kWh with an energy cost of 20p the cost to travel London to Manchester would be £1,400, or about £2.55 per passenger assuming 50% loading on a HS2 train (even 25% loading that's only £5.10).

However, it's worth noting that the existing 390's would use 3,900kWh (as they are not as effective, due to their extra weight) and have far fewer seats and so those costs aren't additional costs. The additional costs are likely to be much less than that (maybe around the £1 each way per passenger mark)

However, as I've mentioned before, your staff costs (due to faster journey times) are likely to be lower, again especially as each driver can drive more passengers per train, which would reduce that overall increase (maybe to around £1 for a return).

Likewise, as I've pointed out before, the number of coaches needed to run HS2 services are basically the same as running the current fleet due to the journey time savings.

However, even an extra £4 in energy costs on a return ticket to Manchester (when the probability is closer to £1) isn't going to make a significant difference.

I would love to know - no one has ever been keen to talk about the costs in land purchase, historic site clearance and so on of doubling the minimum curve radius (horizontal and vertical), resulting in a railway which cannot go round but must plough through everything (this is a much more crowded landscape than much of France). How many of the things which had to be tunnelled or screened could have been avoided altogether with a slightly lower speed alignment?

In theory a dead straight route should take less land than one which wiggles about, however when it's in tunnels a dead straight route is definitely not an issue.

Between 50kph and 400kph the difference in level, assuming 1 in 30 gradients, would be around 42m due to a change in radius from 120m to 5,120m.

However no one is designing a 50kph railway, a more realistic speed would be 140mph (2,000m radius) and so that would reduce to 26m.

However, 1 in 30 is fairly steep for any railway and would only be used to solve a significant issue (and would probably already be borderline as to is a tunnel or bridge was a better solution) for most areas along the route those gradients are more likely to be (say) 1 in 200 and therefore a more likely level difference is 4m.

Whilst even that is a noticeable number it's unlikely that it would result in a shift in ground level by that much (as the engineers would be looking to balance the cut and fill) and so they would (where possible) lift one end by a bit and drop the other by a bit and/or make changes to the gradient.

Even then, a change of 4m in height would be a change of between 12m to 16m of cutting or embankment width.

 

[cats_five]

Every time I see the '100% overspend' shock headline, I think of Glens Sannox & Rosa where it's a mere 400%...

 

[mike57]

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.

 

[Krokodil]

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.

Crossrail was dogged with issues but that's all forgotten about now, it's a roaring success.

 

[quantinghome]

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.

No, it will quickly become part of the essential infrastructure of the country and the cost will be forgotten by everyone apart from economists and civil engineers. Why am I so confident about this? Because it's happened time and time and time again. Here, in no particular order, is a non-comprehensive list of some UK engineering projects which massively overran:

Channel Tunnel
Jubilee Line Extension
Edinburgh Tram
Wembley Stadium
WCML route modernisation
AGR NPP programme
Heathrow Express
The original 1830s WCML
The original 1840s Great Western ML

Projects tend to be remembered for their cost overruns only if they subsequently didn't get utilised - e.g. Concorde, Humber Bridge, Dounreay. HS2 will be heavily used once opened.

 

[InTheEastMids]

It reads like the savings were purely down to only needing to test to 320km/h which reduces the risk of issues cropping up because this is a much more conventional speed for HSR. No mention by the minister of saving on the actual infrastructure itself.

I agree, perhaps as much about de-risking opening than saving vast amounts of money. If it is primarily testing, then there's nothing stopping them coming back and doing the work to increase the maximum speeds at some later date. However it is quite easy to look at GB rolling stock introductions and come up with a plausible Armageddon scenario, especially if there's any further delay to completing the infrastructure.

- manufacturing/quality arising from technology transfer. Whilst Hitachi/Alstom have both built high speed trains, they haven't done it in the UK (see Cl80x)
- technical issues adapting an existing platform to bespoke requirements (Cl810)
- issues discovered with the train in testing that need fixing before testing/entry into service (Cl385)
- Integration of track to infrastructure is difficult (Cl345)
- unusable HS2 stock sits at places like Long Marston (see Cl701)

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.

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

Agree in particular about high speed rail. Although yesterday's news on Tempsford makes EWR a bit harder to cancel.

 

[mike57]

Crossrail was dogged with issues

I accept that Crossrail overan, badly, but how much scope was removed, i.e. start scope v delivered scope. To me its this that lets HS2 down badly. The curtailment to a London Birmingham route with little propect of the original Manchester and Leeds final desinations being reached in any forseeable timeframe is a real let down.

 

[fishwomp]

[..]

Projects tend to be remembered for their cost overruns only if they subsequently didn't get utilised - e.g. Concorde, Humber Bridge, Dounreay. HS2 will be heavily used once opened.

People move on, because there's no point harping on about a sunken cost - and there are new dafter ideas to complain about.

The Millennium Dome. £1.73bn in today's money - for a frigging tent. But what are we to do - go round in 'don't build a tent' t-shirts and protest, 25 years on?

There is point in harping on about continuing to pour money into a project [not specifically meaning HS2, but there's a cap and a disagreement as to whether it fits]!

 

[ainsworth74]

Crossrail was dogged with issues but that's all forgotten about now, it's a roaring success.

No, it will quickly become part of the essential infrastructure of the country and the cost will be forgotten by everyone apart from economists and civil engineers. Why am I so confident about this? Because it's happened time and time and time again. Here, in no particular order, is a non-comprehensive list of some UK engineering projects which massively overran:

Channel Tunnel
Jubilee Line Extension
Edinburgh Tram
Wembley Stadium
WCML route modernisation
AGR NPP programme
Heathrow Express
The original 1830s WCML
The original 1840s Great Western ML

Projects tend to be remembered for their cost overruns only if they subsequently didn't get utilised - e.g. Concorde, Humber Bridge, Dounreay. HS2 will be heavily used once opened.

Oh yeah I'm convinced that within a couple of years of it opening there will be article after article talking about how amazing it is to be able to get between London and Birmingham so quickly and efficiently and why on earth haven't we built further to Manchester and Leeds. It's going to be a roaring a success (on it's dedicated infrastructure) and everyone is going to be clamouring for extensions. Only making those extensions will be either impossible (because the alignment is being sold off) or be extremely expensive (rebuying the land, remobilising the civil engineering teams, etc) and take further decades (because it will require new powers, new land purchases, etc etc).

It was, in some ways, perhaps the most unforgivable thing that Rishi Sunak did as PM to cancel HS2 to Manchester just so he had a throwaway line in his party conference speech that didn't even bring him any political advantage anyway.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

No, it will quickly become part of the essential infrastructure of the country and the cost will be forgotten by everyone apart from economists and civil engineers. Why am I so confident about this? Because it's happened time and time and time again. Here, in no particular order, is a non-comprehensive list of some UK engineering projects which massively overran:

Channel Tunnel
Jubilee Line Extension
Edinburgh Tram
Wembley Stadium
WCML route modernisation
AGR NPP programme
Heathrow Express
The original 1830s WCML
The original 1840s Great Western ML

Projects tend to be remembered for their cost overruns only if they subsequently didn't get utilised - e.g. Concorde, Humber Bridge, Dounreay. HS2 will be heavily used once opened.

It's worth pointing put that some in that list were private sector projects, so not involving public money (notably the Channel Tunnel, and all the Victorian lines).
You might also add Concorde, London's "3rd airport" and any number of defence and energy projects.
There were also white elephants like TSR2 and Blue Streak (and, until recently, the Bletchley flyover).

 

[Taunton]

Oh yeah I'm convinced that within a couple of years of it opening there will be article after article talking about how amazing it is to be able to get between London and Birmingham so quickly and efficiently and why on earth haven't we built further to Manchester and Leeds. It's going to be a roaring a success (on it's dedicated infrastructure) and everyone is going to be clamouring for extensions.

I'm not so sure. The Channel Tunnel/Eurostar was meant to be even more spectacular, but has fallen a long way short of the promised mass transport from Britain to Europe, being progressively scaled back in service provision and being sold off to a series of operating partners all of whom have got into the hands of financial investors who find that a limited service at high fares makes a bit more return than the mass market service originally touted. There are quite a number in Kent who will say that the onetime NSE services into London were better for them than today's High Speed HS1 operation.

 

[Peter Sarf]

I do think there is still a chance HS2 will shine but if it had not been hobbled by being cut short at Handsacre I would be more certain.
Crossrail ("Elizabeth Line") is a good example of how things should have gone less badly.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could avoid saying "less badly" in regards to UK infrastructure projects.

So was the problem with HS2 that it is too big a project ?.

I feel that tinkering with the speed capability now is too late, the savings to be made will be negated by the costs of a re-design of the alignment. Using ballasted track on plain sections could still be a saving over slab track BUT are there not long term maintenance savings from slab track regardless of speed ?.

I think a redesign now over speed requirements will just add more crippling factors to HS2 on top of the abandoned Phase 2a.

I suppose we are in a world where it is best to overdo a project and hope time will make people forget. After all the stop start nature of electrification clearly indicates that there is no reason to be economical when your teams and equipment will be left idle in a few years time.

Make hay while the sun shines seems to be the appropriate modus operandi. For example no looking far ahead by our decision makers for a rolling program of electrification. After all if they were really interested then perhaps they would have questioned the speed capability of HS2 before it was too late.

Of course the huge costs of coping with environmental constraints have really blown the sensible costs - such significant lengths in tunnel !. But perhaps more foresight would have factored in the overall benefits to the whole country of HS2. Certainly we could have promoted more justification - or was it better to try and get this HS2 all done on the quiet......

 

[quantinghome]

It's worth pointing put that some in that list were private sector projects, so not involving public money (notably the Channel Tunnel, and all the Victorian lines).
You might also add Concorde, London's "3rd airport" and any number of defence and energy projects.
There were also white elephants like TSR2 and Blue Streak (and, until recently, the Bletchley flyover).

I was contrasting the long term view of projects which went vastly overbudget but were deemed to have 'worked', compared to projects that also went vastly overbudget and were unsuccessful in operation. It's really only the latter that cost overruns are remembered for.

 

[Taunton]

So was the problem with HS2 that it is too big a project ?.

140 miles of double track railway. Similar to what Mr Brunel did from London to Bristol. Is that really beyond us now?

 

[ainsworth74]

I'm not so sure. The Channel Tunnel/Eurostar was meant to be even more spectacular, but has fallen a long way short of the promised mass transport from Britain to Europe, being progressively scaled back in service provision and being sold off to a series of operating partners all of whom have got into the hands of financial investors who find that a limited service at high fares makes a bit more return than the mass market service originally touted. There are quite a number in Kent who will say that the onetime NSE services into London were better for them than today's High Speed HS1 operation.

I know what you mean but I doubt anyone would say that HS1 should never have been built nor regret its building? Plus the reasons for it's being less successful than hoped surely have more to do with the general failure of Eurostar itself to be quite as successful as hoped (for the well trod reasons of budget airlines coming along, Eurostar north of London never coming to fruition, the boarder formalities, etc etc) than the infrastructure itself. I'm not sure there's any particular reason to suppose that services on HS2 will face the same problems Eurostar did? Or are we expecting demand for long distance travel to dry up? As for it being sold off to private investors and the consequences that has had that seems like a classic short sighted political decision rather than failure of the infrastructure itself!

140 miles of double track railway. Similar to what Mr Brunel did from London to Bristol. Is that really beyond us now?

It seems so going on current evidence! As dispiriting as it is to see.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

140 miles of double track railway. Similar to what Mr Brunel did from London to Bristol. Is that really beyond us now?

More pertinently is Robert Stephenson's original London & Birmingham Railway to the still-standing old terminus at Curzon St.
Initial estimates were £2.5 million, but it cost £5 million to build and open.
The original estimates excluded the Euston terminus, not unlike the current position, and the biggest overrun was in the construction of Kilsby Tunnel which cost £280K instead of the £120K estimate.
It took 5 years to build, from the approval of the parliamentary act in 1833 to staged opening between 1837-38.
The funding was mostly by Liverpool private investors.

 

[FMerrymon]

I know what you mean but I doubt anyone would say that HS1 should never have been built nor regret its building? Plus the reasons for it's being less successful than hoped surely have more to do with the general failure of Eurostar itself to be quite as successful as hoped (for the well trod reasons of budget airlines coming along, Eurostar north of London never coming to fruition, the boarder formalities, etc etc) than the infrastructure itself. I'm not sure there's any particular reason to suppose that services on HS2 will face the same problems Eurostar did? Or are we expecting demand for long distance travel to dry up? As for it being sold off to private investors and the consequences that has had that seems like a classic short sighted political decision rather than failure of the infrastructure itself!

Failure of planning and environmental laws around Ebbsfleet too, which should have been adding far more to the economy by now. Not the fault of building the line, but we aren't making as much out of it as we could. 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.

 

[mike57]

140 miles of double track railway. Similar to what Mr Brunel did from London to Bristol. Is that really beyond us now?

It shouldn't be, but experience generally, outside the rail industry is that even simple jobs seem to take an inordinate amount of time and as a result costs spiral.

An example from locally, about 18 months ago the local council decided to construct a roundabout on a local unclassified road in virgin country on the edge of Bridlington. There was nothing difficult about the job, ground conditions are nomal for the area, clay over chalk, a small roundabout to allow future housing development to take place. No change in level, and they shut the road completely while they did the work. It took what was to me an amazing 6 months plus. Thats with the benefit of modern earth moving machinery. It also cost the local council tax payers a whopping £1.25m. The whole thing was less than 100ft across. They dug down maybe 2-3ft for footings. The joke locally was that 10 men with nothing more than picks, shovels and wheel barrows could have done the job quicker. As a comparison the 31 miles of railway from Bridlington to Hull (fairly flat so no major earthworks) was completed in one year in 1846 with nothing more than man and horse power with contractors locos to move supplies.

We seem to have lost the ability to deliver major infrastructure projects. I also don't its due to increasing health and safety, this should be offset by better machinery and better modelling before starting a job. I do think the complex commercial arrangements are not helping as there are armies of people on a major project trying to squeeze every change into an opportunity to increase profits.

 

[FMerrymon]

More pertinently is Robert Stephenson's original London & Birmingham Railway to the still-standing old terminus at Curzon St.
Initial estimates were £2.5 million, but it cost £5 million to build and open.
The original estimates excluded the Euston terminus, not unlike the current position, and the biggest overrun was in the construction of Kilsby Tunnel which cost £280K instead of the £120K estimate.
It took 5 years to build, from the approval of the parliamentary act in 1833 to staged opening between 1837-38.
The funding was mostly by Liverpool private investors.

Similar happened for the Great Western didnt it? Paddington was opened 16 years after the initial services and again a similar budget increase to the London & Birmingham Railway and to HS2 (currently...)

 

[Peter Sarf]

140 miles of double track railway. Similar to what Mr Brunel did from London to Bristol. Is that really beyond us now?

Sobering thought.

 

[FMerrymon]

We seem to have lost the ability to deliver major infrastructure projects. I also don't its due to increasing health and safety, this should be offset by better machinery and better modelling before starting a job. I do think the complex commercial arrangements are not helping as there are armies of people on a major project trying to squeeze every change into an opportunity to increase profits.

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.

 

[Ian Hardy]

Come on - give me a break as my yank friends would say!

			saving
speed mph	minutes per mile	seconds per mile	200 mile section	minutes saved
10	6	360
20	3	180
30	2	120
60	1	60
90	0.67	40
120	0.50	30	2000.0	33.33
186	0.32	19.4	2129.0	35.48
200	0.3	18	271.0	4.52
225	0.27	16.0	400.0	6.67

Many thanks, that is a lot easier to read.

 

[Krokodil]

So was the problem with HS2 that it is too big a project ?.

That's certainly  a problem. The project's huge demand for raw materials caused prices to rise. 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.

 

[mike57]

Some good points within this document,

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