Confirmed : HS2 West Midlands-Manchester line to be scrapped and replaced with other projects.

[InkyScrolls]

HS2 West Midlands-Manchester line to be scrapped (BBC)

Rishi Sunak is to announce the scrapping of the HS2 high-speed rail line from West Midlands to Manchester on Wednesday, the BBC understands.

In his conference speech, the prime minister is expected to set out a range of alternative projects in the north of England and Wales.

He is likely to argue these projects will be a better use of money and can be delivered more quickly.

It comes after weeks of speculation about the future of the line.

Rumours it could be scrapped have already prompted anger among local leaders and businesses.

Labour Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said the reports were "profoundly depressing", while Conservative Birmingham Mayor Andy Street said a cancellation would damage the UK's international reputation.

The football club Manchester United were among 30 businesses who wrote to the prime minister urging him to commit to he line and avoid "economic self-sabotage".

However, there had also been concerns about the mounting costs of the infrastructure project, with the latest estimates amounting to about £71bn.

No-one saw that coming!

 

[59CosG95]

HS2 West Midlands-Manchester line to be scrapped (BBC)



No-one saw that coming!

Well, the retention of Euston was a pleasant surprise, to be honest.

 

[SteveM70]

Well, the retention of Euston was a pleasant surprise, to be honest.

And that’s exactly what the Tories want you to think. Good old Rishi, stopped it being even worse.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

We still don't know the extent of the cull, or what alternative projects might appear in HS2 Phase 2's place.
Maybe more in Sunak's speech, but all governments have a habit of being deliberately vague on the details of announcements.
Eventually, the DfT will have to make a more detailed announcement.
One person whose shoes I would not want to be in is HS2/rail minister Huw Merriman.
He's got to pretend it was policy all along, despite being the fall guy.

 

[TheLunaPark]

We still don't know the extent of the cull, or what alternative projects might appear in HS2 Phase 2's place.
Maybe more in Sunak's speech, but all governments have a habit of being deliberately vague on the details of announcements.
Eventually, the DfT will make a more detailed announcement.
On person whose shoes I would not want to be in is HS2/rail minister Huw Merriman.
He's got to pretend it was policy all along, despite being the fall guy.

I’d imagine it’ll mostly be existing projects all cobbled together to try and make it sound like new investment. This government really is pathetic.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I’d imagine it’ll mostly be existing projects all cobbled together to try and make it sound like new investment. This government really is pathetic.

The BBC talks about alternative projects in England and Wales.
Maybe electrification west of Crewe/Wolverhampton.

 

[TheLunaPark]

The BBC talks about alternative projects in England and Wales.
Maybe electrification west of Crewe/Wolverhampton.

Indeed, the odd new scheme here and there but I’m not getting my hopes up for anything too ambitious.

 

[Cloud Strife]

So...what's the point in HS2 and the horrifically expensive building works in London then?

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

So...what's the point in HS2 and the horrifically expensive building works in London then?

If Phase 1 (Euston-Curzon St/Handsacre) is completed the rest can be added later if the route is safeguarded (as has the eastern leg).
But it needs a cheaper solution at Euston first.

 

[MarkLong]

If Phase 1 (Euston-Curzon St/Handsacre) is completed the rest can be added later if the route is safeguarded (as has the eastern leg).
But it needs a cheaper solution at Euston first.

Why they even ditch B'ham to Crewe section given it is almost the easiest part to build.

 

[Lockwood]

I'm intrigued by the attitudes to HS2.

HS2 is being built - protests about it being built and calls for it to be scrapped.

HS2 is cut back - wailing and gnashing of teeth.


We have seen a quite big swing in news stories recently from "this is a bad thing that should not be built" to "this is a thing that should not be not built"

Presumably the Venn diagram of those two groups would have an extremely narrow overlap?

 

[Jozhua]

I'm intrigued by the attitudes to HS2.

HS2 is being built - protests about it being built and calls for it to be scrapped.

HS2 is cut back - wailing and gnashing of teeth.


We have seen a quite big swing in news stories recently from "this is a bad thing that should not be built" to "this is a thing that should not be not built"

Presumably the Venn diagram of those two groups would have an extremely narrow overlap?

The unpopular and very expensive London to Birmingham bit will go ahead, while the more popular and cheaper Birmingham northwards bit will be cancelled - make sense?

 

[North-Valiant]

The BBC talks about alternative projects in England and Wales.
Maybe electrification west of Crewe/Wolverhampton.

Plenty of deck chairs to rearrange I imagine

 

[eldomtom2]

Unsurprisingly transit blogger Alon Levy is banging the "HS2 costs too much" drum (they were part of a research project into construction costs, and frequently denounce construction costs in the Anglosphere in fiery terms). Any opinions on their analysis?

High Speed 2 is (Partly) Canceled Due to High Costs

It’s not yet officially confirmed, but Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will formally announce that High Speed 2 will be paused north of Birmingham. All media reporting on this issue – BBC, R…

pedestrianobservations.com

It’s not yet officially confirmed, but Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will formally announce that High Speed 2 will be paused north of Birmingham. All media reporting on this issue – BBC, Reuters, Sky, Telegraph – centers the issue of costs; the Telegraph just ran an op-ed supporting the curtailment on grounds of fiscal prudence.

I can’t tell you how the costs compare with the benefits, but the costs, as compared with other costs, really are extremely high. The Telegraph op-ed has a graph with how real costs have risen over time (other media reporting conflates cost overruns with inflation), which pegs current costs, with the leg to Manchester still in there, as ranging from about £85 billion to £112 billion in 2022 prices, for a full network of (I believe) 530 km. In PPP terms, this is $230-310 million/km, which is typical of subways in low-to-medium-cost countries (and somewhat less than half as much as a London Undeground extension). The total cost in 2022 terms of all high-speed lines opened to date in France and Germany combined is about the same as the low end of the range for High Speed 2.

I bring this up not to complain about high costs – I’ve done this in Britain many times – but to point out that costs matter. The ability of a country or city to build useful infrastructure really does depend on cost, and allowing costs to explode in order to buy off specific constituencies, out of poor engineering, or out of indifference to good project delivery practices means less stuff can be built.

Britain, unfortunately, has done all three. High Speed 2 is full of scope creep designed to buy off groups – namely, there is a lot of gratuious tunneling in the London-Birmingham first phase, the one that isn’t being scrapped. The terrain is flat by French or German standards, but the people living in the rural areas northwest of London are wealthy and NIMBY and complained and so they got their tunnels, which at this point are so advanced in construction that it’s not possible to descope them.

Then there are questionable engineering decisions, like the truly massive urban stations. The line was planned with a massive addition to Euston Station, which has since been descoped (I blogged it when it was still uncertain, but it was later confirmed); the current plan seems to be to dump passengers at Old Oak Common, at an Elizabeth line station somewhat outside Central London. It’s possible to connect to Euston with some very good operational discipline, but that requires imitating some specific Shinkansen operations that aren’t used anywhere in Europe, because the surplus of tracks at the Parisian terminals is so great it’s not needed there, and nowhere else in Europe is there such high single-city ridership.

And then there is poor project delivery, and here, the Tories themselves are partly to blame. They love the privatization of the state to massive consultancies. As I keep saying about the history of London Underground construction costs, the history doesn’t prove in any way that it’s Margaret Thatcher’s fault, but it sure is consistent with that hypothesis – costs were rising even before she came to power, but the real explosion happened between the 1970s (with the opening of the Jubilee line at 2022 PPP $172 million/km) and the 1990s (with the opening of the Jubilee line extension at $570 million/km).

 

[brad465]

I'm intrigued by the attitudes to HS2.

HS2 is being built - protests about it being built and calls for it to be scrapped.

HS2 is cut back - wailing and gnashing of teeth.


We have seen a quite big swing in news stories recently from "this is a bad thing that should not be built" to "this is a thing that should not be not built"

Presumably the Venn diagram of those two groups would have an extremely narrow overlap?

HS2 is very much an all or nothing attitude I think: either do it in full or don't do it all. This scaling back has very little support (if any).

 

[Cheshire Scot]

NPR was of course going to make use of HS2 infrastructure in South Manchester so there is an impact on this too.

 

[PaulHarding150]

Electrify the North Wales Mainline - I’ll believe it when I see it, would be interesting to know when and what trains will use this. There must be a minuscule business case for this given the TfW 197s that have just arrived.

 

[Noddy]

So, as expected, a load of road schemes, with plenty of money to fix the pot holes.

 

[Mag_seven]

Thread reopened as a result of Rishi Sunak announcement.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-67001483

Rishi Sunak confirms the rest of the HS2 rail link will be scrapped in his first Tory party conference speech as PM

 

[James Finch]

So, if I'm correct, the following are reannouncements:

Transpennine Route Upgrade
Leeds "Metro" (Trams)
West Midlands "Metro" (Trams) Expansion

EDIT: as "consolation"... What will be announced to increase physical capacity (i.e. new lines)?

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The PM announced a series of new rail projects in his speech which cancelled "the rest of HS2".

Those I noted were:
- North Wales Coast electrification
- Liverpool-Hull full electrification
- new station in Bradford with 30m journey time to Manchester

There are others in his "hundreds and hundreds" of projects which will use the £36 billion freed up from the HS2 budget.
HS2 will at least go to Euston, and by inference Handsacre, as HS2 trains will still reach Manchester.
My guess is the proposed new sections of NPR (Liverpool-Manchester Airport and Piccadilly-Marsden) are dead, with existing lines upgraded instead.

Lost in the detail is that HS2 trains will be slower than Pendolinos north of Handsacre.

 

[Mikey C]

• Upgrade the energy coast line between Carlisle, Workington and Barrow

What does that mean?

Leaving aside the rights of wrongs of the decision made today, there's a big difference between a costed a detailed proposal given to parliament, and announcements in a speech

 

[basfordlad]

Simply won't happen

 

[The Planner]

• Upgrade the energy coast line between Carlisle, Workington and Barrow

What does that mean?

Leaving aside the rights of wrongs of the decision made today, there's a big difference between a costed a detailed proposal given to parliament, and announcements in a speech

Already on the cards at the south end anyway, so a re-announcement.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Leaving aside the rights of wrongs of the decision made today, there's a big difference between a costed a detailed proposal given to parliament, and announcements in a speech

Network Rail will be surprised at these commitments, to which it can have made no technical input.

 

[Dan G]

Announcement now made

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-67001483

Rishi Sunak has just said he's cancelling "the rest of the HS2 project" - meaning everything outside the London to Birmingham leg, which is already under construction.

Sunak now says "we will reinvest every single penny" saved from HS2, which he says is £36 billion pounds, in hundreds of new transport projects in the North and the Midlands, and across the country.

"With our new Network North, you will be able to get from Manchester to the new station in Bradford in 30 minutes, Sheffield in 42 minutes, and to Hull in 84 minutes on a fully, electrified line."

Sunak says HS2 will travel all the way to Euston station in London - in line with the initial plan.

As we just reported, HS2 will run to Euston, as planned. But Sunak says the HS2 management will no longer run the project there.

"There must be some accountability for the mistakes made, for the mismanagement of this project," he says.

"We will instead create a new Euston development zone."

• Protect the £12bn to link up Manchester and Liverpool as planned - this won't be with high-speed rail
• Build the Midlands Rail Hub, connecting 50 stations
• Help Andy Street extend the West Midlands Metro
• Build the Leeds tram, electrify the North Wales main line
• Bring back the Don Valley line
• Upgrade the energy coast line between Carlisle, Workington and Barrow

 

[Danfilm007]

Will NR build the element into Euston?

 

[eldomtom2]

So, what will Labour's reaction be?

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

Lots of marginal constituencies in North Wales and Cumbria - pure coinincidence of course. It would be nice if the electrirification, er, actually started could be completed - i.e. Bristol, Oxford and Swansea.

 

[Nymanic]

Truly a depressing day.

Among so many other things, I wait with jaded anticipation to see how 400m trains will apparently be accommodated under the Piccadilly trainshed (and indeed all the other 'classic stations en-route), without massive disruption, unforeseen cost increases and a further detriment to our scarce capacity. After all, upgrading existing infrastructure always works out so well...
Non-tilting stock will lead to longer journey times for more of us travelling north of Birmingham - but I'm sure that will just be ignored or hand-waved.

The rest is about as concrete and digestible as those 40 new hospitals. Or, rather, about as digestible as concrete.

I'll hold my tongue there. I've just had enough of it all.