Britain’s elusive high-speed rail dream

Countries such as France, Germany or Spain with shiny and extensive high-speed rail networks may look with bafflement across the Channel to the agonies in Britain over building anything similar. The originally solid case for the HS2 line, meant to whisk passengers from London to Manchester and Leeds via Birmingham, has become ever more precarious as the price tag has soared. After being repeatedly delayed and hacked back, the project is in danger of death by a thousand cuts.

Cost estimates spiralling from £30bn a decade ago to as much as £100bn have forced the government to look for savings. Much of the Y-shaped line’s eastern arm to Leeds was scrapped in late 2021. A new, two-year delay to another section may mean the line does not reach Manchester until the 2040s. Plans to bring HS2 to Euston in central London may now be completed only in 2041, with trains terminating till then several miles away in the west of the capital. Some MPs suggest what remains of the project — at least beyond Birmingham, to where construction is well under way — should be axed. Despite the costs and delays, that would be a mistake.

The focus on speed in marketing HS2 has led it to be seen, wrongly, as a vanity project. In capacity terms, it is essential infrastructure. Its origins lay in early-2000s forecasts of rail needs that projected southern sections of the west coast London-Glasgow line would hit maximum capacity by the mid-2020s, and the east coast line to Edinburgh a few years later. Though the pandemic has altered travel patterns, those forecasts are broadly set to be met. Widening existing lines is itself expensive and disruptive. It was decided to build new high-speed routes to spread the load.

Since commuter and freight trains share the existing main lines, shifting inter-city services to dedicated tracks allows many more to run, at much higher speeds, while more local and goods trains can use the old lines. As HS2 will join the west coast line beyond the worst bottlenecks, faster and more frequent services can run through to northern England and Scotland. That makes less carbon-intensive rail travel a more alluring alternative to flying. And shifting freight from roads to rail is crucial to meet net zero targets, but impossible without space on the railways.

HS2 should therefore be completed at least to Manchester. While the government wants to tweak the Euston terminus design to save money, any delay in opening it should be kept to a minimum. The north-east arm to Leeds had a less compelling logic but alternatives, such as a leg through Nottingham to York, could make sense. Ministers should remember cost-benefit studies can underestimate the additional activity a well-designed project will generate. Within eight months of opening last year — though delayed and over-budget — the cross-London Elizabeth Line was carrying 3mn passengers a week, 50 per cent more than expected, with little sign it was “cannibalising” Tube journeys.

Project managers and the government must continue to look for savings. But these should come through redesign or re-engineering, not lopping off further bits of HS2 and undermining its rationale, or from postponements that reduce immediate outlays but push up the total end cost.

Lessons must be learnt, too, from the ballooning expenses and interminable planning and political approval processes. Though Britain is much more densely populated, engineers note big rail projects are managed very differently in France, seemingly without compromising quality or safety. The UK still needs HS2, and has no quick Plan B. But the project’s handling to date is really no way to run a railway.