Hearing a BBC Radio 4 programme on the HS 2 “Business case” reminded me of why I voted No to the decision in principle in Parliament to proceed with HS2. It made me think further about the great embroidery, extension and stupidity of many modern government business cases. The more complex and expensive they got, the worse in practice they proved to be.
The BBC took us back over one of the big disagreements during the early years of Business Case expansion on HS 2. In the first case cutting the time of the journey gave the country a “gain”. It meant those on the train were assumed to be travelling business people, would become more productive as they would save previous minutes from the journey which they could use to work in the office on arrival. So the designers went for maximum speed at considerable extra cost to save minutes for these mythical hard workers who couldn’t work on the train.
In later iterations it was decided with new technology business people could work very effectively on the train with wi fi, laptop and smart phone, so all that “gain” disappeared. The modellers decided there were collateral gains for everyone else in the economy from the ability of a business elite to travel well with laptop on a new fast line. These too became exaggerated.
To me a business case is not based on guessing what people might do on the train or attributing side benefits to others. These are matters of judgement that do not generate revenue for the train operator or the state, in this case the same institution. As a businessman my experience of evaluating a new investment was based on asking two simple questions. Could the investment save total and average costs of production? Could it add significant revenue? It had to add enough extra business and or subtract enough existing cost to ensure there was a profit on the investment. It needed to guarantee it could cover its costs of capital.
This should have applied to evaluating HS2. HS 2 was never going to add a lot to total passenger journeys. It was designed to switch some passengers off existing services by offering them a faster and better service. Some thought this could be done whilst charging at a premium price. Others thought the HS 2 nationalised rail would need to undercut the existing rail providers to draw passengers away from the present services. This led to the danger that it would cut revenues and prices on current lines, leading to the demand for more subsidies for existing providers. A modest win for train travellers would be a big loss for taxpayers. It was always likely given an estimated shortfall of demand in the early years of HS 2 that HS 2 would be loss making from the start.
Part of the way through the project the government switched its case from greater speed to help business to the need for more capacity. Covid then undermined the case for more capacity. It was always likely the cheaper solution to provide more capacity for growth would be improved digital signalling on the existing tracks, to allow more trains per hour to run on a railway that already existed.
The biggest reason the Business case was wildly too optimistic lay in the forecast costs. A £37bn project became a £100 bn plus project which then had to be cut down drastically in size to limit the excessive costs. It remains a major financial disaster the more that is spent on it. The taxpayer is unlikely to see any normal cash return on this investment. It neither makes rail travel less costly nor offers the hope of enough additional passengers.
July 24, 2025
It was always an absurd project started by Labour but supported by the Con socialists, the Libdims Coalition and Labour. Another vast waste of money that does zero good and huge net harms in terms of disruption and environmental vandalism. High Speed can only really been High Speed when you have very few stops so door to door journeys often take longer as longer taxi etc. end connections. I assume it was just driven by vested interests, crooks, “consultancy” fees and people on the make. What other reason?
Add to the list of net harm expenditure like the net harm Covid Lockdowns and net harm “vaccines”, the open door low skilled immigration, the benefit levels that deter people from working, joining the EU and now back door rejoining, VAT on school fees, the war on Non Doms, landlords, motorists, Net Zero, the energy policy, pushing EVs, renewables and heat pumps, zero deterrent two tier policing and justice…
July 24, 2025
Has Essex Police Chief Constable Ben-Julian Harrington resigned yet? Or was he just obeying orders from above? He does not even seem to think his force has done anything wrong yet!
July 24, 2025
He won’t resign and he won’t be sacked. But the Establishment’s tactics have been made very public:
They can be summed up as “deliberately provoke a violent clash, so that Two-Tier can blame the Faah Rite and the Government can justify imposing authoritarian governance.”
July 24, 2025
The purpose of massive immigration from all over the ME, FE and Africa is to create a nation of strangers (tribes) who, as we have seen, can only be kept in control with an authoritarian government.
July 24, 2025
Yes, which is why there are pushing Digital ID and in due course a Social Credit System
July 24, 2025
Harrington said he would not resign. He spoke of escorting a group rather than providing a bus for them.
He has precedent on his side. Cressida was actually promoted, rather than forced to resign – despite being in charge when Jean Charles de Menezes was killed.
Labour are very worried about unrest and riots. So heavy policing will be the order of the day. It will take a break through like the poll tax riots or Brixton to upset the apple cart.
Ballymena was different, as they are well-practiced in rioting despite heavier policing. So all their targets have now fled.
Groups like Tommy Robinson’s will have been infiltrated. So any push will come from those under the radar who very determined and well-prepared. Whether that will happen in England remains to be seen.
July 24, 2025
HS2 was intended to be part of the EU’s Trans-Europe Transport Network intended to link HS rail across the EU Empire. The project was driven by the EU (and in the UK by rabid Europhile, Adonis) so the British Government (DfT) basically cobbled together a justification for it.
There was no demand coming from ordinary British people, based in the UK, for it.
As the original “business case” collapsed – including the fact that we’re no longer in the EU so no longer committed to the EU’s T-ENT scheme – they kept inventing new ones. And then started scaling back the scheme to the point that it became absolutely pointless. We don’t need another rail line from London to Birmingham. We’re paying £100 billion for a pointless rail line.
And when they had multiple opportunities to euthanise the White Elephant before we ripped up the Cotswolds, destroyed ancient woods and wasted £tens of billions on a pointless rail line (including £100 million on the Bat-shit Bat-Shed), successive “Conservative” PMs/Ministers failed … or refused … to do it.
July 24, 2025
It was pointless (indeed worse than pointless as vastly expensive yet negative value delivered) this from day one! Even a mad plan to take it to Northern Ireland via Edinburgh and Glasgow.
July 24, 2025
If rail travellers had to pay the full costs of their tickets and there was a fair market between train (currently about 50% subsidy) and road users (coach, car, truck) more like 50% is tax. Then trains would be about £2 a mile per person and cars about 30p a mile for up to seven people. So what would the real train demand be then? £460 return London to Manchester or £80 for one up to seven people in a people carrier or car. The latter also door to door and the former also needing taxis or other end connections to pay for too. Plus you have a car to use on arrival and somewhere to store your luggage rather than having to lug it round all day!
They do not even save CO2 or energy in general with end connections, track, staff and ticketing is fully accounted for!
July 24, 2025
@ Donna “As the original “business case” collapsed – …. they kept inventing new ones” – as went the case for HS2, so went the case for Blair’s Iraq War.
Our political class have much for which to answer.
July 24, 2025
A prime example of mission creep, and change the justification over time to suit enlightenment.
Then when overwhelming evidence indicates a write-off and plenty of blame to be spread, they keep holding firm ‘not on my watch’ – so it only gets worse……
July 24, 2025
Yes
July 24, 2025
The UK is inextricably linked with the empires of others. In particular, the Roman Empire and the Norman Conquest (and UK life greatly influenced too by Saxons, Gauls, Vikings, by the Italian Renaissance, by the German Handel, by the French Huguenots, by the Dutch in the fens, by the Anglo-Irish such as the Duke of Wellington, Edmund Burke and Oscar Wilde, and many others.
If we drift too far off into isolation then we don’t reflect our history and we turn sterile and nationalistic.
If we drift too far off the other way, we lose our patriotism, and love of our land, people, native culture and so on.
We need to be sovereign (although don’t agree with how Brexit was carried out – or not carried out) whilst also having healthy relations with our nearest neighbours (for economic, cultural and security reasons).
Reply Few propose isolation. Brexiteers want to trade with the world on fair terms and ally with likeminded countries including distant lands like New Zealand.
July 24, 2025
Isn’t it strange how “isolationist” Britain managed to create a global empire. I don’t want the UK to be isolationist. But I don’t want the world, his wife 10 kids, and assorted “dependants” moving here to live courtesy of British taxpayers and, although I’d like to be on friendly terms with our continental neighbours, I don’t want to be ruled by them. And that goes for the ECHR as well as the EU.
July 24, 2025
+1
July 25, 2025
I’m with you. I don’t want to be ruled by large immigrant numbers nor by the bureaucratic EU – and nor by crass, vulgar America culture! (You left out the Grey Squirrel of vulgar American culture – and politics).
Whilst embracing what is best about abroad (including both the USA and Europe) whilst being sovereign with tight immigration.
July 24, 2025
I 100% support full British sovereignty. And great trade with distant countries – and with those on our doorsteps. Not either / or!
But when it comes to trade, we should really be focusing on supporting entrepreneurs and companies in the high tech sector that export brands of high value to all parts of the globe where trade agreements or not or distance or not are more-a-less irrelevant.
Lastly, is the USA a friend when it charges us 10% tariffs especially when we need the opposite right now (and that they are charging the EU more is like saying, ‘well at least the bully only kicked me in the leg once instead of twice.’
July 24, 2025
Ed
Trump was elected by the Americans to work in the best interest of Americans, not all will support him, not all will like him, he is fully aware the World has been sucking at the financial teat of America for far too long, people in Countries outside of America will not like his actions, but I wish our Prime minister was as passionate about our Country as Trump is with his.
July 25, 2025
I’m not denying President Trump the right to be President. I’m just saying he’s no ‘friend’ to the UK that’s all (and, anyway, you can still be patriotic but develop win-win relationships with other countries that actually benefits your country more in the long-run).
July 24, 2025
Chilterns, not Cotswolds.
July 24, 2025
I see HS2 as the ultimate fuckfest that is allowed to proceed because nobody has the political courage to put an end to it. Its older brother the Dome was a trial run at a political vanity project. Its protagonists are either retired or enjoy ambassadorial roles. What is the bottom line looking like today.
The real question is what profitable use, could this scar across our landscape, be put to. A truckers highway to a log jammed M25 or just a rewilding monument to government planning, allowing farmers to produce food.
July 24, 2025
Oh well we got a nice £multi-million bat tunnel!
Not their money, nor they who benefit from the finished project. So they care not what they pay nor what value (if any) is ever delivered. Driven surely by corruption, vested interests, political and other “consultancy” fees or even bribes! What other possible explanations?
July 24, 2025
I propose blocking both ends of the bat tunnel and driving all the bats from Westminster to ‘hang out’ there – Tyburn is too crowed now for mass bat-hanging.
July 24, 2025
Full cost of HS2 work around Moxon’s bat tunnel will be £168m, says DfT
https://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/full-cost-of-hs2-work-around-moxons-bat-tunnel-will-be-168m-says-dft/5136801.article
Thats 168 youth clubs fully staffed, equiped & running cost for a year
July 24, 2025
One option would be to put solar panels all along it, and stop the scandalous use of good quality farmland for Milibandian “solar farms”. Another would be to change it into a long distance footpath – the White Elephant Way?
July 24, 2025
Actually the Dome has been a massive success – it’s owners made a profit of £52.6 million last year.
July 24, 2025
All proponents of HS2 have got left is the sunk cost fallacy – we’ve already spent so much we might as well keep going. It should be cancelled. Building a rail line to Birmingham at the cost of £1billion per mile simply to reduce the journey time by 20 minutes is obviously absurd. When it was planned to continue to and link other northern cities (the original Labour government proposal) it seemed like a good idea in principle but the incompetence of the Conservative (Boris) government in approving the business case and implementing the plan led to it inevitably going off the rails – no apologies from any of them of course, this sort of thing is absolutely standard for the public sector.
July 24, 2025
‘Sunk costs’ reminds me of the original ‘Thames Tunnel. That got built despite technical issues and initial failure. Originally for pedestrians it was adapted for rail and now carries the East London line.
Thanks to a man like Brunel – not Isambard, Kingdom but his dad, Marc.
Nowadays, there are too many idlers and hangers-on with no sense of shame. Doers are in short supply.
July 24, 2025
Indeed the sunk cost lunacy and the fact that so many politicians have invested their reputations in promoting lunacy for many years – and they would look even more stupid if they now admit they have been lying to the public for many years and pissing your money down the drain. Group think lunacy is hard to correct. Same with lockdowns, net harm vaccines, net zero, renewables, VAT on school fees, the wars on landlords, car drivers, non doms… all (other than the VAT on school fees though Socialist dope Gove wanted it) are/were pushed by the UNI-Parties.
July 24, 2025
Newcastle-upon-Tyne is a ‘northern city’.
Never mentioned by those train-set playtime participants south of Watford gap.
July 24, 2025
Good Morning,
Sir J, was there ever a comparison made and business investigation into why the Great Central Railway failed, and why HS2 is different?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Central_Main_Line
July 24, 2025
The difficulty is that hardly any passenger railways anywhere in the world run at a profit. If profitability were the criterion for having them, UK would not have any at all. I am not suggesting Sir John is arguing for profitable railways. He is not. But the result is that policymakers are not very interested in returns on investment. They require a business case only because it is best practice for project management so it looks professional and, they hope, wards off rational criticism and thus enables them to get the money.
What they should do instead is simply compare the costs of alternative investments and put the alternatives to the public to see what advantages the public sees accruing to it from each alternative and asking the public to rank them by value for money. Whatever is done it will always be woolly process and political motivation will always win. As far as I can recall high speed rail was an EU initiative which included UK as an extension of the EU project presumed to proceed regardless of public or business opinion. So the business case and other debates were just window dressing.
July 24, 2025
The British Establishment was implementing EU Policy (the T-ENT scheme) and trying to avoid having to admit it. So they needed a “business case.”
The cost was originally planned to be shared between the British Government and the EU. We paid £billions into the EU; the EU refunded us a proportion of our contribution to implement EU policies in the UK.
When we “left” the EU our annual contributions stopped and so did the EU’s much smaller flow of funds into the UK to deliver their projects. Hence the cost of HS2 to British taxpayers suddenly escalated*. But the CON Government didn’t want to explain that. Basically, we are now paying the full cost to implement the EU’s HS2 … which is why it had to be drastically cut back.
* Costs were also increasing because the original quote was a ridiculous fantasy.
July 24, 2025
Yes Donna, I agree.
July 24, 2025
Money laundering like all EU endeavours. Present a wonderful financially viable opportunity and fund it in reality via the washing machine.
See Ukraine for a similar project.
July 24, 2025
Of course JR is arguing for profitable railways!
July 24, 2025
I firmly believe that government , of whatever colour, has been emasculated by its own low intellectual capacity and a permanent ill equiped civil service who see the role as their.prerogative. However the CS currently hold the reins of power. For rectification listen to Liz Truss on Youtube, where she not only recognises the problem, but offers solutions of a very necessary but radical nature. You might like her logic. I heard it as forward thinking, none parliamentary conservatism, more recognisable as Reform. A daughter of Thatcher. I hope her thinking takes root, she bares fruit the country desperately needs.
July 24, 2025
Listening to Liam Halligan yesterday, he pointed out that Gilts have been higher this year than under Truss. He also stated that of the £21B borrowed recently, £17B was in debt interest payment. He rightly describes this as a “Ponzie” scheme. We are well on track to another 1970’s IMF type situation with no one seemingly able to stop the runaway train, certainly not this bunch of amateurs. I keep wondering what I should be advising my sons to do apart from flee….
July 24, 2025
Many of those who were not an MP at the time and had no influence in how tax payers money was to be spent, could also see the stupidity of the HS2 project which was in my view back then destined to fail because by then it was becoming increasingly obvious that the UK couldn’t run projects of this type on time nor to budget such as the Channel Tunnel, and in order to get the project through the figures had to be massaged because Parliament wanted a ‘super’ train and there was and still isn’t with subsequent projects the incentive or wish to scrutinise a business plan.
This was a vanity project from the outset which was more about keeping up with Japan and France who already had a ‘bullet train’ than getting the business case correct.
How can it be feasible then and now to spend £37 billion +++, which didn’t include the need to build new rolling stock to go on the line, to get mostly business travellers to/from London/Birmingham Manchester/Leeds at a far greater ticket cost with the only reason being that it will cut 45 minutes off their journey.
This is where Parliament’s decisions and those of common’business’ sense and acumen don’t align.Parliament get these projects through because most MP’s are not business people ,they have unending access to taxpayers money and with some clever debate and words can get these projects approved.Such a project would never have been approved in the business world because if it had been,any business case would have had to be based on lies, but of course it is the business world that have been rubbing their hands with anticipation of all the billion pound contracts that they will and have benefitted from and the Government’s mis-management that goes hand in hand with such contracts.
July 24, 2025
Perhaps the reason those who could see was that they were short of brown envelopes which colour the vision dramatically I hear?
July 24, 2025
The original idea of a fast service to Manchester and Leeds was sensible but only it could be completed in a reasonable time frame. Now it is cut down to just London to Birmingham it serves nobody. From us in the Thames Valley it is easier and quicker to get to Birmingham by train via Reading! A gold plated service (and I have to admit the Colne Valley viaduct is an engineering masterpiece) but serving nobody and with trains not in service until at least 2035 I will probably have kicked the bucket by then. It has all gone very wrong and surely there is no other option but stopping now.
July 24, 2025
Tell me the decision you want, and I’ll write a business case for you. I’ve seen this happen countless times in the civil service. No one ever looks back at the original business case to check how accurate it was.
There was never a case for HS2, as the current train journey from the North to the South is quick and regular. Where there is a need, it is from East to West, where the journey time is long and complicated.
July 24, 2025
Exactly! From Newcastle to London in 3 hours. But from Newcastle to the western cities, Liverpool, Manchester etc, you need a car.
I remember when the excuse for HS2 was ’connecting the northern cities’. In that case they should have started at Newcastle and done the cheap bit first. The money spent so far would certainly have produced a line from Newcastle to the point now reached. The majority of the line therefore.
July 24, 2025
When I read many years ago that there was a growing capacity problem London-Birmingham, and that in peak times trains would run from 12 to 15 times per hour in both directions, I sat and thought about emptying and refilling each train from arrival on a platform to departure…. How many sets of trains and staffing would be needed? How many platforms at each end might be required, how many minutes would the ‘gate ‘ be open for passengers to board? The quoted numbers of passengers possible per train would create a push and shove mentality seen at football stadia, and london tube platforms. Alarming chaos!
I quickly knew it would never work.
July 24, 2025
Non-productive investment in wasted infrastructure does not lead to growth of course so, clearly enough, diverting government money into HS2 will have harmed not helped.
“Northern powerhouse” is now the empty slogan it always was, I assume.
July 24, 2025
The true Northern Powerhouse once drove not only the UK but the world! The political class had no finger in the pie in those profitable days.
Perhaps that is the most valuable lesson from this whole HS2 political fiasco.
July 24, 2025
Totally agree why would people in south go to London to go to Birmingham when you can go via Reading. And don’t start me on architect fantasies call stations.
July 24, 2025
It is the same, but with knobs on and the accelerator pushed to the floor by Miliband, for all the nonsense Net Zero investments foisted on the long suffering UK taxpayer.
July 24, 2025
Off topic.
The UN’s International Court of “Justice” has now declared that countries are responsible for their CO2 emissions and can be sued by other countries which think they’ve been affected by climate change.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14934467/UN-court-sue-Britain-climate-change.html
Quite how a country in, say the Indian Ocean, could sue the UK for emissions they claim have affected them is beyond me …. particularly when, for instance India and China are far nearer and are generating between them over half of global emissions. But of course, India and China aren’t the target of this ruling: the UK and other countries in the West are. And only the British Government, stuffed as it is with Globalist Human Rights Lawyers, will take any notice.
It does, however, demonstrate very nicely that what Ottmar Edenhofer (lead author of the IPCC’s fourth summary report released in 2007) said in 2010
“‘Global warming’ is not about the science – UN Admits: ‘Climate change policy is about how we redistribute the world’s wealth’
The UN’s Objective to resistribute the world’s wealth has just been accelerated by their corrupt “court.” Perhaps that’s because they know the wheels are coming off the SCAM in the UK. The only country which is likely to take any notice.
https://www.climatedepot.com/2017/05/24/global-warming-is-not-about-the-science-un-admits-climate-change-policy-is-about-how-we-redistribute-the-worlds-wealth/
July 24, 2025
The Uniparty, the Civil Service and the judiciary will already be making the calculations of how much we can owe and who will be paid. I expect a large new Civil Service department or quango will be created equivalent to the CCC. Will there be any discounts given for us for any of the benefits the Industrial Revolution has brought to the world, or is there none because no-one uses any fossil fuels or its products? On the other hand, do they think that the reparations will be worthwhile when they believe life on the planet will shortly become extinct? “We are at the beginnng of a mass extinction…” said Greta Thunberg.
July 24, 2025
Let’s hope they sue. They will need to prove ‘global warming’ and CO2 as the cause.
July 24, 2025
Lynn,
They will not need to prove anything to our dopes.
Chagos was simply a suggestion by those who think they rule the World, and Two Tier readily paid up for that rapid enough.
Miliband thinks global Warming is linked to Co2, so enough said !.
July 24, 2025
The UN has already done that for them ….. at least not proven either, but declared they have.
July 25, 2025
Easy peasy: How can you explain temperatures at 30C in Lapland or the opening of the North East and North West passages? Even Dick Lindzen cannot explain them without the effects of increase in GHGs.
July 25, 2025
And certainly not the one here who is not even able to keep properly updated by the findings of Roy Spencer.
July 25, 2025
hefner is back.
July 24, 2025
@Donna – the World is getting weird and 2TK, the Worlds real kneeler of choice is its puppet
The ICJ (such a contradiction, justice?) Judges all unelected other than by Friends, or friends of Friends, all unaccountable to no one, get to make up, invent, Laws to suit themselves without any democratic over-site.
Just because the UK Legislator invents things without consulting the people doesn’t make it right. Those Countries not participating in this silliness include India, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, the USA that is more than 50% of the World’s population which unlike the UK’s Legislators that have committed us all to get down on one knee and obey, can just shrug their shoulders and say so what, then get on and prosper.
Pointed out elsewhere of what this notion misses; From 1801 to 1891 the UK population rose from 9million to 29million. Most were very poor and burnt wood and there were no consumer goods other than clothes and furniture.
In a similar period the population of China increased from 200million to 300million. Most were very poor and burnt wood and there were no consumer goods other than clothes and furniture.
The population of Africa was about 1 billion over the same period Most were very poor and burnt wood and there were no consumer goods other than clothes and furniture.
That fact that 90% of the global population was and burnt wood and the UK was less than 5% of it, begs the question who?
Double who?, who are these numpties make up their own laws and who are they pointing the finger at, those that will pay for everyone or those that will tell them to get stuffed……
Also elsewhere; It is like a Monty Python sketch. Who polluted this? Own up, come on?
It was me. No it was me. No no……
The sooner we get rid of this Parliament with its friends in the House of Lords and become a democracy the sooner we can all move on..
July 24, 2025
In the context of revenue and return on “investment”, a Parliamentary question that would leave a hapless minister squirming would be “if, hypothetically, HS2 opened tomorrow, what would be the cost of an ordinary return from Birmingham Curzon Street to London, and how would this compare with an ordinary return from Birmingham New Street on the existing main line?” A follow up question about footfall would effectively put the boot in.
July 24, 2025
If efficient European train operators were allowed onto this line, it would cut the monopoly, could force prices to drop, and would definitely be used through the night for continental freight so they can bypass current services.
July 24, 2025
There never was a case for HS2 from a practical point of view, all the arguments are/were bogus.
There are not enough passengers who want to travel from London to Birmingham (Birmingham to London possibly)
Why travel from a high cost living area, to a low wage region for work ?
High speed only comes with fewer stops, so fewer passengers collected en route.
High speed only comes with near straight lines, makes the route inflexible and high cost to overcome obstacles and ground conditions.
Door to station times do not change, so marginal time saved only.
Requires completely different technology that has no synergy with the rest of our railway system.
The comparison with Euro Tunnel (high speed train) is bogus because huge disruption is/was caused with Channel crossings, Euro star London – France does save time, Euro Tunnel Dover-Calais does not, because you still have an hour wait at both ends to load up for a short crossing, so time difference to a Ferry (same load up time) for this short route not huge, advantage of the ferry, you can eat a good meal (in a proper restaurant) on board whilst travelling, so no need to stop later in the journey.
Thus no logical or practical thought given to a proposed ground breaking and cost breaking project.
July 24, 2025
For how many people travelling from London to France does the Channel save time? What is the cost apportioned per person per hour?
Was it worth it?
July 24, 2025
Lynn
I have absolutely no idea, I have only been on it once, and that was very many years ago when it run out of Waterloo, but I guess bookings are reasonable in volume terms, no idea about cost per passenger/investment.
Was comfortable and speedy enough for our planned route/journey to France and Belgium at the time.
Not keen on Le Shuttle (motorail), in my view a terrible way to travel, sitting in your car seat, in your car, in a tube with nothing to look out at in order to save about an hour maximum compared to the Ferry, where costs are similar.
Only possible drawback against the Ferry is possible bad weather.
July 24, 2025
The programme to which the author refers is a ten-part podcast series called Derailed which is available on the BBC Sounds app. I enjoyed listening to all ten episodes: if I have one complaint, it is that the episodes are too short and the producers missed an opportunity to get into more details. There’s certainly no shortage of interesting content.
The closing remarks are perhaps the most interesting. When it opens, will people use it in large numbers? That surely depends upon how journeys are priced, but if they do the question of whether to re-start work on the more northerly stretches will be asked. It is notable that HS2 has not offered for sale the land that has been acquired for these stretches despite Mr Sunak’s decision to cease works.
July 24, 2025
It will go ahead, once we are realigned with the EU.
July 24, 2025
It is sad for the engineers who have been involved in this project as they will not be able to look back on their dedication to it with any pride. The scars across the Chilterns will be there for hundreds of years (unless the whole region gets covered in new housing estates, I wouldn’t put it past them) and all for what? Even as a railway enthusiast myself I could never look at HS2 with any sense of excitement. Meanwhile the farce of the partial electrification of the Paddington to the West Country main line just demonstrates the depth of incompetence of the decision makers.
July 24, 2025
DL
Yes, I have never understood why the overhead electrical system with all of the associated extra cost and uglyness was used to power these trains, when perhaps a modification to the third rail system in use for decades, is so much more simple, and much less cost.
Perhaps I am missing something ?
July 24, 2025
Due to the mechanical impact of the shoe on the rail, 100 mph is considered the practical upper limit for third-rail operation.
July 24, 2025
Is it beyond the technicians to work and improve on that, they both work on contact/pressure.
July 24, 2025
rail.h5mag.com ‘Overhead vs third rail: How does rail electrification work?’
July 24, 2025
HS2 was Gordon Brown’s idea. As was selling most of our gold at the bottom of the market in 1999-2002
The humungous cost overrun rests with the fateful decision that the trains should travel at 230mph. Trains this fast need long stretches of dead straight track, which also needs to be very strong and flat. HS1, which travels at 180mph, was much cheaper per mile of track.
The London to Birmingham stretch meant HS2 would need to go through the heart of the Chilterns, an area of outstanding national beauty. Many Tory MPs, speaking on behalf of unhappy Chilterns residents, demanded expensive tunnels, noise abatement and cuttings to keep the trains out of sight.
In the end, 11 tunnels were commissioned between London and Birmingham, burying the line for 32 miles of the 140 mile track. There were 50 viaducts. Not to mention the notorious £100m bat tunnel.
HS2 was always controversial. Right from the start there were problems managing the contractors, co-ordinating the planning, disagreements over build sequencing and civils. As with dozens of taxpayer funded projects over the past 20 years, we proved to be incapable of managing it on time and budget.
July 24, 2025
HS2 is designed to run at 225mph. The European TGVs run at 186mph with the French sometimes reaching 199mph. The decision to have a faster train set than the European network was taken early on. As you say, this has exacerbated the cost overrun. The line could have been built alongside the M4 and avoided ruining the Chiltern and needing tunnels and also much reinforced track base in order to prevent sound compaction. This was all designed despite having much shorter travel distance. The terminals are inferior to the existing line.
July 24, 2025
It only works for Europe if it connects to HS1.
They would have sold it that it wouldn’t connect in Labour so as not to stir Union issues.
Eventually under the Tories it would have been connected because that makes the most sense and adds in competition to British rail services.
It was actually a Europe-wide scheme dreamed up by Jacques Delors.
Like anything under Labour, it was over-promised, overpriced and a white elephant for the UK.
July 24, 2025
Off topic
I see two Bankers had their convictions quashed yesterday, because they did not commit any crime at all.
In fact worse than that, there was actually no crime committed at all it would seem, because others (including it is alleged The Bank Of England) where operating in the same way, at the same time, for the same reasons.
What an awful state our legal and so called justice system has now become.
Far too many complicated laws, when the system needs simplification.
An example: Theft is theft (taking without permission) no matter how you dress it up, the only difference is the degree or value.
We now have so called thought crime ? really ?
July 24, 2025
Certainly a crime was committed – by the authorities – ‘The State’.
They tried to ‘frame’ these two to take the fall.
Apparently it worked if you think no crime was committed.
July 24, 2025
Agreed, I wonder if they will have to wait 20 years for compensation for the jail time they served, and if the prosecutors and Judge will now be tried for conspiracy and contempt of court.
July 24, 2025
HS2 will perpetually be seen as the project where people say “We should have canned it five years ago, but now we’ve sunk so much investment into it we can’t stop.” Five years later they say the same.
This was a project launched on the back of politicians’ hubris. European countries have their high speed rail lines and the UK’s rail network looks so slow and antiquated.
The business case for it is just as sound as Rachel Reeves’ economic plan.
July 24, 2025
Sir John
There is this Socialist Metro London view of the World, especially from West London, that the World revolves around them, that they are the centre of the Universe. HS2 was originally going from Acton (West London) to somewhere outside of Birmingham and the door-to-door bit from those stations ‘could’ save 20 minutes. The travel time getting from city centre to city centre added another hour.
The business case I would assume meant they thought there was a lot of businesses travelling between those cities, without asking would they want to. Aren’t they, those businesses now all Working from Home?
Although the real story appears be for the need to submit to the EU’s diktats of a connected Europe.
Everyone and their cat knows the same money and effort put into existing networks would increase flows and save costs for not just those in West London but the whole Country. That would be the sane action.
July 24, 2025
john, you are making a massive mistake backing the so call india free trade deal. it is nothing of the sort. it makes it even easier for indian nationals to get work visas to the uk, gives massive tax perks to undercut locals, distorts elections as they are allowed to vote here. meanwhile it is far harder for brits to get work visas to India. nothing is done about the massive industrial scale theft of British intellectual property. we have an entirely unbalanced playing field where the indian side uses child labour, inadequate safety kit, no anti pollution kit, don’t pay software license fees so our equivalents are forced to shut by unfair competition.
this is not a good deal for the uk or the world, it will push up net world pollution, and it will impoverish our own workforce.
no no no
July 24, 2025
@iain gill – India now with the Wolds largest population
July 24, 2025
Well said Iain. The last thing this country needs is this trade deal with India. It’s a dreadful agreement unless you’re one of the tiny minority who are involved with the export of Scotch (noting that a certain well-known Lord Frost has been very deeply involved in the export of Scotch in his career, and I’m sure still knows lots of people who remain in that trade).
July 24, 2025
The original concept of spending £billions to cut the journey time from London to Birmingham by 10 minutes never seemed like a sensible investment.
The time saved was meaningless because of the custom of rail travellers on business which is to work on the train. Secondly I have never met anyone that thought arriving in either London or Birmingham 10 minutes sooner was even desirable.
As time has gone on the option became travelling from somewhere near Birmingham Airport to somewhere near London with a thirty minute commute from the terminus into central London.
What value saving ten minutes there eh?
The new suckers option is no longer a bridge for sale, it is a whole high speed rail system for sale.
July 24, 2025
Sir John
The big part you missed and is not coming through, is HS2 dressed up to look like a modern high-speed train, it is not. It is another Countries cast off’s that have run out customers in its home territories, using old redundant technology in a ‘new dress’. We have seen how theses dressed up cast-offs add to the comfort in what some like to present as modern carriages, back breaking, seat numbing, rubbish, cheap knock off’s of the real thing. They discourage, not encourage use.
The UK content is a handful of assembly workers, handed kit made elsewhere to make it look good. It is not UK technology and expertise being developed, its taxpayer money going to support a foreign regimes – all at the expense of an advancing UK and its workforce. Even now as we have recently learned because of the UK’s deindustrialisation the Steel for the tracks will be coming from out-side of the UK at massive additional costs.
It is time for regime change, a Government and its MP’s to get real and engage with the people and stop fighting them to appease personal ego
July 24, 2025
No doubt some people will have made a lot of money out of this “major financial disaster”?
July 24, 2025
HS2 was of course an EU project which is why it existed in the first place and why it has never been cancelled by the Uniparty. It was never intended to make a profit or increase productivity or GDP/capita or even to be used by anyone not on the tax-payers’ expense as the tickets were going to be far too expensive. I did suggest at the time that we needed, to use an aircraft analogy, a Jumbo and not Concorde so that we could move people up and down the country at very cheap prices. The technology was out of date even when it started. If we wanted to demonstrate our prowess in train technology we should have built a Maglev train. This technology was originally developed in the 1960s by British electrical engineer Dr Eric Laithwaite, inventor of the linear induction motor and the so-called “father of Maglev”.
July 24, 2025
Yet another lost opportunity ! Eric developed it and the Japanese and Chinese used it with considerable success.
Ditto tilting trains, BR developed the APT, a tilting train, put put it into limited service but it had been under-developed so they withdrew it.
The technology was sold to Alstom / Fiat FerroviariaIt and they perfected it and sold the Pendolino units back to us !
July 24, 2025
To be honest I always thought a competitor line that EU train companies could access with their rolling stock is the only good part of the whole project. To cut out the dominence of our monopoly train service, it only works if it connects up through London.
I also thought the main point of it was for European freight movements to cut out British competition. They could move through the UK without ferries and without our rail unions. Boris even floated going all the way into N Ireland (at our expense of course)
July 24, 2025
Sir John
World events getting ahead of themselves once more – ego is triumphant
The UK Government and its Parliament have given authority to an illegitimate unaccountable organisation to persecute the UK forever and a day
“The UK implemented an ICJ advisory opinion when it agreed to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius last year in a deal in which Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, played an influential role.”
Now
“The UN has opened the door to Britain being sued over its historic contribution to climate change.”
“It also cleared the way for lawsuits over historic emissions, which could leave the UK, the birthplace of the industrial revolution, at risk of legal action from other nations.”
As with the Chagos Islands, no proof required just self opinionated super national judges with vested interest inventing laws
The only legitimate laws are those derived from democracy, the will of the people, then amended and repealed by the same process. Everything else is self-opinionated left wing ‘talking heads’ get above themselves, they have no legitimacy unless is awarded to them by our democratic process.
We need regime change, a Government and a Parliament working for, and not against the people that empower and pay them
July 24, 2025
From Comments on the DT
“Our enemies have done a really good job from within and externally, without firing a single bullet they are destroying our country. Worse still, our pathetically docile politicians fall for it. You can be sure, because this is advisory, Starmer will present an open cheque book and saddle future generations with debt for decades to come.”
Someone needs to tell the World, particularly the ICJ what laws are – they are not personal opinions from vested interested parties. They require a democratic mandate from ‘all’ the people . The ICJ has no legiimancy
July 24, 2025
HS2 – agreed. Terrible idea. But not as bad as Boris wanting to build a bridge from England to France and to Ireland or whatever. Something awful like that he had planned.
July 24, 2025
HS2 is a classic example of the stupidity of our government and MPs. Delighted you voted against Sir John, but the difference is that you have had experience in the real world.
It is a vanity project that would never succeed because our Governments don’t know how to write a contract with penalties for non-performance. I am not surprised to hear it is part of an EU rail plan, so no wonder it is a colassal failure.
But even more serious is the present PM, who can’t be bothered to read his speeches before giving them, and the current Chancellor, who can’t see disaster staring them in the face. Immigration and debt will destroy the UK and force a period of serious, real austerity. But Labour just drift to disaster!
July 24, 2025
I think the current estimate is that a further £50bn is required and that does not even get the line into central London, just to an new interchange at Old Oak Common
The additional £50bn is more than the value of the complete project to the country so the best option would be to cancel the whole thing immediately.
July 24, 2025
HS2 should have been built from the north down.
The case for HS2 is and was the capacity issues north of Birmingham where long distance inter-city trains compete for track capacity with the local services and freight, with the resulting situation that neither has the capacity they need to deliver the service they want to.
As an example, the Elizabeth line runs 4 trains an hour on the same routing as the long distance GWR trains out of Paddington (between Hayes and Harlington, it’s 10 trains an hour, plus Heathrow Express). It can do this because there are 4 tracks, so the long distance services and the stopping/freight services can be kept separate from each other, and use the available capacity on each pair without conflict.
For comparison, the town I grew up in has 1 train an hour and can’t get any more because the same tracks are used by the long distance inter-city services, so capacity is constrained. HS2 would have freed up capacity so that such places in the midlands and north could have an Elizabeth line-style service (even a 2 trains/hour service would be a big improvement), but thanks to the decisions made by government, that possibility has been taken away from them.
Too many decisions taken around HS2 were political, kowtowing to individual backbench constituency MPs and NIMBYism. As a country we will again pay the price for failing to invest in modern infrastructure, just as we have for the decision not to build a new London airport at Cublington back in the 60s/70s, but instead to persist with Heathrow with all its attendant issues.
July 24, 2025
HS2 was the slippery slope for the tories ….I’ve often wondered why so many (99%) tory MPs backed the idea …the same approach to net-zero, with still 99% of tory MPs supporting that mad concept
I apologise in advance if the sea rise is recorded and evidenced as ten centimeters per year, every year !
July 24, 2025
Slightly off topic
‘New Offshore Wind Strike Prices More Than Double Cost Of Gas Power, DSENZ has just published the Administrative Strike Prices for the next round of Contracts for Difference, AR7
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/07/24/new-offshore-wind-strike-prices-more-than-double-cost-of-gas-power/#respond
It destroys once and for all the myth that renewables are cheaper than gas
July 24, 2025
Farage and Tice have served notice that if they’re elected the Contracts will be scrapped. Perhaps that will put foreign investors off.
July 24, 2025
132 criminals were illicitly shipped, into the UK yesterday on the 23rd July from France……
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migrants-detected-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats/migrants-detected-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats-last-7-days
July 24, 2025
Absolute disaster from Day 1.
Further investment in a 19th century transport paradigm.
After 200 years it is time to move personal point to point public transport forward into the 21st century.
Autonomous transport and development of ride-hailing apps can provide the framework for direct point-to-point journeys for all replacing underutilised personal cars which sit around most of the time occupying space doing nothing.
July 24, 2025
Oh dear senior Labour party members have been funding the counter demonstrators to stir up trouble.
Essex police Chief Constable has been saying “hate speech” is worse than sexual offences.
The ruling classes have lost the plot.
July 24, 2025
I well recall when HS2 was first mooted, coinciding with the expensive and unnecessary move of Eurostar from Waterloo to King’s Cross. We were told it ‘had to be’ King’s Cross so that foreigners arriving in London could connect to Scotland. (‘What percentage of those arriving from Paris in Waterloo want to reach Edinburgh and Glasgow?’ I wondered. And why couldn’t they hop on the Northern Line?)
Then it gradually filtered through that it was an order from the EU pursuant to their plan to regionalize Britain and carve it up. The south of England would be ‘joined on’ to Northern France to create a single ‘EU region’. Which looked very like a sadistic ‘Republican Marriage’ of the French Revolutionary period.
HS2 was a continuation of this mad idea. De-power London’s economic power, fast-track to Birmingham, may be of use to continentals travelling continuously from Paris or Brussels to the Midlands, as a way of decentralizing London – which would make HS2 no use to British travellers whatsoever, except for civil servants, landowners and company directors in the north wanting nationally subsidised travel between London and the North and Midlands. Civil servants of course travelling for ‘nothing’ to survey their empires in yet more useless ‘meeting’ which they could have perfectly well on Zoom. (Much of this nonsense was already under way in corporates and gov. departments in the 1990s.)
There was never a ‘business case’. It was an EU order. Having left the EU, Johnson and his mates were too lazy to drop HS2 and admit it was phoney, and had cost us a fortune for nothing.
As usual, in voting against, Sir John was one of very few voices of common sense opposing wasteful taxation.
But when we left the EU
July 24, 2025
HS2 Group Think prevailed by politicians instead of proven business experience. It was obvious that using several of the old routes to the north, modernising them and even bypassing Nottingham (where a development at the site of the former mainline station rendered it very expensive to change) would be more cost effective than HS2 and better understood.
HS2 should never have been allowed and those responsible for it need to be shamed.
July 25, 2025
As usual a project or a vanity piece. Whatever the future holds I fear it will not be long before the IMF are at the door and as Keith from Leeds correctly predicts, a period of severe austerity looms.
July 28, 2025
Hi sir john
The vote against HS2
Is very short sided in 20 years or even less the benefits will prove it right to build HS2
The rising cost if the fault of the lack of decisions and dithering no one can estimate a true cost that far ahead
A lot of our canals were delayed because of high cost just look what the high cost of canal did for the country without them the industrial revolution wouldn’t have happened it’s the same with HS2
But it is sad that so many people lost their homes which now because of the cancellation they will stand empty.
Every delay will put up costs so increase the speed of the building of HS2 this will save millions of pounds
Thank you