When Gordon Brown proposed the HS2 nationalised new railway line project it was to go from London to Birmingham and on to both Leeds and Manchester, creating a Y shaped new railway between major cities in England. It was to cost £37 bn and was to get the UK up with or ahead of Japan and France with their fast trains running on straight track between major cities.
Labour, Coalition, Conservative and now Labour governments have all wanted the project to work, and have all ended up cutting back the ambition in the face of runaway costs and endless delays. Ministers rightly get the blame, but Ministers just asked senior managers and officials to do it better and cheaper and each time ended up with its considerably dearer and slower. Each enthusiastic Minister wanting to help deliver a success was faced with yet another list of undesirable cuts and options as they wrestled with the absurd and unacceptable budget overruns. The highly paid consultants and senior managers have some questions to answer.
HS2 has become a warning to all those who think a nationalised railway will be so much better. Here is a fully nationalised railway which has had access to an effectively unlimited budget of subsidy and free money paid for by taxpayers. No one can tell us when anyone will be able to travel from Old Oak Common to Birmingham on it, let alone from Euston. All agree we will never travel to Manchester or Leeds on it as promised originally.
Some say it will now cost £100 bn to just do the Birmingham to Euston part of it that remains, three times original costings for well under half the railway. There needs to be much thinking by the government about how it has come to this. We need to see a new business case for what they now hope to deliver. We need a more demanding timetable for the completion to lower the extra time costs. Maybe the railway should end at Old Oak Common, as the costs to complete new track into Euston will be large.
This is a most inauspicious start for an all nationalised railway. As they cut the speed it can attain it loses its original main selling point. It will increase capacity on a route which currently does not lack capacity, so getting any financial return now seems impossible. No wonder growth and productivity are so disappointing when a major project like this hits the buffers. This is the first railway massively delayed and part cancelled by too many twenty pound notes from taxpayers on the line.