HS2 could become a little less high-speed to save on time and costs
Plans to make HS2 the fastest regular passenger rail service on the planet could be scrapped to save time and costs on the massively overrunning project.
Cutting the top speed of the trains by around 40km per hour could save billions of pounds with a ‘negligible impact on journey times’, the Department for Transport (DfT) said.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has provided two options for speed reductions on the route, which will connect London with Birmingham.
One would bring the top speed down from 360km/h to 320km/h, roughly the top speed of Japan’s famous Shinkansen bullet trains.
The other would reduce it further to 300km/h, which would make HS2 no faster than the existing HS1 – better known as the Channel Tunnel route.
Either choice would mean it forfeits the crown of quickest railway on Earth, with both China and Indonesia boasting passenger trains that can reach 350km/h.
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Alexander said the government is ‘determined to deliver HS2 as effectively and efficiently as possible’.
She added: ‘In doing so, I will look at every opportunity to claw back construction time, save taxpayers money and ensure the project delivers for the country.’
According to the DfT, the fact that no other railway in the world is currently engineered for such a rapid top speed would mean HS2 trains could only be tested once the tracks were built – further delaying the project.
A report on the impact of reducing the speed of the train is due to be delivered to Alexander before the start of Parliament’s summer recess on July 16.
In an alternative reality where all original deadlines were met, the first passengers would be start riding high-speed between London and cities in the north of England later this year.
Of course, that isn’t happening. Rishi Sunak announced he was scrapping the northern and eastern legs of the project in October 2023.
The Tory PM’s decision came after years of ballooning costs and unmet targets. In 2012, it was estimated the cost of the first phase would be £20.5 billion – but by January 2024, the estimate was £49bn to £56.6bn (all in 2019 prices).
In December 2024, Labour appointed former Crossrail boss Mark Wild to become the new CEO of HS2 Ltd, the company launched by the last Labour government in 2009 to head up the project.
Alexander said Wild had been tasked with a ‘reset’ which would ‘bring an end to constant cost increases and delays, and deliver the remainder of the programme safely and at the lowest reasonable cost’.
In her latest update, the Transport Secretary said the new CEO’s work had shown HS2 Ltd ‘did not have an accurate assessment of how much work had been delivered, or of how much was left to do’.
‘It is now clear that previous plans significantly underestimated the work required,’ she added.
No new target date for the completion of the work was provided.
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