Rishi Sunak’s decision to cancel the northern section of HS2 ends Britain’s ambitions to build a high-speed rail line along the backbone of the country linking cities in the north and south.
The Prime Minister said he had ended the “old consensus” to connect major cities “to the exclusion of other places”.
His announcement marked a significant scaling back of the project’s original ambitions, but Sunak said post-pandemic changes in business travel patterns had “severely weakened” its economic position.
Instead, he pledged to redirect the £36bn saved from canceling Birmingham North projects to fund a range of smaller transport schemes, including roads, rail and buses. About a quarter will be used to repair potholes.
But transport chiefs and infrastructure experts have questioned the timing of Sunak’s new scheme and whether it can be delivered.
Tony Travers, a professor at the London School of Economics, said: “While smaller projects are easier to control, there is a huge gap between announcement and delivery.”
What’s left of HS2?
Trains will now only run on the high-speed line between London Euston and Birmingham. They will then slow down and continue on traditional rail to Manchester and beyond.
Sunak confirmed that the high-speed line will connect with Euston station in central London, allaying concerns that the southern end of the line could end at Old Oak public station in west London.
HS2, the government agency responsible for the scheme, was stripped of its responsibilities at Euston and work was halted earlier this year after the project’s construction costs almost doubled to £4.8bn. Instead, the project will be managed by the new Euston development, which is expected to include developers and other businesses and include the construction of thousands of new homes. Sunak said this would save £6.5bn, but the figure has been questioned by some experts.
Travers said HS2 was “a tragic case study in how public infrastructure is not planned and delivered”.
“Canceling the Birmingham to Manchester section still won’t help cost control in the first phase of the scheme and they still need to address that,” he said.
Why was the Birmingham to Manchester route cancelled?
Rising costs have cast a shadow over the project. Even in 2016, the London to Birmingham route was five times more expensive per mile than similar schemes in Europe, according to the government. The cost of the first stage of HS2 is now expected to be higher than initial estimates for the full railway.
Construction of the first line began in 2020, but more than half of its allocated budget (£40bn to £45bn in 2019 prices) has already been spent, despite the project being only three years old and taking at least six years to open . According to calculations by the Financial Times, if inflation is taken into account, the cost will jump to £57 billion.
Rising costs and a lack of transparency have cast a shadow over the second phase of the project, which will cost far more than £100bn.
Supporters of HS2 believe the route will speed up journey times between some of the UK’s biggest cities and free up space for other trains on current tracks.
But a 2015 report by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Select Committee said overcrowding on the West Coast Main Line was mostly limited to Friday nights and weekends and could be addressed through fare changes and other minor improvements.
The pandemic has also reduced train travel, with passenger numbers still around 20% below pre-COVID levels as people work from home. Business travel, which had been expected to account for about half of earnings, has recovered even more slowly.
A Downing Street spokesman said the business case for the project had changed, with it now being offered at just 80p per pound instead of £2.30.
Although more than £2 billion has been spent on the northern phase of the project, work is still in its early stages, key design issues have yet to be resolved and most contracts have yet to be awarded.
Stephen Glaister, professor of transport and infrastructure at Imperial College London, said the tax cost per household for the entire HS2 rail line was estimated at £2,300 over 20 years, with the cost in 2020 being £100 billion, meaning the government would have to “take Produce conclusive evidence of “value for money.”
What will replace the northern section of HS2?
The Prime Minister announced a series of rail, tram and road upgrades and bus improvements under the banner of Network Northern – although not all of these will be in the north of England.
But some £20bn saved by HS2 will be used on projects in the north, including a new £2bn station in Bradford, one of the UK’s worst-travelled cities.
Several rail lines are due to be electrified, including one between Leeds and Hull, a plan initially pushed by northern leaders as part of the Northern Powerhouse Rail High Speed project, which was scaled back by the government last year.
The Government also confirmed that existing funding of £12bn allocated in the Integrated Rail Plan 2021 to improve connections between Liverpool and Manchester will remain in place. The mayors of both cities are expected to be given the power to rework existing plans to improve rail links.
Leeds, the largest city in Europe without a public transport network, has pledged £2.5bn of future funding to achieve this goal.
However, infrastructure experts say the new projects could take years to deliver. “For example, we expect it will take at least five years for Northern Powerhouse Rail to recover from the devastation of HS2 Phase 2B and have construction contracts approved before it is ready for letting,” said Robbie Owen, partner at law firm Pinsent Masons.
Further south, the Midlands will receive almost £10bn of HS2 savings, with £1.75bn of this being spent on the Midlands Rail Hub scheme to upgrade rail connections in the region. Some railway lines that were severed under the Beeching scheme in the 1960s will also be reopened.
West Midlands mayor Andy Street, an outspoken critic of the decision to cut HS2 north, is set to receive another £1 billion in the transport budget.
The government has previously discussed a number of rail projects, including the Integrated Rail Plan for 2021, but funding has not yet been committed.
The government will cap bus fares at £2, except for rail, initially as a temporary post-pandemic measure until the end of 2024. The government will also provide funding for bus infrastructure and increased services in parts of the country.
The plan also includes 70 road upgrades, including work to mitigate key points and upgrades to the A1, A5 and M6, as well as £8.3 billion for pothole repairs.
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