The original plan for HS2, as the UK’s second high-speed rail line is known, envisioned a network of trains connecting London and Heathrow Airport to nearly all major cities in the north of the country. Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and even Glasgow were meant to be connected in this way. The idea was that the British could do what the French and Japanese could do, just like they did during the Victorian era.
As the costs increased, the ambitions were scaled back. According to insiders, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will announce the downscaling at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester on Wednesday. Heathrow had already been dropped from the plan, followed by Leeds, Liverpool, and Scotland.
Scrapping Manchester from the HS2 railway map would save £10 billion (€11.5 billion). The government intends to spend it on new railways connecting the cities in northern England. What remains of HS2 is a line between Birmingham and London. To be precise, it’s a suburban area of London, as the station will be in Old Oak Common. Extending the line to the more central London Euston station has now proven to be too expensive.
By scrapping Euston, a small disaster occurs because hundreds of homes have already been demolished near the station to make way for new platforms. Additionally, any time saved by the high-speed train is now lost: it takes about half an hour to transfer to the city center from Old Oak Common.
With this decision, Sunak is taking a different course than his predecessors in Downing Street, who were all in favour of the project. The biggest problem with HS2 is the costs, which quickly escalated to nearly £100 billion, a multiple of what was originally planned.
“As Chancellor of the Exchequer, I have to answer the question of why it costs ten times as much to build a railway line here as it does on the other side of the Channel, in France,” said Jeremy Hunt on BBC radio before flying from London to Manchester.
The high costs are partly due to the fact that the line passes through beautiful natural areas just north-west of London, the Chilterns. Due to protests from local residents and nature conservationists, many tunnels have to be built there. Additionally, a lot of money has been spent on consultants, and salaries for HS2 employees are twice as high as those for other transportation projects.
Supporters of the line argue that a fast rail connection is necessary to bridge the gap between London and the poorer north of the country. All the mayors of the cities involved are in favor of the construction, as well as the business community.
Opposition leader Keir Starmer was initially against HS2 but is now a supporter. Opponents argue that it would be better to invest in reopening railway lines that were closed in the 1960s. Dozens of British towns have been without a railway station since then.
