The boss of HS2 has admitted that it is ‘terrible’ that the budget for the hugely delayed high speed rail project is set to balloon to £100bn.
Mark Wild, who was parachuted in to ‘reset’ the beleaguered project after rescuing London’s troubled Crossrail project, also told MPs today that he was convinced it would not be delayed any further after years of setbacks.
Yesterday, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander admitted costs will be somewhere between £87.7billion and £102.7bn in 2025 prices, and that the first trains will likely launch between May 2036 and October 2039 on part of the line.
When first announced more than a decade ago, HS2 was set to cost £32.7billion for the leg from London to Birmingham, and services were due to begin this year.
But the project is now delayed and massively over budget – with trains will run slower than planned at a maximum of 199mph rather than 224mph, despite the fact the tracks will be built to withstand the greater speed.
Speaking to the Transport Select Committee this morning, Mr Wild – also a former London Underground boss – said: ‘Let’s just acknowledge what bad news this is: from the budget set in April 2020 that was £42-43bn, that number has doubled.
‘This is terrible news and we have to think about the reasons for that.’
The HS2 boss said spikes in inflation, particularly those driven by the war in Ukraine, were partly to blame for the spiralling costs – along with the fact that construction on HS2 began in 2017 before the design had been fully completed.
Mark Wild, chief executive of HS2, has admitted that the surging budget and spiralling delays to the high-speed project are ‘terrible news’
Rail minister Lord Hendy said taxpayers would be ‘rightly horrified’ by the issues that continue to plague the beleagured rail project
The first operational HS2 route will run between Old Oak Common in west London and Birmingham’s Curzon Street station sometime between May 2036 and October 2039.
They will not reach a newly built HS2 terminal at London Euston until May 2040 and December 2043, where services will also travel to Handsacre Junction in Staffordshire before merging onto the existing West Coast Main Line.
Even now with construction well underway, HS2’s design is only ’80 to 90 per cent complete’, Mr Wild said.
And he openly confessed that HS2’s budget and timeline were a world apart from high-speed projects in Europe, which he admitted were built ‘in faster time’.
France has just signed off plans to build 222km of high-speed rail between Toulouse and Bordeaux for its super-fast TGV trains.
It’s roughly the same distance as the HS2 line from London to Birmingham but has been budgeted at just €8.5bn (£7.3bn), a fraction of HS2’s cost.
In fact, the Artemis moonshot programme has cost less to date – around $93billion, or £69.5billion.
Asked if he could complete HS2 with the original budget and original timescale of £45bn and 10 years, Mr Wild said: ‘I don’t know.’
He admitted that those in charge had ‘lost control’ of the project prior to his appointment – as it emerged that HS2 bosses met with ministers just four times in three years prior to the General Election.
But he pledged that a year from now the project will have a ‘high-fidelity’ schedule to bring it back into line.
HS2’s original route was supposed to connect London with Leeds and Manchester, but the two northern legs were axed amid spiralling costs and delays
He added: ‘When I arrived in his job the project had become completely uncoordinated. We will get into a position of April 2027 where matters of reserve and contingency come under normal controls.
‘I know I’m promising jam tomorrow but I’m convinced the bookends of time are robust and the baseline will fit within it. We will manage this project in an orderly and transparent way.’
Rail minister Lord Hendy said anybody watching proceedings would be ‘rightly horrified’ by the handling of the project.
‘This is a disastrous place to be at a project at this stage,’ he said.
Addressing committee chair Ruth Cadbury he added: ‘We’re confident with this process but you would’ve liked this process to start quite a long time ago, wouldn’t you?’
Transport Secretary Ms Alexander yesterday blamed the surging cost of HS2 on ‘past misunderstanding of the work required, underestimation and inefficiency, issues within the control of HS2 Ltd, some of its suppliers, and previous governments’.
Part of the work to remove the ‘gold plating’ of the project would include reducing the focus on the ‘highest possible speeds’, she added.
But Dr Scott Arthur, a Labour MP and civil engineer, said of the plans to slow trains down: ‘We’re going to design things as intended lines but the trains are going to run slower. That seems a bit odd, doesn’t it?’
Lord Hendy, the rail minister, said of the speed reduction: ‘The additional three minutes of journey time is neither here nor there.’
