die belebende Bedenkung
Last week Northern metro-mayors Andy Burnham (Manchester) and Steve Rotheram (Liverpool) criticised Nigel Farage s Reform party after its deputy leader Richard Tice warned off businesses bidding for potential high speed railway projects in the north of England. Instead of reviving Northern Powerhouse Rail and HS2 north, a Reform government would spend the money on things Continue reading
Last week, civic leaders in the north of England launched two reports promoting their visions for railway investment, and aimed at influencing the Labour government s ten-year infrastructure strategy. On 14 May, metro-mayors Steve Rotheram (Liverpool) and Andy Burnham promoted their vision of a new Liverpool to Manchester Railway (L2MR), actually a reworking of the western Continue reading
It is time to deal with High Speed 2 as what it is – a cautionary tale that should be studied by future governments in how not to run a major project . That s what Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, Chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, stated in commentary accompanying the publication of the Committee s Continue reading
On 2 December, former Crossrail wrangler Mark Wild became the new chief executive of HS2 Ltd. The government is looking to Mr Wild to identify and lead HS2 Ltd and its supply chain through the essential changes needed to bring costs back under control. To do this, we will be asking him to undertake an assessment of the Continue reading
The election of a Labour government in July raised hopes among High Speed Two revanchists that cuts to the project, made by previous Conservative governments, would be reversed. Prominent HS2 aficionadas in Labour include Transport secretary Louise Haigh and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, and while in opposition, Ms Haigh commissioned the Arup Juergen Continue reading
Changing HS2 costs over time are estimated using bespoke indices (and therefore not comparable to publicly available indices of construction costs), the Department for Transport stated in a February 2024 e-mail response (see Q5a below). The response also provided other interesting tidbits, such as then-prime minister Rishi Sunak government s justification of the Northern Powerhouse Rail Continue…
The case for the HS2 railway has always depended on wishful thinking, misrepresentation, and garbage assumptions. Upholding this decade-old tradition, the government made much of a claim in the October 2023 Network North command paper (CP946) that the de-scoped HS2 phase one could enable West Coast corridor capacity to almost double from 134,000 to 250,000 Continue reading
The downsizing of HS2 in October 2023 did not include any changes to the plans for the Birmingham terminus at Curzon Street. As the HS2 route out of the now-oversize Curzon runs alongside the existing railway linking Birmingham New Street with Water Orton, albeit at different elevation, there would be the possibility of making a Continue reading
Transport secretary Mark Harper MP joined West Midlands metro-mayor Andy Street at Birmingham s Moor Street station on 29 February, as part of a photo-opportunity announcing £123 million to kick-start funding of the Midlands Rail Hub [MRH] . (This scheme has received a fair amount of attention on the Beleben blog, as regular readers might recall.) The Continue reading
The High Speed Two programme, after the cancellation of its latter stages to run only from London to the West Midlands (Phase 1), will offer very poor value for money for the taxpayer , the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) stated in a report published on 7 February. It is the latest addition to Continue reading