In 2020, the UK Prime minister, Boris Johnson approved a controversial and massive transport infrastructure project for the country, called HS2. In 2024, after over 15 years of planning. With estimated costs ballooning almost four times to a staggering £106 Billion pounds, and several massive changes to the blueprint, HS2 is still yet to be delivered.
The project was meant to connect the disproportionately populated London with the rest of the UK, including cities like Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds, with the eventual goal of stretching all the way to Scotland. But the project was mired with problems from the start.
The huge environmental costs and damage to England’s iconic landscapes and wildlife had protests rising up all over the country. Legal battles ensued, adding years and tens of millions of pounds to a budget that was spiralling out of control. It seemed as if the project was doomed to join other great transport engineering follies of the modern age, such as the Moscow Monorail, or the California High Speed Rail.
This is in contrast to China’s High-Speed Rail network, the largest rail network in the world. The idea for this was originally floated long after planning for HS2 began in the UK, but quickly overtook it in rollout and delivery.
HS2 would have been completed in just under 2 years at the pace and level of investment. Instead, it labours on, far from the destination it promised, and at four times the predicted cost. Could this be the United Kingdom’s biggest, and most costly, infrastructure blunder ever?
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You expect nothing less than chaos from a chaotic government. The railways and public utilities (water, power, gas, etc.) were not privatised, they were commercialised. Overseas shareholders are laughing all the way to the bank. The UK pays utilities subsidies to these companies who pay these subsidies to their shareholders as dividends. They do the same thing in loans. DB are paid subsidies for transport services in the UK which goes to fund cheap rail fares in Germany! Google it.
It’s astonishing that Britain has lost the majority of its automotive industry and still has arguably worse rail than Germany.
Why no leg from Manchester to Leeds?
Of course it is, it was a government vanity project and utter waste of time and money
Lol, lol, lol the industrial age and England lol.
This video ably demostrates the enormity of the lies spoken by politicians and of their utter incompetence.
BBC News story from 2013. How prophetic…
A leading business lobby group has called on the government to abandon its controversial high-speed rail project. The Institute of Directors (IoD) said a survey of its members showed businesses were unconvinced by the economic case for HS2. The IoD's director general, Simon Walker, described the project as "one grand folly". In response the government said the HS2 project was forecast to generate billions in economic benefits.
HS2, which stands for High Speed Two, is intended to allow trains to run at 250mph (400km/h) from London to Birmingham from 2026, with branches to Manchester and Leeds via Sheffield planned by 2032. The government says it expects the project to cost £42.6bn. But the Institute of Economic Affairs, a think tank, has suggested it could rise to more than £80bn. The Department for Transport (DfT) also claims the project will generate £50bn in benefits to the UK economy, helping job creation and creating investment opportunities.
But the IoD said a survey of its members showed that just 27% felt the project represented good value for money. Some 70% said the scheme would have no impact on the productivity of their business. Fewer than half (41%) rated HS2 as important to their business – that is down from 54% in a similar survey conducted in August 2011. "Businesses up and down the country know value for money when they see it, and our research shows that they don't see it in the government's case for HS2," said Mr Walker. "Overall there appears to be little enthusiasm amongst IoD members, not even in the regions where the benefits are supposed to be strongest. "We agree with the need for key infrastructure spending, but the business case for HS2 simply is not there… it is time for the government to look at a thousand smaller projects instead of falling for one grand folly." He added that the cost-benefit analysis was conducted before laptops and tablet computers became commonplace, and as a result suggested time spent on trains was wasted. "The fact is more than half our members say they spend all of their time on trains working," Mr Walker told the BBC's Today programme. "For many of them it's as productive as the time they spend in the office."
HS2 has divided opinion, even among the business community. The British Chambers of Commerce, another business lobby group, said it remained supportive of the project, though a spokesperson told the BBC it was "critical" that costs were kept under control. The CBI has also voiced lukewarm support. Director general John Cridland said it supported HS2 "in principle" but that "it must be demonstrably clear that the benefits outweigh the costs".
A DfT spokesman said the HS2 Growth Taskforce would "work with city and business leaders to ensure we are capitalising on every opportunity to help regeneration, job creation, investment opportunities and in building a skilled UK economy". Without HS2, he said, "our existing rail network will be full by the mid-2020s at a cost to passengers and businesses up and down country".
HS2 in its original plans the Y shape is the only answer. The protests and opposition didnt derail the project but changing plans left and right , tory politics and lack of skills due to not making High speed rail made it go overbudget. China, France and Spain can make cheap high speed rail because the continuously build. The Anglosphere cant build sh** on time.
Catastrophic governments – another recently cemented in – overreacting to the real leaves on the track which are fat, overfed wimps moaning about everything including protestors, planning officers, nervous accountants… Britain needs the brave.
We should have had it completed in all sections 5 years ago. Sure, it’s overpriced but land values are so high in a densely populated country any rail project will never make its money back. But I want a train to Leeds!!
Don’t you?
The irony …
Yes i am indian . And yes i believe the english empire was a blessing in disguise for my land .
In the UK, we refer to this phenomenon as “Rip Off Britain”.
We basically now accept here that private companies take an additional cut (or invent increased costs) from government budgets wherever possible as the norm. Every government project is assessed by an army of private sector ‘consultants’’ who charge premium prices for their ‘expertise’, to the point that government workers now lack the expertise to function without them.
From public health, to prisons, to social housing, ‘PFIs’ (Public Finance Initiatives) provide low quality services for inflated prices. The British Armed Forces are facing a recruitment crisis, but somewhat unique among NATO countries it’s in large part because the private company Capita turns perfectly adequate and highly motivated applicants away for insignificant medical reasons purely to further increase costs and further justify the service they provide.
Our water companies are privatised, who pump sewage into our waterways, give out record dividends to shareholders, but are on the verge of filing for bankruptcy.
An elected representative stole £60M (USD$79M) during the p@ndem1c where she sold fake protective equipment to our National Health Service.
And finally we know even private companies which we buy from directly as consumers charge us much higher rates than our peers in the EU and G7, like how energy companies recorded record profits after Russia invaded Ukraine (again) in 2022.
The problem in the UK isn’t that the government is too big, or too incompetent. The problem is that corruption has been legalised and that every public initiative is infested with private sector parasites that continually drain public money away and into offshore accounts, leaving us with terrible quality infrastructure and services.
Who in their right mind builds a rail network just after 2008 crash….Criminals….Stockmarket Whores who milked us all for every penny we had i feel like i have been robbed on a National level.
This video is obviously relying on a lot of biased sources and makes some illogical comments. How can tunnels, often constructed to preserve landscapes (including one mile long tunnel constructed to avoid cutting down ancient woodland) be described as 'highly intrusive?' How can the self-publicist Chris Packham justify his claim that this is the most destructive project ever? Think about it – 345 miles (both phases) of narrow rail route compared to 2,200 miles of much wider motorway. The huge amount of environmental work carried out by this project (which adds considerably to its footprint) is unprecedented in UK infrastructure. As for carbon emissions, the whole route of HS2 in construction and 120 years of operation will produce less carbon than one month's emissions of the UK road network. HS2 will reduce UK emissions by encouraging modal shift from road and air transport and free up considerable passenger and freight capacity on the existing rail network.
Shout out to Barnet FC @ 2:55