HS2 delayed again?

[NCT]

The Koralmbahn is only being tested for one year for operation in the December 2025 timetable.

 

[HSTEd]

HS2 has designed a railway with very tight integration between the trains and signalling system.

See the previous example of the automated stop only allowing the train to stop in specified locations, as well as the train's ventilation system altering mode through the journey. That latter one is caused by the tunnels being too small to meet air quality standards if the train ventilation system is allowed to run continuously. The trains "overventilate" before entering the tunnels to reduce the carbon dioxide concentration in the train, before largely recirculating air during the journey through. [See note below]


I would expect extensive testing of all this equipment and its interactions.

EDIT:

A correction, it appears that that requirement was floated by HS2 during its attempts to get out of lengthening the Chiltern Tunnel back in 2015. Page 25/37
It is unclear if that was actually adopted.

It's not mentioned in the train technical specification document, but that is also very old indeed.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

A couple of nuggets from Mark Wild's letter to Heidi Alexander (now nearly 3 months old):
(My bold).

However, three key issues have been identified for urgent resolution:
1. The organisation is imbalanced and too big in some functions. Delivery teams lack the resources they need, while the corporate centre has grown excessively.
2. There are critical capability gaps in commercial, technical, assurance, control and finance functions.
3. There is too little focus on the end railway - on delivering and operating the system for passengers, rather than managing the construction programme.

In addition to these capacity and capability gaps, there are some cultural issues that run deep. The organisation is too bureaucratic, process-driven, and risk-averse. It does not operate like an expert builder of a railway. There is a lack of accountability, with individuals feeling disempowered to make decisions or drive change. Over the coming months, building on steps taken over the last year and a half, HS2 Ltd must become a lean, expert delivery organisation, focused on performance, outcomes, and cost discipline. Crucially, the cost of running the organisation must be reduced. Leadership in the Integrated Project Teams must be strengthened, and the organisation must be reshaped to put delivery first.

There must be a number of shredded reputations as a result of this list (as was the case when the Elizabeth Line management was replaced).
Interesting that rolling stock, the railway contracts generally, and interworking on the WCML, do not figure at all.

And a little further on (again my bold):

We will develop the optimal operating configurations for HS2. It is my assessment that there is a need to simplify the day one railway, and I am looking at all available levers (e.g. opening at slightly reduced running speeds, removing automatic train operation) while protecting the long term agility to deliver the full benefits. This staged approach will reduce risk, improve reliability, allow for more certainty around cost, reduce the delay to the railway’s opening and enable incremental build-up of the service.

So delivering a reduced spec line initially, while retaining eventual full scope capability.
Essentially starting to eat the elephant.

 

[stuu]

HS2 has designed a railway with very tight integration between the trains and signalling system.

See the previous example of the automated stop only allowing the train to stop in specified locations, as well as the train's ventilation system altering mode through the journey. That latter one is caused by the tunnels being too small to meet air quality standards if the train ventilation system is allowed to run continuously. The trains "overventilate" before entering the tunnels to reduce the carbon dioxide concentration in the train, before largely recirculating air during the journey through.


I would expect extensive testing of all this equipment and its interactions.

That's mental. Who thought that was a good idea? So much of it has been reinventing the wheel and then being surprised it costs a fortune

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

So delivering a reduced spec line initially, while retaining eventual full scope capability.
Essentially starting to eat the elephant.

If in eight years they can't deliver 300kmh from the outset there is no point carrying on.

 

[SynthD]

The government ends up with considerably less tonnage of white elephant though, because they are free to abort the programme after any one of those phases.

That assumes that the project fails and is cancelled before the whole set of small projects are done? What if it is completed, imagine the positive. It looks to me as they have managed the overall scheme to have no connection orphaned by later work, but the segments are 100mi, not your favoured 50mi. Splitting hairs?

 

[absolutelymilk]

My Reading of Mark Wilds letter, and Heidi Alexander's statement (link)

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/685177afcf42a58f50cac99b/hs2-ltd-letter-to-transport-secretary.pdf

I realise it's a few months old, but I'm surprised the civils are only a third complete when many of the big ticket items (the tunnels and Colne Valley Viaduct) seem to be nearly complete. I wonder if the smaller items are much further behind?

 

[The Planner]

A 50 mile "bypass" segment alongside the southern WCML (possibly higher speed, but not necessarily do) would have been much better way to start IMO.

Then we could have separately considered the best way to increase capacity at Euston/Birmingham/Colwich/Manchester to enable new services.

Then one day maybe we could have joined everything up, but we wouldn't have relied on it.

That still doesnt solve the Coventry corridor or Colwich though, what capacity does that release until you build something else?

 

[FMerrymon]

My Reading of Mark Wilds letter, and Heidi Alexander's statement (link)

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/685177afcf42a58f50cac99b/hs2-ltd-letter-to-transport-secretary.pdf

Resetting the High Speed Two (HS2) programme

A statement outlining the future of High Speed Two (HS2), including new management and a bold reset plan.

www.gov.uk

Is that the cancelled parts need to be reinstated (but only once they have got to grip with issuing new contracts that are more risk and incentivised, rather than cost plus approach that has failed). Reading between lines there are hints either going to spend a fortune to bodge it into existing lines (and phase1 won't really be properly utilised)or going to have to do add on bits (but not in same uncontrolled cost style).

My own thought is the next stages report (due in Autumn) will be looking at optimal outcomes of moving forward, not just minimising cost and wasting huge amounts by having mismatch between high spec phase 1 and an inadequate what happens north of Birmingham.

The cost appears to match the six monthly review from December rather than the widely reported recent cost that was put at 100bn.

 

[AndrewE]

...the train's ventilation system altering mode through the journey. That latter one is caused by the tunnels being too small to meet air quality standards if the train ventilation system is allowed to run continuously. The trains "overventilate" before entering the tunnels to reduce the carbon dioxide concentration in the train, before largely recirculating air during the journey through.

That sounds almost unbelievable - and is probably on a par with the logic behind the "bat-cave" tunnel entrance. You give contractors (and designers with no rail or building design or environment experience whatsoever) a "cost-plus" contract and then wonder why everything is gold-plated! I would love to see the justification for this design criterion. Might it be in the public domain? I would hope that the individuals or committee who signed it off would be chased personally for the wasted millions of pounds it must have cost too...

I would (from my professional experience in exactly this field) bet that there is no risk whatsoever that saloon CO2 levels could ever become unacceptable in an electric train running through a tunnel on an exclusively electric railway. It has never been mentioned to my knowledge in relation to Channel Tunnel trains, for example.

...Now if you were asking me about the acid gases (NOx and SOx) that passengers are subjected to in Standedge Tunnel I could easily make a case for it being closed to passenger trains immediately pending electrification...

 

[weeklycommuter]

The Stewart review (Major Transport schemes, Governance and Assurance) is now published

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/685291bf2b367fdd44c15e2b/dft-major-transport-projects-governance-assurance-review.pdf

131 pages so not going to quote it.

I read the following on page 62 as the key reason for this disaster which will result in the very necessary big increase in railway capacity being delivered many years later and at vastly greater cost than could and should have been achieved.

7.1 The culture of cost control and affordability
F36. A culture of driving down cost to manage affordability has been absent from the Programme.
Most people I have spoken to have blamed the original vision for HS2 and the resultant requirements and scope for the high costs. A railway that was originally intended to increase capacity became a vision to build the best and fastest highspeed railway in the world. This effectively ruled out the cost savings expected from utilising HS1 design, which was tried and tested, and a completely new design was required.

 

[Zomboid]

I read the following on page 62 as the key reason for this disaster which will result in the very necessary big increase in railway capacity being delivered many years later and at vastly greater cost than could and should have been achieved.

It always struck me as unnecessary to build it for speeds above 300 or 320kmh. The very early drawings I saw seemed to be for a 400kmh alignment, which I suppose is ok in itself as future proofing, but I would have actually built for 320.

 

[FMerrymon]

It always struck me as unnecessary to build it for speeds above 300 or 320kmh. The very early drawings I saw seemed to be for a 400kmh alignment, which I suppose is ok in itself as future proofing, but I would have actually built for 320.

Last couple of lgv lines have been 350/400kmh alignments. The speed adds some cost, but it was the 18 trains an hour that required the slab track. Most expensive bits remain the getting into Birmingham and London, which is nearly half the cost.of phase 1.

 

[Brubulus]

It always struck me as unnecessary to build it for speeds above 300 or 320kmh. The very early drawings I saw seemed to be for a 400kmh alignment, which I suppose is ok in itself as future proofing, but I would have actually built for 320.

Would be interesting to know if the 360kmh speed was truly a cost driver or if it was the wider culture of gold plating and attempting to reinvent the wheel at every possible opportunity.
If it were just built as another LGV, even if the speed was 360kmh, it would have been much cheaper.

 

[JD2168]

With the amount of time & money spent it would have been better to increase the frequency of the current services & electrify other lines. HS2 at this rate is nothing more than a rather expensive shuttle service

 

[Technologist]

Given HS2's track record, there's no guarantee spending more money would actually deliver the project faster. It might just waste money faster....

In my cynical (and uninformed) opinion, HS2 Ltd has saught to make the whole project "too big to fail" from the start. Governments should have insisted on a phased approach which may have allowed lessons to be learnt along the way. We now risk having a white-elephant, delivered years late and many times over budget, which in turn destroys the case for any future investment in high-speed rail.

This, the project was both unambitious and over ambitious at the same time!

The vision should have been for a full Shinkansen style parallel network going to every city with more than 250,000 people. This should have been the dream sold with a plan to actually do all of this in the working lifetime of a voter.

The opening project should have been something smaller and cheaper that was explicitly there to build competence in the organisation/industry and was not expected to pass a cost benefit analysis on it's own. It should have gone somewhere where NIMBYs were less organised maybe York - shin Middlesborough - shin Sunderland - Newcastle and it should have been built like Chinese/Japanese high speed rail mostly on a modularised concrete viaduct. This could have then been used to ally fears of visual intrusion and noise in other places. Then we go do something like Northern Powerhouse Rail in about half the time because we know what we are doing and we change planning law.

Set the whole thing up to be self funding with the ability to buy property at and around stations and then sell/rent it at a profit to pay for the lines. It will probably be initially quite poor at this but eventually it will be going gangbusters building railway just like every other developer who historically used this model.

This should have been built in line with actually building a capability to innovate on rollingstock. I think the example here is Japan where there is generally a running advanced prototype train at all times so we are in a position where an in-house research and technology group builds the prototypes and then industry picks them up and builds them. So if we can a classic compatible, 400kph, BEMU with 90kw/t we can have it.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Wednesday at 21:31 ==

With the amount of time & money spent it would have been better to increase the frequency of the current services & electrify other lines. HS2 at this rate is nothing more than a rather expensive shuttle service

See above point, for a fraction of the money spent we could have increased the domestic capability to actually design and build infrastructure before actually going away and practicing building lines/systems. The whole point about technology is that it's essentially magic, it's not about making trade offs. Our fundamental issue is that we must be governed by lawyers advised by economists both backwards looking profession with low or no tolerance for uncertainty.

 

[absolutelymilk]

The opening project should have been something smaller and cheaper that was explicitly there to build competence in the organisation/industry and was not expected to pass a cost benefit analysis on it's own. It should have gone somewhere where NIMBYs were less organised maybe York - shin Middlesborough - shin Sunderland - Newcastle and it should have been built like Chinese/Japanese high speed rail mostly on a modularised concrete viaduct. This could have then been used to ally fears of visual intrusion and noise in other places. Then we go do something like Northern Powerhouse Rail in about half the time because we know what we are doing and we change planning law.

Sadly pointing to the low impact that HS1 has had on the environment did not persuade the NIMBYs on HS2!

 

[NCT]

Isn't there a bit of sensationalised over-simplification in the 'HS2 Ltd reinvented wheel' line?

I'm sure there is a lot of truth to it, but as I understand it (and this is from last 15 years worth of grapevines so happy to be corrected) HS2 Ltd was advised by SNCF to future proof its alignment - the mantra back in around 2012 was that if you were to build a new railway in the countryside then there's little marginal cost between a fairly straight line and a really really straight line, and the ability to design in high gradients meant you could minimise tunnels and viaducts. Running 18tph just meant you minimise infrastructure km input for the maximum train km output - if was meant to be a unit cost saving measure. Purely on headline infrastructure units - the number of track km and platforms, HS2 is an incredibly lean specified project.

Somehow this all got lost in translation and we ended up with the highest unit costs in the world. Yes slab tracks are more expensive than ballast tracks, but the Germans have built plenty of them and I'm willing to bet my house that their unit costs were nowhere near as high as HS2's.

City centre approaches are an unavoidable scope item of HS2 - the whole point of HS2 was that existing city centre approaches are full. How do the Northolt tunnels compare in unit costs against Crossrail tunnels? I'm surprised the Birmingham approaches are expensive.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Wednesday at 21:48 ==

The opening project should have been something smaller and cheaper that was explicitly there to build competence in the organisation/industry and was not expected to pass a cost benefit analysis on it's own. It should have gone somewhere where NIMBYs were less organised maybe York - shin Middlesborough - shin Sunderland - Newcastle and it should have been built like Chinese/Japanese high speed rail mostly on a modularised concrete viaduct.

God no.

 

[HSTEd]

That's mental. Who thought that was a good idea? So much of it has been reinventing the wheel and then being surprised it costs a fortune

I've added clarification to my earlier post, its not clear if it was actually adopted.

It was on the list of things that HS2 said would be needed ot mitigate the long Chiltern tunnel in 2015, but its not in the issued train technical spec circa 2019. See my original post for clarification and link.
They may have got out of it.

However, the aerodynamic design of Chiltern tunnels also means all the tunnel ventilation shafts are closed with dampers in normal operation to prevent tunnel booms.

Intervention shafts with emergency ventilation equipment are provided in the long tunnels, but there will be no pressure relief function since bypass shafts exhausting to atmosphere were predicted to exceed noise limits for the noise-sensitive areas in which most of the shafts are located. Furthermore, eliminating the bypass enabled cost savings by reducing the size of the shafts. Track isolation dampers will be closed during normal operation, and the shafts will have no influence on aerodynamics in the tunnels.

Also this project has really gone on a long time..... I have faint memories of documents from a decade ago that are still several years into the project!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Wednesday at 22:02 ==

That sounds almost unbelievable - and is probably on a par with the logic behind the "bat-cave" tunnel entrance. You give contractors (and designers with no rail or building design or environment experience whatsoever) a "cost-plus" contract and then wonder why everything is gold-plated! I would love to see the justification for this design criterion. Might it be in the public domain? I would hope that the individuals or committee who signed it off would be chased personally for the wasted millions of pounds it must have cost too...

I would (from my professional experience in exactly this field) bet that there is no risk whatsoever that saloon CO2 levels could ever become unacceptable in an electric train running through a tunnel on an exclusively electric railway. It has never been mentioned to my knowledge in relation to Channel Tunnel trains, for example.

...Now if you were asking me about the acid gases (NOx and SOx) that passengers are subjected to in Standedge Tunnel I could easily make a case for it being closed to passenger trains immediately pending electrification...

As noted above, it is not clear it was actually adopted.
It was proposed in 2015 by HS2 but doesn't appear in the train tech spec. See the original post for the link.

Remember that the HS2 tunnels are functionally all single tunnels with no ventilation shafts under normal circumstances, because they are trying to avoid tunnel booms emanating from any shafts.
The shafts all have ventilation dampers.

 

[eldomtom2]

and it should have been built like Chinese/Japanese high speed rail mostly on a modularised concrete viaduct.

Why? That means more cost and more visual impact.

 

[FMerrymon]

City centre approaches are an unavoidable scope item of HS2 - the whole point of HS2 was that existing city centre approaches are full. How do the Northolt tunnels compare in unit costs against Crossrail tunnels?

Yes, unavoidable, but a substantial part of the costs and means you don't save much from reducing speed. An LGV 300/320kmh line would require exactly the same.

Northolt tunnels were 3.3bn for 8.5miles. I don't believe that includes fit out.

Yes slab tracks are more expensive than ballast tracks, but the Germans have built plenty of them and I'm willing to bet my house that their unit costs were nowhere near as high as HS2's.

I believe poor ground conditions and the depth of cuttings has meant more piling required. The NAO reported that the railway was lowered in response to complaints about possible noise levels as a result of using slab. There was discussion at a TSC session that the depth of piling was being gold-plated.

 

[NCT]

I believe poor ground conditions and the depth of cuttings has meant more piling required. The NAO reported that the railway was lowered in response to complaints about possible noise levels as a result of using slab. There was discussion at a TSC session that the depth of piling was being gold-plated.

Having heard this a number of times (not a scientific way of assessing the credibility of a claim I know) from reputable sources I do feel these are the key reasons for the high costs-
- The politically motivated lowering of the railway (which among other things upset the previously balanced spoil)
- The over-specified piling depth.

 

[Grimsby town]

With the amount of time & money spent it would have been better to increase the frequency of the current services & electrify other lines. HS2 at this rate is nothing more than a rather expensive shuttle service

If there was capacity on the WCML for more services, HS2 wouldn't have been built. It'd likely cost billions, if not tens of billions to upgrade the WCML for an additional hourly path or two. HS2 construction has been an absolute mess but phase 1 is still going to create allow for somewhere around an additional 10tph. Further smaller and more manageable phases could do similar for other lines and cities.

 

[NCT]

Don't forget HS2 was born out of the ghost of the highly disruptive and massively descoped West Coast Route Modernisation.

 

[Zomboid]

HS2 was, and is, the right solution to the challenges of capacity on the southern WCML (and MML and ECML, for that matter, if the whole thing gets built eventually).

 

[Xavi]

HS2 did originally tender target cost contracts, but Treasury wouldn’t approve the prices (high because of the specification and mitigations demanded by ministers), so the only way to proceed (which the government wanted) was cost plus contracts with optimistic (to suit Treasury budgeting) forecasts, which continued until it suited Rishi’s advisers to call time.

 

[Snow1964]

Whilst all the management and political bickering is going on, HS2 have issued a series of summer newsletters covering middle section of HS2 with photos of recent progress and upcoming works in next few months.

North Chilterns area

https://assets.hs2.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/NCA-Summer-Newsletter-2025-to-publish-2.pdf

Aylesbury area

https://assets.hs2.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/NC2A-North-Newsletter-Summer-2025-v2.pdf

Calvert area

https://assets.hs2.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/HS2-Calvert-Area-Summer-Newsletter-2025.pdf

Twyford-Greatworth (Brackley) area

https://assets.hs2.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/T2G-HS2-Newsletter-Summer-2025.pdf

Greatworth-Southam

https://assets.hs2.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Greatworth-to-Southam-HS2-Newsletter-Summer-2025.pdf

all are pdf, but too lengthy to quote.

So some sections are virtually earthworks complete with landscaping going on. A few more bridges are expected to be completed soon. But does seem to be be rather a time gap before any track and signalling goes in which makes me wonder about timescale coordination..

 

[stuu]

I've added clarification to my earlier post, its not clear if it was actually adopted.

It was on the list of things that HS2 said would be needed ot mitigate the long Chiltern tunnel in 2015, but its not in the issued train technical spec circa 2019. See my original post for clarification and link.
They may have got out of it.

However, the aerodynamic design of Chiltern tunnels also means all the tunnel ventilation shafts are closed with dampers in normal operation to prevent tunnel booms.

The Guadarrama tunnel in Spain is even longer yet is 0.5m narrower and doesn't, as far as I can tell, have any of this nonsense. They really do seem to have reinvented the wheel

 

[absolutelymilk]

Three years of testing seems quite an outlier, for what will be a very straightforward railway with no interfaces with anything else

Where do they mention three years of testing? I couldn't see it in the statement or the letter

 

[stuu]

Where do they mention three years of testing? I couldn't see it in the statement or the letter

Second page of Wild's letter, the second point of the schedule section