HS2: The UK's Insane $130 BILLION Money Pit 

When the French decided not to build a high speed line to the west of Paris straight after building the link south they reserved the rail corridor for potential future use, thus reducing long term costs. When the UK abandons it promises to the North the government announces it is immediately selling off the land it has already bought, mostly at a loss, so the next government couldn't reverse it, and does so without seeking the permission of parliament, who authorised the purchase in the first place.

It infuriates me that there is absolutely no accountability or consequences for these people who waste so much public money due to their utter incompetence.

It’s wild that Spain managed to build 3000km of high speed rail for less money than the UK spent to build 68 miles.

I briefly (over a summer) worked for a company who mapped the railway station boundaries for wheelchair access. A team of 8 people to take some basic digital measurements. All of which could have been done by 2 people. We also all got paid for 8 hours (min contract time) and were there around 20 mins. There are a lot of private firms with deep pockets because of the railways.

Having worked on the HS-2 project breifly, I can say the beauacracy there is staggering. It's no wonder it's being cancelled. I worked there as a fire alarm engineeer for a few visits. It took 18 months to organise a visit for me to link 2 of the welfare units together to the main security hut fire alarm panel at Euston becuase 18 different depatments had to approve that on visit. Apparently none of the departments would talk to each other. Then when I did make it there there had to be 5 people there to do the job instead of 2 people - ther person that organised the job had to stand and watch us, myself and the HS-2 fire alarm engineer and, (and this is the best bit!) 2 electricians. one to turn the key and remove the key to isolate the 230v supply the the other electrctrician had to look after the key whilst we did the work which was pointless as the panel supply didn't need isolating. It was like something fromk a comedy. The entire site was like that. So effectively, a 160ft hole was dug there and that's as far as they got along with a complex traffic light system that none of the lorry drivers took any notice of. Well done MACE Dragados! I was on another MACE job recently and it was exactly the same, behind and chaotic and over budget.

All my friends that worked on HS2, had silly pay, loads of benefits (company cars etc), and hardly worked - they weren’t even high up. I remember saying it would never get finished. I mean why should it? These companies get free money from the government with 0 accountability on how it’s being spent.

My friend worked for a local authority in the regeneration department, trying to find ways to build new affordable housing. The team were a lot of very bright talented people, architects and planners. After a few years they had all burned out, quit, the boss got clinical depression. They faced total inertia. Huge email chains and nothing getting signed off. Angry town hall meetings involving months of preparation. Corrupt practices by rich companies. You should do a video about why so few architects in the UK now get work in the public sector - almost all of them survive by doing private gigs.

“Just to slightly reduce travel time between London and Birmingham” - The description of such projects as “high speed rail” has been a communication disaster. Their real purpose is to increase network capacity. By removing long distance higher speed services from the legacy network the density of trains on the legacy network can be substantially increased and hence more people and freight can be transported. This is not about getting there faster on a train, it’s about a train existing at all that serves your local station, and hence not wasting your life sitting in a traffic jam.

German here: Infrastructure costs growing multi-fold during the building phase of a project are normal elsewhere, too, including right here in the middle of the continent (all countries). Even though we do mostly finish large infrastructure projects: Our latest all-new high speed track routing of about 50 km (Stuttgart-Ulm) was only opened one year ago. Italy is also getting ahead with its stuff. Only very few countries are true masters of railway infrastructure. I believe Switzerland is by far the most capable country there, bar none. I admire what they have achieved and continue to do. Also, the dreadful "nimby" attitude is widespread, making it that much harder to see large infrastructure projects through. But selling the land intended for a future infrastructure build (if it indeed happened in England) is a sin and those folks doing it should be *personally* held liable - not just lose their political office at some point. If some sort of corruption or unjust selling out of state property has taken place, even prison terms should not be out of the question. Without the pressure of personal liability no responsible behaviour by those lowly, mentally corrupted politicians.

As someone who works in facilities in the UK, I can vouch that the higher uppers seem to prefer spending endless time (and money) just talking about things rather than actually achieving anything tangible

It's insane how our train fares in Britain are so astronomically expensive to the point where most of us prefer to drive.

I've done contracting work on HS2 sites, I can understand exactly why it's costing so much and achieving so little. the amount of red-tape is insane just to go onto a site with no activity to do an hours worth of work, nothing seems to get done. I went over to a site over by the A45 east of birmingham once a month for 12 months. In that time they built a haulage road, dug a big hole and built a 50ft square concrete pad, that's it. but there always seemed to be dozens of "workers" just wandering about doing nothing and several higher ups sitting around in their nice air-conditioned site office complex looking at PCs.

As a german who works in rail construction I see day in day out how inefficient we are and had to learn not to care because it's not my problem because I will get paid anyways. I refuse to imagine how a nation can be that much worse.

Overspend by the government needs to be investigated, why costs got so out of control and where the money has gone.

I actually think you've missed the big picture here; the HS2 Project was actually created as a way of siphoning huge amounts of Treasury Money into private hands - in that sense, it has been a complete success. It has been an "early retirement" project for many.

This goes further than this excellent video. I worked in the Oil & Gas Industry in Scotland in the UK. In the 70's and 80's when the oil fields opened up the Oil Operators like Shell and BP and the Oil Services companies like your Halliburtons and Schlumburger's took on swathes of people with transferrable skills like fishermen, marine engineers, car mechanics, industrial sparkies and so on. These people gained experience, their wages grew as their experience and knowledge gained momentum until they became global experts themselves. Moving into the 90's the oil industry stopped training and became more investor dividend driven, and poached staff off of other local industries instead, the older guys with big wages who started in the 70's and 80's likely made it difficult for newbies to come in as they liked their fat salaries and less competition. They also started to retire and took their knowledge and experience with them. Moving onto now, they do have a lack of trained skilled staff, the last down turn reduced wages which meant it was less lucrative to work in the O&G and the lack of decent training for decades meant a huge gap in skills was starkly obvious. So the UK Oil industry had no real solid planning for the future in a known globaly volatile industry, pathetic future proofing and training for future engineers, technicians, project managers and all sorts of other bad future proofing. In the UK everything was just left to the markets. Big business would rather reward shareholders with big dividends than train local staff if it can get away with it. When staff can be taken from any part of Europe or the world already trained and cheaper it becomes a no brainer for them. And here in lies the biggest problem in the UK, it no longer invests in its own people, and has not done so in a very long time. When business can get already trained staff cheaper in a globalised market they will do it if they get away with it. Countries like Norway take around 51% of all revenue from extracted resources for their sovereign oil fund, the UK allows its resources to be taken by foreign companies with tax breaks?? Norway and other Oil producing countries insist that local staff are trained and developed so that skills and know how stay local, the UK does not give a toss. The people who run the UK have no interest in the people, and this is the problem. For decades our industry has been allowed to rot and decay and all the know how and skills have gone with it, if the political will does not exist to support and nurture industry it cannot possibly survive competition from countries who do support it. If the UK has no real sound industrial, engineering, manufacturing or project managing base it likely cannot run a piss up in a brewery. The O&G industry has made efforts to train and progress staff in the last decade, but usually only University graduates not the coal face workers so to speak, and these people are just as important.

I think it’s worth pointing out to those not based in the UK that the idea of HS2 wasn’t originally to make journey times to Birmingham quicker - journey times by train to Manchester and Leeds would have been cut by 1/3 and free up capacity on the east and west coast mainline - the two busiest routes in the UK and connecting London to Scotland. This would have meant more freight trains and more frequent commuter trains to the towns and cities that currently get a small service.

As an urbanist who hates car dependency things like HS2 and the trams in Edinburgh being messed up so badly whilst they seem to be able to get horrible urban motorways done!

Very informative and well put together video. My only addition is regarding the point of the UK lacking the expertise. Rob Holden of London and Continental Railways, the company that owns HS1, said he managed to deliver the line earlier and within the budget by only telling a handful of people the true budget, whereas HS2, the budget was well known and thus contractors and consultants began to inflate their prices before even a single piece of track could be laid down because they all wanted the biggest slice of the pie. Holden also has experience with the Elizabeth Line project but later retired. He was told that he had lacked necessary experience for work on HS2 and thus was never consulted, so it seems that as well as the UK lacking a lot of expertise, we also seem keen on rejecting it.

“Something needs to change in the UK”… Almost everything needs to change.

The thing is we don’t need a bloody high-speed railway network we just need our railway network rebuilt to the scale of 1960.

Considering we invented the train and railway it shows how far we have dropped as a country

It’s even more embarrassing when you consider the UK is the progenitor of modern rail, yet failed so spectacularly.

I’m don’t even live in the UK and this absolutely infuriates me.

The stupid part is that london to B'ham was always going to be the most expensive part of HS2 (most estimates had a factor of 10 over the rest of the line) and many were predicting £100B from the outset The line should have started in the north and been built south. By the time they got near the Chilterns the final route into london would have been sorted out. Instead it waited until that route was negotiated and then started at London

Corruption. I live near a HS2 site. For the last year all they've done is move a pile of dirt from one side of the road to the other and back repeatedly. It's a way to funnel public funds to MPs old school friends who are invested in construction companies that received the contracts. They don't want to finish it, they want to keep collecting paycheques for doing sweet FA.

I work for the firm that at one point was the largest technical consultant on hs2. We hired 100s of new people for the project due to its scale and our projected earnings. When the project was canned so too were so many of the new employees. It’s things like this people don’t even consider when thinking about how far reaching the ramifications of its cancellation have been

The biggest single problem, in my opinion, is the lack of Engineers in senior positions in the UK. The skills needed to become a Senior Manager in the UK are not the skills needed to be a good Manager.

The level of incompetence in the UK is hurting me on a personal level... And I'm Swedish, and I haven't even visited the UK for over 10 years now! 😳

The EXACT same thing is happening in California with their High-Speed rail between L.A. and San Francisco. Some 17 years after the project began, not a single piece of track is open, and the line isn't anywhere even close to being complete. And now they want to build one between L.A. and Las Vegas.

One of the best advantages I've seen for HS2, was the fact it would free up the slower, congested railway lines to enable more local trains to operate

I bet from the perspective of many, HS2 was a roaring success. From their pov it transferred a trainloads of money into their hands, and all it cost was a few grotty buildings in London that can now be replaced with something clean and modern.

Trouble is that instead of getting fixed price the politicians are milking the situation to suit their pockets

Thank you for this fantastic video. I'm a native Californian where we have a High Speed Rail cost problem too. I am a rail fan but no one seems to be able to figure out how to deliver high speed rail on time or budget here either. The inflated price for our project is virtually identical to HS2 and, at this point, will only be completed in Central California - NOT the San Francisco to Los Angeles line as originally envisioned. There have also been numerous lawsuits throughout the state that have added to the cost. The UK does not have a lock on politicians who like shiny new technology without consideration of it's cost vs. benefit. Also, as a tourist who loves London, it seems silly to cancel the connection to Euston and make the HS2 such a bad choice for residents and tourists alike.

I wonder if it was ever intended to succeed. Perhaps it was only intended as a severely clumsy way to turn taxpayer money into private profit.

This has happened on a smaller scale in Honolulu, Hawaii. Billions have been spent on a rail line that doesn't go anywhere and is a decade behind schedule and still unfinished.

i work with these projects as an archaeologist - i'm part of some of the pre-construction payout but i'm a biased advocate for it being important lol BUT as someone currently working with an infrastructure project, the amount of bureaucratic incompetence i've witnessed in the past year, including what i've heard from colleagues working HS2 specifically, has been mind boggling and very frustrating. we would be able to do our jobs faster if there wasn't such an issue getting everyone else to do their jobs properly (archaeology is poorly paid so tightly run by necessity, we're a tiny portion of the budget). The amount of time we've all spent sitting on our hands waiting for a piece of legal paper this summer was mind numbing This would've been so much better spent on just looking after our current railways or on JUST the northern section lmao

"Even the French!"...you say. The French have been way ahead in high speed rail for decades. The first TGV line opened in 1982 between Paris and Lyon and since then they have kept up a steady plod of building LGV's (Ligne Grande Vitesse) linking the country and refining the trains which run on them. When we came to live in France in 2013 the LGV linking Paris to Bordeaux had been under construction for a year. It was completed in 2017 for a cost of €7.8 bn. The distance between those cities is 500 km (300 miles). North of Poitiers some of the infrastructure was already in place and only need the special track to be laid but the 250 km from Bordeaux to Poitiers was entirely new, cuttings, bridges, overhead power, a completely new permanent way. Here they just crack on and get it done over much longer distances..Sometimes it's really embarrassing being a Brit.

It cost ~£250,000 a few years back for my local railway station to put some netting above a single platform to try and stop pigeons perching above waiting passengers. It didn't really work as pigeons still managed to get in the rafters!

Wow. Who could have predicted it? Apart from everyone...

I started working for Network Rail shortly before HS2 was announced. We were saying back then that there is no way in Hell it would ever be completed, even with such a long timeline...

Government research establishment employee here, it's all about spending the money and putting your hand out for more.

Another issue that you didn't touch on is the issue of chronic short termism in public infrastructure projects due to the 4 year term of MPs and party leadership. Big expenditure often doesn't see positives coming back until after their term is probably up which combined with insane mismanagement, public pressure, cronyism, and all the other issues you mentioned, as well as a lack of accountability results in exactly what we got with HS2. A poorly managed, poorly planned, mess of a project that fundamentally COULD at some point have been a benefit.

I installed drainage pumps for the piling at Euston. After 2 days I got it running just perfect. Never got started. 2 weeks later I went back to pack it all up. They decided to prioritise the welfare block development over the station itself 😂 its a shitshow but every hour I work on the project I can consider a tax rebate.

An interesting titbit about the HS2: Part of the original route was planned to go through an old farm in Southam. They must have figured they could buy out the farm as it wasn't really being used any more. What they didn't realise was that the farmhouse was actually Codemasters - the biggest independent game developer in the UK. They ended up having to redirect the planned route instead.

The problem of the NIMBY concept is a huge problem here in the US too. It's unfortunate but inevitable because people are stubborn and so many don't care about the overall greater good.

The story of the incrementally creeping cost overruns of HS2 reminds me of a quote from the late Senator Everett Dirkson of Illinois, "A hundred million here and a hundred million there and pretty soon we're talking about real money."

I know you posted these as ‘government officials’ but a huge issue is our infrastructure building is privatised meaning that as long as a company wins the contract they will bloat and drag as much as possible.

Wow, as a German I was surprised that our costs per mile are 1/3 of the british costs. Normally our infrastructure projects are the expensive and unlogical ones. Just look for the BER airport in Berlin or the "Stuttgart 21" railway project but the HS2 seems to be in a class of it´s own!

Basically, the way to get good at building rail, is to draw up a plan of all the rail you want built this century, choosing a place to start and keeping that team going. their experience will bring effort and time down

Overpaying for a complete HS2 is far less of a waste of public money than cutting back the project to the stretch that no longer has any reason to exist. The Tories need locking up for the damage they've done to this country.

The brown envelopes were fat and heavy with this one! Wonder how many friends of friends were supplying ppe and suddenly had consultanting firms doing those 3 day safety courses 🤑🤑🤑

I worked on HS2 supporting its ERP system (accounts, HR, procurements etc) and the stuff i have seen! how to literally burn money..

Thank you for this one. I don't know if I can add much to some of the wise comments below. 1) There is ALREADY the alignment of a central moderately high-speed railway line, in the shape of the Grand Central Line. It was comprehensively rubbed out, apart for a few miles near Loughborough, where it is now in the care of a heritage railway, under the Beeching reforms, but could be re-instated and have a link made to Birmingham, as it goes via Rugby, Leicester and Nottingham. (It was built by a railway company from 'the North' as the "London Extension", before being renamed.) 2) I pass a site for the HS2 near Warwick every week. Nothing seems to have actually happened for months. 3) It appears to me (as mentioned by commenters below and also by Simon Whistler) that there are a lot of people involved in the project who are paid huge amounts to do virtually nothing. 4) There are no doubt many people (especially politicians) who are receiving very nice 'sweeteners' for arranging this or that. 5) Some part of me says that this project ALWAYS had a certain amount of 'jobs for the boys' about it. As in "How many of my mates can we give an income to?"

Having worked briefly at HS2 as an apprentice. I have seen first hand how much of a shambles the internal management of this much needed project was! Far too much bureaucracy and nobody willing make a decision!

The problem wasn't the original idea for HS2 - even with a 30 billion price tag - the problem was the mismanagement in the execution and the ridiculous adding of costs. Any infrastructure project can balloon insanely when the politicians cave to unrealistic demands from the people and can't competently manage the project. What really points to government incompetency is that when the costs were spiralling, the government didn't call for a review to investigate and slash unnecessary costs and overhaul the management. That one review they did do did not fix any problems or instigate any solutions, so it failed.

The irony here is that this country pretty much invented the modern railway - now we’re pretty much the worst at building them…..embarrassing.

I’ve been living in Manchester 21 years and I’m very surprised at how bad this has become - I note that Irish Rail is better at its rail projects, although the Irish government made massively wasteful EU funded investments on motorways rather than building new rail lines - indeed, a proposed high speed rail tunnel from Holyhead to Dublin was shelved yet again because private investors were not willing to waste money on a poorly managed project

I seem to be in a tiny minority with this view so be forewarned, but I'm forever struck anew by the lack of accountability when cost estimates that formed the basis for elected-official approval turn out to be so wrong. If you stole that money from the taxpayers you'd go to prison, so why is it perfectly okay to be responsible for that much taxpayer money to disappear, as long as a construction crew gets it instead?

Its very straight forward as to why the UK finds it impossible to build infrastructure on time and price is because of the non stop squabbling in public/civil service sectors. Add to that the continuous objections at ever stage and the costs escalate. Plus the bureaucracy within the contractors. In China it costs £21million per kilometre of High Speed Railway, the dearest in the rest of the world (not the UK) is the USA at £59million per kilometre. In the Uk it was running at £200 million per kilometre. The real irony here, is that the Chinese were asked to build it, THEY TURNED IT DOWN!! Why? they to, could see the total horrendous bureaucracy would cost £billions and they were right. In essence Whitehall and Westminster and its contractors could not organise a piss up in a brewery. This has been proved right even more now through the Covid inquiry, total stupidity and common sense and forethought absent . It cost lots of peoples lives AND NOBODY IS RESPONSIBLE. NOT ONE.

Before I watch the video after the intro I'll answer the question. I worked on the railways in my Early 20s 20 men stood around watching one man do a basic task is why the budget is so high. In the summer in Northampton. 12 men travelled from Doncaster, one being me We did this all summer Joined up with the GNER crew in front of the carlsberg factory in Northampton We then proceeded to do foook all and get paid Well we did do a little bit. 20 men took all day to put 3 signs out to slow trains down I could have done all 3 alone in two hours because of the distance between each one I went there for the money but went back to my apprenticeship welding job because I couldn't just standing around passing time Time = money Now you know why the rail industry costs so much

It did sort of make sense when Heathrow was part of the scheme. Being able to utilise Birmingham Airport as Heathrow’s third runway (45 mins away) and give the Heart of the Country access to the world via Heathrow with a direct connection. The wet dream of 250mph trains also drew the political interest. 😎😇

Its obvious, 30 years ago 2 people and 1 vehicle went to fill pot holes on the road, Today it takes 8 people and 3 vehicles and 7 out off the 8 people cant bend over to tie their shoes laces. Now multiple that by a 1000 people doing a project that took 150 to do years ago with less productive machinery. And thats why it cost so much, and local authorities have burnt through their yearly budget before the second quarter.

The HS2 debacle will stand as a monument to British incompetence on an epic scale. I always like to quote the example provided just across La Manche where France designed, constructed and delivered, on time and on budget, two high speed rail lines, similar but not exactly the same in terms of specification to HS2 - trains began running on these two lines, on the same day, July 2017 - these two lines (LGV BPL & LGV SEA) combined constituted a track length in excess of the entire planned HS2 line from London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly - the total capital cost of these two projects; 9bn€ or about one tenth of the estimated cost of its HS2 counterpart. Yes, I know there are some key differences meaning HS2 would be more expensive overall but TEN TIMES THE COST - someone, somewhere is laughing all the way to the bank and it's certainly not the UK taxpayers en-masse!!!

My favourite story of HS2 is the £100m bat tunnel built to protect bats located on either side of the line. That’s so indicative of how the costs have blown out

This is not a UK-only problem. In Australia, the government is building a 2200MW pumped storage power station ("Snowy 2.0'") Original 2017 budget was $2 billion. By August 2023 the builder was estimating $12 billion. Current estimates (by independent analysts) are $20 billion. Timeframe keeps going out, and out ..........

Literally the northern part is probably the most needed. The rest of the money could be used to recommission some lines closed in the 1950s

As an American I'm jealous of Britain's low low infrastructure construction costs since ours are three times higher. It wasn't always that way. There is a bridge near me over the Merrimac river that was put up during the great depression in about a year. When it came time to repair it a while back it took 10 years. During that time we had to use a rickity temporary bridge. How is it we could build a bridge from scratch in a year in the 1930s and in the 2000s it took ten years to just renovate it.

Point: The local lines at Old Oak Common include the Elizabeth Line which provides a fast link across Greater London - though that too went well over budget and delivery schedules even though the builders were telling us it was all OK until the very last minute.

I am Italian, and until this video I was worried about the state of our public transit system. Now I am indeed laughing my ass off at how incompetently the UK is dealing with their own public transit.

Reminds me of the Berlin Airport.

The problem is that nothing moves fast in government, causing old plans to get more expensive over time, due to things like inflation. They just can't plan things, just like the NHS computer system. Too many chefs spoil the broth as they say! Not only that are infulenced too much by people that don't matter, the many outweigh the few!

It's indescribable how much rage this matter has caused me over the past 6 years. The money pit that is HS2 continues to cost and cost for NOTHING, whilst essential services in health and local governments continue to have costs and services cut. Who is accountable for it? Absolutely nobody, because this is Britain and our government don't believe in repurcussions, they believe in sliding out of sight with another payout.

I work on the railway.. Its an absolute shambles. Costs around 5000 a night for 2 guys to take turns cutting grass. About 12 men to operate a petrol strimmer, only 2 or 3 of which actually use the strimmer and only one person at a time. I was on a job once where there were 19 men to change a single bolt. Insane

The problem is that almost all government contracts say "pretty please complete the project by this time at this price" there is no strong incentive for any private company to complete the project on time and under budget if they can make more money by dragging it out.

I am working with another branch of the UK government on a large transformation project... and without giving too much away... but reality is that the public service is just filled with incompetence at every level. Everyone screams for change but does not want to change anything about what they are doing, they don't understand the most basic economic principles, they have no strategy, no competent planning or project authorities... they don't have the capabilities and/or competent staff to deliver the project. It's a nightmare.

Well this was depressing af. Remind me - why do I choose to stay in this country again?!

When you make a national commitment to a project of this magnitude, you get it done. I'm not the biggest supporter of HS2, but canceling it was shameful. Lots of jobs, land, contracts now in a difficult situation. Good governance is predictable governance.

As a Northerner, I'm not really surprised that the Tories fucked us over, they've got a pretty good track record of promising the world and then just deciding that the North of England just doesn't fucking matter. But it also seems that the people at Euston who's homes and businesses were knocked down for no fucking reason didn't get a much better deal. Also, this is a genuine question: Would HS2 have been any better had those NIMBY's not kicked up a fuss or would it have just been less of a disaster than it currently is?

There are a few errors here: the estimates are not in constant pounds. Plus the cost of the Euston re-development and the urban elements of the links are not included in other coutries' estimates of cost whereas they were in the case of HS2. The fundamental issue is we didn't define what it was for sufficiently clearly and stick to that objective. Instead we let an inefficiently complex contracting and subcontracting hierarchy created because of the historical flakiness of successive UK governments strip the value out of a project which was meddled endlessly with by politicians during planning and construction, creating even more cost overruns. It is shameful that my country allowed this to happen. But we should still build it. And attempt to claw back any wasted money that we can.

There are a ton of utilities (water, gas, electric etc.) criss-crossing the route. Every utility affected is milking HS2 with fees for re-routing or 'protecting' their assets. Huge teams set up to ensure maximum invoicing opportunities at inflated rates. They don't have enough staff though, so they sub the groundwork out to the usual massive service companies (Capita, G4S, Mitie etc), tripling the cost per hour. Sometimes even they 'sub it out' themselves adding yet more mark-up. And of course, because of those dangerous hippies lurking in the fields every contractor needs two security guards with them at all times - KA-CHING! Add to that the people at the top of the project are just toffs with no practical engineering or project management experience spending public money and you end up with HS2...

In the US, I would not be surprised if HSR from Boston to Miami cost 1 Trillion dollars and still went over budget.

It's a shame there was no mention of the capacity benefits of HS2. Once the fast trains are on HS2 there would be much more capacity on the existing lines for local services. The time savings to Birmingham, Manchester, etc. weren't really the point.

As a UK-dwelling astronomer, I absolutely loved the comparison between the Elizabeth Line and the James Webb Telescope. You have a new subscriber!

It's called corruption. 😅 Also if a company gives you a quote and you don't do the necessary due diligence to check and accept the contact.. no one complained about being paid more right?

I'd LOVE to see an episode comparing this to the California high speed rail that has so far gone... nowhere and cost I don't know how many million or billion dollars.

I live in Strasbourg in France at the border of Germany. And I can attest that the construction here is top notch. I think in the last 5 years there were 3 new tram stations build with 2 extensions and more on the way, done smoothly and and with not much disruption. Only problem is the building noises at night ^^'

The fact the government didn’t understand the budget would far exceed the £33bn is a joke. It was obvious for anyone that works in the industry that it was going to cost atleast £85bn & that was back in 2015. The only way to deliver projects like this in the UK is keep unqualified politicians & quangos out of it, streamline planning, ring-fence the money & leave the delivery to construction professionals (with budget over-site from National Audit Office). Or get China to do it for us 😂

They should have just built the whole HS2. Better to pay a lot for something rather than pay something for nothing. The bit that kills me is if HS2 doesn't get built to Euston, it would be faster to take the older line from Birmingham to Euston than it would to take HS2 and change to continue the journey. I guess at least passenger capacity between the two cities would improve though.

I think the problem is that as soon as a company gets a government contract, it thinks it's a bottomless pit to milk money out of. There doesn't seem to be any one in government tracking spend (probably because it's tax payers money and they don't care) and no accountability to those companies that seem to 'need' two or three times the amount they actually bid/budgeted for! I suspect if you chased the spends, you'll find for every penny spent, some MP get's a back hand in shares or bungs! If this was financed by independent backers, the amount spent would be analysed every few weeks and any overspend would mean efficiencies and re-evaluation at an early stage of the project as to what was viable and what needed to be re-assesed!

There is a huge problem in most governments with pre-planning, If you saw the Chart you would see where I live being above the UK that being Canada. However, the biggest issue is that most of these politicians don't want to get anything done, they just want to sit on their laurels and achieve nothing whilst also receiving the benefits of being in their position of power. So, it is Vital to not only choose with your vote, here in Canada trying to make sure it's a Minority government is best because it forces the parties to actually do stuff if they want to keep their jobs, can't really say how it goes federally for anywhere else. What I am trying to say is that your voice matters and your government should work for you and not itself.

Japan are experts in high speed rail, I'm shocked that the UK didn't hire advisors from there to streamline the process. The trains in Japan are considered late if they're one minute behind, a UK train is early if it's 5 mins late...

No one has ever explained to me why a country as small as ours *needs* high speed rail. I'd far rather just see the regular rail network upgraded from it's current clanking and overcrowded state.

HS1 came in on time and on budget. Because the man in charge never revealed what the budget was that he was allocated.

Pre-comment: I was involved in the original 'HS2' Project aims, and objectives, High Speed Passenger rail was NOT the driving requirement. Again, there is little understanding here of the rationale for the project, this was to shift passenger traffic onto dedicated lines to allow for High Speed Freight! The line was only specified as 'High Speed' as the differential cost was near zero from standard speed. Well you were wrong there I hear you scream, but no, the costs are inflated by delay (inflation), mission creep (putting tunnels in Nimby areas) and acquisition costs of the corridor. The unfortunate HS2 name ONLY refers to the fact that it is the second High Speed line in UK, not its intended function or purpose. Lord Adonis had no clue how to do infrastructure, or high speed. We became bad at this due to lack of experience in building infrastructure.

I have no experience of how projects happen here or in Europe but I suspect that in the UK a HS rail project is seen as a project to suck billions from the state by Engineering firms, lawyers, bankers, and land developers, whereas elsewhere it is seen as primarily a project to create a modern, high speed rail line.

Meanwhile in my “3rd world” Indonesia, we went over budget for our HSR (~143km or in banana units 88 miles) by about 2 billion in usd terms to the tune of 7.3 billion USD. There are multiple terrain type involved with about 13 tunnels dug. 130 billion pounds is insane for a line slightly longer than ours. Construction started in 2016, and commercial service started this month on 2 Oct 2023. So we have our first HSR, the 2nd line is already being planned. I think some of our over budget and delays is due to 2 years of covid otherwise we might just our HSR in 2021. It’s ironic that the G7 countries with the exception of Japan, can’t seem to get their infrastructure projects done in a reasonable amount of time and budget.

Britain always underestimates the cost of infrastructure projects. Always. Whenever I learn of a new projects budget, I always quadruple it! The problem is that having set an unrealistic budget, the government of the day panics when costs spiral beyond it and, as in HS2, they then either cancel it or scale it back. I envy our European cousins who, generally, have greater sticking power. Simon should do a video of the fantastic undersea tunnels project that the Danes completed. In the Faroe Islands, of all places.

To clarify, Brandenburg Airport which replaced Templehof and other airports, had a cost overrun of 4.5 billion Euros, and was ten years late! High speed rail in Germany also has had many cost overruns and cancellations. Britain, by this comparison, is not so bad.

I live in Spain and I can assure you one of the reasons here is the lack of obsession with "Health and Safety" which means work can simply progress unimpeded by mountains of nonsense.