CNN
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Building new railways is an expensive business. Even in ideal circumstances, carving a new route through the landscape costs millions of dollars per mile and can take decades to complete.
If you want to build that railway through one of Europe’s most densely populated countries, expect the costs and opposition to increase dramatically.
With its first — and now only — phase currently costed at between $58.4 billion and $70 billion by the UK government, Britain’s High Speed 2 (HS2) rail project now costs an eye watering $416 million per mile.
It’s a metric that gives it the dubious honor of being the world‘s most expensive railway project.
Only the equally troubled $128-billion California High Speed Rail project in the United States comes close to matching HS2’s soaring costs, with some estimates suggesting that it could top out at $200 million per mile.
For comparison, the Tours-Bordeaux TGV line in France cost around $32-$40 million per mile in the mid-2010s — although much of that line runs through sparsely populated agricultural regions.
European high speed rail projects outside the UK typically cost around $66.4 million per mile.
Population density and topography obviously have a significant effect on construction costs. That said, China and Japan have succeeded in threading new high-speed railways through some of the world‘s most densely populated megacities for far less than it will cost Britain to build the 140 miles of track between London and the central English city of Birmingham.
And Chinese contractors managed to drive the Jakarta-Bandung “WHOOSH” high-speed line through some of Indonesia’s most difficult and densely populated terrain for around $80 million per mile.
But in Britain, where it’s common for major infrastructure projects to blow their budget, the costs for HS2 keep racking up.
Now, with even its supporters despairing at how it’s been managed in recent years, the rail project is widely viewed as an expensive mess that will likely never deliver many of the social and economic benefits it once promised.
So, how did it get here?
Political interference. Chronic short-termism. The UK’s lack of long-term, integrated transport and industrial policies. Slow and overly bureaucratic planning and environmental regimes. Poor project management. Inadequate oversight by the civil servants and government.
The blame list goes on.
Add to that a construction industry seeking to insulate itself from all of the above with contract bids that include enormous mitigation costs.
Since it was launched in 2012 with a projected overall cost of $42.8 billion for almost 400 miles of new railway, HS2 has been led by five different CEOs and seven chairmen. It has, in theory, been overseen by six prime ministers, eight finance ministers and nine transport ministers during a time of unprecedented political turmoil in the UK.
In October 2024, the London Times newspaper called HS2 “a story of prolonged dysfunction.”
It said: “The gradual stunting of HS2 represents egregious short-termism but also an object lesson in why Britain struggles to escape its doom loop of anemic growth.
“The project has become emblematic of Britain’s inability to complete big infrastructure projects.”
Railway journalist, author and long-time HS2 skeptic Christian Wolmar told CNN Travel the project was likely doomed from the start, with a soaring price tag partly down to simple design flaws.
“A number of mistakes were made at the outset, including the decision to build the line for 400 kilometers per hour (250 mph) operation — 100 kph faster than the international norm,” he says.
“There was also a lack of discussion over the chosen route, which could have followed existing highway corridors.”
Rapidly rising construction costs have plagued major projects across the world in recent years. But even before the Covid pandemic, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the surge in inflation that followed those global events, HS2‘s spiraling costs were starting to alarm many observers.
Speaking at an industry conference in 2022, Ricardo Ferreras, director of Spanish construction giant Ferrovial — one of many companies involved in HS2 — blamed the process of obtaining permits and conducting environmental studies for the increased cost of building high-speed railways in the UK.
“It’s true the cost per kilometer is way higher in the UK than it is in Europe, for example in France or Spain,” Ferreras said, laying most of the blame at the maze of UK planning and environmental restrictions construction companies must navigate.
“As an example, in Spain the government will get all consents, and all environmental permits, and then when they award the contract, the contractor can just focus on delivering the project.”
There’s no doubt that building railways is cheaper elsewhere. As journalist Wolmar points out, Spain has built an entire high-speed rail network of 2,500 miles for around $65 billion, which in the UK won’t even cover the cost of HS2’s 140 miles from Birmingham to the London suburbs.
But, he says, the costs associated with HS2 still boggle the mind.
“There are mitigating factors such as the relative cost of land and the lack of opposition in other countries but, regardless, a variance of 10 or 20 times is remarkable,” he says.
HS2 initially seemed to make sense to many. Successive UK governments have sold the project to voters as a chance to “level up” deprived post-industrial cities across central and northern regions through investment in improved infrastructure to create “northern powerhouses.”
But not everyone was convinced even before costs got really out of hand. UK social justice think tank New Economics Foundation, in analysis published in 2019, said HS2 was more likely to benefit London rather than the northern cities.
“The High Speed 2 (HS2) rail line will deepen the regional divide and should be shelved in favor of investments across the rail network, especially in the north of England,” it said.
HS2 has always been controversial for a whole host of reasons.
Right from the start it generated anger from communities blighted by its construction as well as environmentalists trying to save ancient woodland lying in its path.
Also upset were those who argued that even its original price tag was steep for a rail line that would offer only marginally faster travel, regardless of whether it would free up capacity on the existing rail network for regional and freight trains.
The need to soothe angry residents in communities along the route added to the massive cost.
Opposition was especially fierce where HS2 slices through quintessential English rolling landscapes north of London, dotted with ancient woodlands and historic villages.
Wealthy retirees living in the pretty Chiltern Hills found themselves in a surprising coalition with radical environmental campaigners from the likes of Extinction Rebellion as they attempted to halt the project. However, their efforts were in vain and only succeeded in significantly driving up construction costs.
Many miles of extra tunnels and expensive earthworks were added to make the railway “disappear” from view, adding billions to the price tag but doing almost nothing to reduce opposition from a vociferous anti-HS2 lobby.
This month it was announced that nearly $130 million would be spent on a one-kilometer-long “bat shed” covering the track in rural Buckinghamshire to ensure high-speed trains do not disturb bats living in nearby woodland. Its construction was demanded by planning authorities despite a lack of any evidence that bats are affected by passing trains, according to HS2’s builder.
Where other countries build their new railways largely at ground level or elevated on seemingly endless concrete viaducts, Britain has chosen a far more expensive route that requires 32 miles of tunnels and 130 bridges — including the UK’s longest viaduct. On average, it costs 10 times per mile of track more to build in a tunnel than above ground.
‘Gold’ standard
Indeed, putting the arguments aside for a moment, HS2 will feature some stunning civil engineering achievements.
The Colne Valley Viaduct taking the railway out of northwest London stretches for more than two miles over a series of lakes and waterways. Major new stations at London Euston — if it is completed — Old Oak Common, Birmingham Airport and Curzon Street in Birmingham city center have been planned as modern-day “cathedrals” of transport inspired by Britain’s magnificent Victorian era terminals.
A “gold-plated” specification means that the tracks will be suitable for the fastest regular trains in the world when they eventually start running in the 2030s. Concrete “slab” tracks will require much less maintenance than traditional lines. Equipment such as tunnel ventilation shafts will be cleverly disguised to blend in with surroundings.
Work is underway at 350 sites. This includes four enormous, 2,000-tonne machines deployed to bore new tunnels – 14 miles of which have already been completed in the three years since construction started in earnest.
Above ground, HS2 Limited, the umbrella company tasked with building the railway, and its contractors have gone to enormous lengths to mitigate their impact on the environment along the route, tweaking the route to limit damage to woodlands and designated areas of outstanding natural beauty, planting millions of new trees and funding millions of dollars worth of environmental and community projects from rewilding schemes to school playgrounds.
But while the price tag kept escalating, public willingness to foot the bill has diminished. And when the cost of building Phases 1 and 2 rocketed to an estimated $130 billion, the UK government came under increasing pressure to find savings.
HS2 was originally conceived as a Y-shaped network that, once at Birmingham, would split west and east toward the cities of Manchester and Leeds, connecting the capital with the key city regions across north and central England.
Then, in November 2021, the eastern arm was amputated, followed in 2022 by the Crewe-Manchester section in northwest England and finally a crucial line creating extra capacity between Birmingham and Crewe, a famous railway junction for lines to northwest England, Scotland and Wales.
At the same time, the then Conservative government also caused further dismay by suggesting that the line would not run into central London as planned, instead fizzling out at a new $1.3 billion transit interchange at Old Oak Common on the western fringes of the city.
While the new Labour government elected in July 2024 has made positive noises about investing in infrastructure to stimulate economic growth and possibly completing the tunnels under London to reach the planned terminus at Euston, it has so far dismissed calls for the Birmingham-Crewe section of Phase 2 to be reinstated.
The final design of the London terminal at Euston is still to be confirmed and there are still huge doubts about its cost and scope of the expanded terminal, how many platforms it will have and who will pay for it. The original plan for up to 14 high-speed trains per hour has been scaled back to just eight per hour, with many shuttling only between London and Birmingham.
Meanwhile passengers at the existing station at Euston are forced to pick their way through an enormous building site to find their trains — a situation that could continue for another decade.
Even the hugely controversial decision to scrap all HS2 lines north of Birmingham, made by former prime minister Rishi Sunak in October 2023, added more than $2.6 billion to the bill in write-offs and accounting costs for work already undertaken. That move was touted by Sunak as saving $47 billion to be redirected to other transport projects across the country, although in reality little of that funding was ever forthcoming.
‘Mutilated and pointless’
There are fears that the overall price tag could, in fact, keep climbing.
“With no clear budget and with the now extended timeline for Phase 1, which still has no clear opening date, it is impossible to obtain any accurate assessment of final costs,” rail journalist Wolmar adds.
“With rail passenger levels only just returning to pre-Covid levels and the nation’s coffers almost empty, the country is left with a ludicrously expensive venture that, in its current mutilated form, is essentially pointless.”
HS2 supporters maintain that the biggest benefits of the original “Y” shaped route would have been generated away from London, in the long-neglected post-industrial regions of the Midlands and northern England.
These areas suffer from poor transport links, leading to low productivity and pockets of deprivation that are among the worst in Europe. By creating fast new rail links between cities such as Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds and Manchester and freeing up capacity on existing railways for better local services and more freight, promoters hoped that HS2 would be the spark to ignite much-needed growth outside London.
Rail industry leaders claim that reinstating the Birmingham-Crewe section of HS2 could actually save the government money, by increasing the value of future operating concessions. These could be worth around $26 billion if fully developed from central London and joining lines to northern cities.
However, the section under construction between west London and Birmingham would be worth just a quarter of that according to an analysis by the High Speed Rail Group (HSRG).
HSRG, a coalition of rail and engineering companies whose members include global transport giants Hitachi, Alstom, Siemens and UK train operators, argues that spending billions more now to reach Euston and Crewe would save the UK Treasury $4.5 billion in the long run.
In the meantime, London continues to dominate the UK economy, sucking investment and talent out of the regions and widening the already cavernous gap between the capital and the rest of the country.
Unlike the London-Birmingham route, where HS2 trains will whizz from city to city on all-new lines at up to 250 mph from the mid-2030s, services continuing to Manchester, Liverpool and Scotland will have to run at just half that speed — and often much slower — to reach their destinations.
And those high-speed trains to the other cities will have to compete for track space with existing inter-city trains, regional services and slow-moving freight on lines that are already struggling to cope with congestion.
Rail experts and even the independent National Audit Office public spending watchdog warn that far from increasing capacity for passengers and freight to meet climate change targets, the current plan will lead to reduced rail capacity and higher fares.
That, in turn, will force travelers back onto congested road networks — or aboard short-haul air routes, from where at least they’ll get a great view of the gleaming new high-speed railway line and, perhaps, an opportunity to try to figure out where all the money was spent.
