Is HS2 back on the government's agenda?

The government is rethinking what to do about HS2 – Britain’s farcical train project.

Old Oak Common Could Be London Terminus For Shortened HS2
(Image credit: Dan Kitwood / Staff)

Transport secretary Louise Haigh has admitted that the costs of HS2 continue to spiral as she announced plans to “get the project back under control” with another independent review, say Jim Pickard and Gill Plimmer in the Financial Times. The original cost of the Y-shaped rail line, intended to link London to Manchester and Leeds, had “ballooned” from £37.5 billion in 2009 to more than £70 billion by the time Boris Johnson axed the eastern leg in 2021, says The Sunday Times.

When Rishi Sunak severed the western line in 2023, some cost estimates had jumped to £100bn. Even after having “shed most of its sections”, one estimate puts completion costs at £67 billion, which will leave us with a 135-mile-long line dubbed the “Acton to Aston shuttle”, says Christian Wolmar in The Spectator. Starting five miles from central London, it will terminate a mile from Birmingham New Street station, “necessitating a tram ride”. Since it will be more expensive and won’t save any time, few people will use it.

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Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.