HS2, it just gets worse

If you thought the HS2 boil had been lanced, that the rail line was near completion in its much reduced form and that we could happily expect at least a high speed line between London and Birmingham, well I have news for you.

The cost of the remaining inadequate failure of a rail line is still rising, and rising. That is without improving the line to Manchester or getting HS2 to a major London terminal. As delays, alterations and inflation push the price from £45 billion, to £67 billion now and that number is expected to rise again as a new man comes in and looks at the books.

This is just a national scandal and disgrace, other countries have built whole railway lines for a small fraction of this total and still HS2 is 6 years away from completion.

Now the government says that ministers are going to get involved in managing the project. It is a great pity that this was not done from the start but the Tories stood aside and let the whole thing spiral out of control as they continually cut it back, again and again.

But this does not bode well for the government in the long term. It wants to borrow more to invest and quite right to. But it has to spend that money well and the evidence from HS2 is that the British state is not really capable of doing that.

I think it might be a nice idea to just send our infrastructure “experts” to work in France, or Spain or China for a few years, to see how it is done.

After all we seem to have forgotten how to build railways, nuclear power stations and much else.

We really have to stop pretending that we can do this stuff without reforming the industry, training our people better, managing projects professionally and spending money responsibly.

Otherwise we will keep wasting vast amounts of money for no good purpose.

Jonty’s Jottings

Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.