Rail minister Lord Hendy has said the beleaguered HS2 rail project will serve “most of northern England” when the line to and from London Euston is finally completed. He was speaking at a ceremony marking the start of the final part of tunnelling for HS2, where two tunnel boring machines named Karen and Madeleine began inching from Old Oak Common in west London to Euston station.
The cost of HS2 has ballooned while the planned Y-shaped network has shrunk to a stump between London and Birmingham, with plans to serve Manchester and Yorkshire shelved by the previous government. The final design for the terminus in the capital, as well as multi-billion-pound financing, remains uncertain.
Lord Hendy pledged trains will run from Euston far beyond Birmingham. “We do want to connect this railway with the rest of the railways in Britain,” he said. He envisages trains leaving Euston for most of northern England once connections are built, adding that the current six-platform design leaves space for more platforms because “it's inconceivable that you would build this railway at this level of expense without filling it full of trains to go everywhere in Britain.”
The minister criticised the previous government for not building the tunnels and for planning an inadequate station. Last year, the Public Accounts Committee said that 13 years after HS2 was given the go-ahead, it is not known what it will cost, what the final scope will be, when it will be completed, or what benefits it will deliver. The project is undergoing a “fundamental reset” under new chief executive Mark Wild, with the final bill for a much-reduced railway likely to be at least £100bn and the opening date for the first section pushed back to the mid- to late-2030s.
Mark Wild, who overhauled the botched Crossrail project, said the key lesson is to produce a range of cost and time rather than trying to land projects on a pinhead. The tunnel boring machines are expected to take between 12 and 18 months to reach Euston, where work was suspended by the previous government.
