Ballooning cost of HS2 reflects a deep-rooted problem with our planning of infrastructure
In his final days as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown promised to invest £20bn in a high-speed rail line that would ferry thousands of commuters from the north to the south of England.
“This is also a momentous day in the long and glorious history of British railways,” Brown said during a speech in 2009.
Almost 14 years later, the expected cost of building the HS2 rail link has ballooned to more than £100bn, 8.5 times more than comparable projects elsewhere in Europe.
“If we are going to be solving the big problems that the country faces, we do have to have an answer as to why it costs 10 times more to build high speed rail in this country than in France,” Jeremy Hunt said at Tory conference in Manchester on Tuesday. “That is totally and utterly unacceptable.”