The government may be forced to deliberately put people off travelling by train between Birmingham and Manchester due to the knock-on effect of terminating HS2 in the Midlands.
Rishi Sunak announced last year that the northern leg of the HS2 project would be scrapped to cut costs on the project, which had spiralled since its conception.
It means new trains will now travel to Manchester on existing tracks but they will have less space than current services, which means capacity is likely to be reduced rather than increased, which was its raison d’etre.
HS2’s delivery company estimates that capacity between Manchester and Birmingham could be reduced by 17 per cent and, as a consequence, the Department for Transport may need to dissuade passengers from travelling by train at certain times – if at all.
The total cost to complete the phase 1 scheme as it stands from London to Birmingham is between £49 billion and £57 billion at 2019 prices, according to HS2 Ltd, although the DfT estimates it will cost £45 billion to £54 billion.
The previous Conservative government had spent £592 million buying up land and property along now-cancelled parts of the route alone, The National Audit Office (NAO) report notes, which as Sam Freedman points out, is an “astounding achievement”.
Commenting on the findings, Labour’s new Transport Secretary Louise Haigh said: “It’s long been clear that the Conservatives recklessly mismanaged HS2 and allowed the costs to spiral entirely out of control – but this report lays bare the scale of their mistakes.”
A spokesperson for the Conservatives said: “As the NAO report makes clear, when we left office there were a number of options under consideration to maximise the benefit of HS2. The new government will decide which of those options to take forward.”
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