Sources connected to the now-truncated HS2 project tell me of the insane difficulty, expense and delay of building an underground electricity supply to one section of the line. The cost of feasibility work went from £3.5m to £12m, as 18 options were explored for achieving this mundane task. The preferred one proved unacceptably hazardous to some canal bridges under which it would pass. The next foundered when a landowner demanded £2.8m for permission for the supply to cross their property, to which HS2 objected, only to see the figure raised to £7m by an independent valuer. The option eventually chosen started construction earlier this year, three years behind schedule, at several times the original intended cost.
It’s hardly surprising, then, that the project as a whole proved expensive. At the root of the problem is the High Speed Rail Act of 2017, which places an overwhelming obligation for permissions and consents on contractors, which in turn reflects the fact that barrelling a huge railway through scenic, prosperous and Conservative-voting parts of the home counties was always going to be complicated. Sunak’s cancellation was pointlessly destructive, but at least it gives pause for thought: perhaps this densely populated country, with its well-guarded natural beauties, is no longer the place it was when Brunel and Stephenson drove great railways across the landscape.
