The Elizabeth line will become as overcrowded as the Tube because of a decade-long delay in opening the HS2 high-speed station at Euston, Sadiq Khan warned today.
He said retaining Old Oak Common, a new £2bn station under construction in north-west London, as HS2’s southern terminus until Euston’s now-likely opening date of around 2040 was “not a viable option”.
He also warned of the impact around Euston station, where construction work is already forcing the part-closure of Euston Road – and delays to HS2’s promised upgrades of Euston and Euston Square Tube stations are now feared.
Transport Secretary Mark Harperon Thursday evening announced two years of delays to the construction of HS2, which is designed to add capacity to rail services between London and Birmingham, and eventually further north to Crewe and Manchester, in a bid to ease Government cash flow problems.
Old Oak Common station would open first, around 2031 – where HS2 passengers would be required to change onto the Elizabeth line to reach central London or Heathrow. It will have six underground platforms for HS2 services and eight surface level platforms for Elizabeth line and Great Western trains.
But Mr Khan, in a letter to Mr Harper, warned that by 2030 the eastbound sections of the Elizabeth line from Reading and Heathrow to Paddington would be “nearing capacity” and HS2 passengers would be boarding “already busy trains”.
Mr Khan said: “This means passengers boarding at Old Oak Common could wait for more than 10 minutes during the peak periods and there may be a need for station control where customers are held at different parts of the station to avoid congestion on stairs, escalators and platforms.
“The levels of crowding on the trains would be comparable to Tube journeys in central London and would be at odds with customer expectations of the new HS2 services.”
He said Elizabeth line frequencies at Old Oak Common would have to be increased from 12 trains an hour to 20 and possibly 24 to cope with passenger numbers – meaning four more trains would have to be bought.
The order would have to be placed quickly by the Department for Transport, while production lines were still in place. “There will not be another opportunity to procure additional trains at similar prices until the full fleet is replaced in around 30 years,” Mr Khan said.
The mayor also revealed a design flaw at Old Oak Common will result in no “level boarding” on Elizabeth line trains, because the track is not low enough. This means wheelchair users will have to use manual ramps.
Experts today warned the delay in completing HS2 would simply add to already soaring costs. These are predicted to exceed £100bn – three times the original estimate.
Sir John Armitt, chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, told the BBC’s Today programme: “Every time you delay a construction project, you inevitably increase its costs. By putting in this delay you simply put doubt in people’s minds.”
But Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said there was a need to be "realistic" about the cost of building HS2.
He said the UK was investing more in "any time since the Victorian era", and told Times Radio: "We have got to be realistic when we have a significant economic impact through Covid."
