Euston should be abandoned as the London terminus of the HS2 high-speed line, according to a Labour peer.
Lord Berkeley, a civil engineer who helped to build the Channel Tunnel, said many HS2 passengers would have quicker journeys if they switched onto the Elizabeth line at Old Oak Common station.
It is the latest twist in the controversy over the cost of HS2 and follows the revelation that the £5bn new HS2 station at Euston will only have six platforms.
Lord Berkeley, a long-term critic of the cost of HS2, obtained a parliamentary answer confirming it would take HS2 passengers longer to reach Oxford Street by staying on the train to Euston rather than switching trains at Old Oak Common.
Old Oak Common, near Willesden Junction in north-west London, will be used as HS2’s temporary southern terminus when HS2 trains start running between the capital and Birmingham in around 2030.
No opening date – nor funding - has been announced for the HS2 station at Euston but it is expected to take until about 2040 to complete.
Lord Berkeley asked how long it would take to reach Bond Street station travelling via the Elizabeth line – which will stop at Old Oak Common – in comparison to HS2 passengers continuing to Euston and then completing their journey by Tube.
Lord Hendy, the rail minister, said the journey using the “Lizzie line” would be almost six minutes quicker – a total of 24.8 minutes, including the time it would take to walk between trains and wait for a train to turn up.
This compared with 30.6 minutes for a journey via Euston and then on the London Underground, Lord Hendy said.
Speaking to The Standard on Wednesday, Lord Berkeley, a Labour member of the House of Lords, said it was right that HS2 station at Euston had been scaled back from 10 to six platforms – but said he would go further and axe the station and make Old Oak Common HS2’s southern terminus.
Lord Berkeley said: “I don’t think you need to go to Euston at all. Old Oak Common is a perfectly suitable terminus.
“Going from Old Oak Common to central London is quicker on the Elizabeth line than going all the way up to Euston and then back on the Northern line.
“Old Oak Common station should be ready for operation five years before Euston, at the very least. Passengers will get used to getting off and changing at Old Oak Common.”
He added: “Capacity is what it [HS2] should be about. It’s certainly needed north of Birmingham.
“I don’t think you need to go to Euston at all, which will probably save £10bn. They ought to rebuild Euston station for the existing [mainline] railway. It’s bloody awful at the moment.”
He said it was a “great relief” that the Labour government appeared not to be trying to restore the original 11-platform plan for Euston.
“Six platforms is the right number for what they intend to run. There is now some logic coming into the design,” he said.
He suggested that the next change in the Government’s thinking on HS2 was likely to be a reduction in the line speed – which would also enable Avanti West Coast’s Pendolino trains to use the new high-speed track in and out of Euston.
Praising the involvement of rail minister Lord Hendy, a former chairman of Network Rail, Lord Berkeley said: “At the end of the day, they have cut the costs of HS2 by cutting bits of it off. It’s a bit of realism coming into it, which is welcome.”
The original plan for Euston was for 11 high-speed platforms. Six were to open first for a London to Birmingham service, with the other five following when HS2 was extended north to Manchester.
But HS2’s northern leg was scrapped last year by the then Tory government, a decision the Labour government said it did not plan to reverse.
However the mayors of the West Midlands and Greater Manchester have proposed a “HS2 lite” scheme that would see HS2 trains running on the West Coast Main Line.
There are concerns that if Euston’s HS2 station were limited to six platforms then this would scupper “HS2 lite”.
Earlier this year, Chris Gibb, a rail industry executive who has worked at Virgin Trains and Network Rail, suggested that the Pendolino fleet be revamped to run at 155mph on HS2 – alongside new HS2 trains that would be capped at 186mph rather than 225mph.
He said: “In only five-and-a-half years the HS2 infrastructure will be ready for passenger trains to run, but there is no acceptable industry operating plan and passenger proposition yet.”
His plan is for the new HS2 fleet to run on HS2 as 400m trains London to Birmingham, and 200m trains London to Liverpool and Birmingham to Manchester
He said that, under the current plans, Old Oak Common was “unsuitable as a permanent terminus” as its track layout limited departures to between eight and 11 trains per hour.
In addition, there would be fewer seats in total on HS2 services than on Avanti West Coast trains, and HS2 trains would be up to 17 minutes slower London to Glasgow than a Pendolino.
