Britain’s biggest infrastructure project in over a century has hit the buffers. HS2, the high-speed rail network meant to revolutionize UK travel, is now plagued by delays, cost overruns, and a drastically scaled-back vision.
What was once a £32 billion project has ballooned to an estimated £100 billion (or even more!). The dream of zipping from London to Birmingham in 49 minutes and London to Manchester in just over an hour seems further away than ever.
In this video, we delve into the HS2 saga, uncovering what went wrong and why this megaproject is now facing such a turbulent future.
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#uk #infrastructure #engineering
42 Comments
So, can HS2 still deliver any meaningful benefits for the UK? Or is it destined to be remembered as a costly and controversial miscalculation?
Hundrred billion to cut 20-30 minutes off Brum-London. Money well spent…….
Why not just use a TBM and create a nationwide high speed rail project a couple hundred metres under the earth.
Bet you could do that for a fraction of 100B. At best they’re incompetent, more like – corrupt to the bone f them
Where is HS 1 ??
Why are so many negative people, the rest of Europe is far ahead of the UK. The lines now running could and should be partly used for freight, that would help to could down green house gasses.
It is many things including our old friend, the classic English muddle. If you want to get to Birmingham earlier then get up 20 bloody minutes earlier. The country is too small for this to have any value whatsoever and so it serves no purpose. Zero.
Crossrail although different in many respects is also very similar in at least one. We cannot organise a pissup in a brewery.
How many prisons, hospitals and existing railway `upgrades` could we have bought with this money???
All this is wasted whether it completes or not, meanwhile we are letting rapists out of prison early
This is a giant winge
If you ask me alot of the cost increase is due to government delays in decisions
Total disaster from the concept stage. Politically biased London concentric idea of where the true North actually is. Money would have been better used upgrading capacity of existing routes and implementing shorter cross country links.
IF this project was started in the North, Manchester, Leeds to head south it wound't have been cancelled.
project aimed at getting more workers into the black hole of london from further afield, never about improving things for the cities in the midlands etc.
The problem is they get the price wrong and just put their hand out for more money as they know their friends in Westminster will hand over tax payers money without much resistance
So if we spend 100billion. and get 15billion back in one year… seven years we get are money back then in the profit plus more…. get on with it
Another conspiracy by motor vehicle and Oil industry who will like surely be bankrupt after this project completion
What an excellent account of this project
at Uni they tried to get me into project management; – I could foresee great wealth if successful …I could see many many meds and many many doctors if not successful …I would likely be in a chair somewhere, swaying to an fro with a silly look on my face…
The money would be better spent fixing potholes!
Another Failure becoz of 'DEMOCRACY'
Saying it’s a railway to nowhere is straight disinformation.
This would have been a great project had it stuck to the original plan. A very fast train linking major cities. The problem with our current set up is that it is clogged with freight trains slowing down the whole system. Also a lot of the increased spending has gone into local projects to appease the local populations, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
WELL IF THERES WW3 PLENTY OF ROOM FOR US TO HIDE IN THE UNDERGROUND LOLVLIKE IN WW2 😅😅😅
This is all because it involves too many people, companies, groups and mouths kicking up so much fuss.
The English canal system in 1795 would never have made England the world's greatest economy if so many had not not been silenced.
HS2=F**k up ! What a complete waste of money ! [ licence for '' job worths '' to make '' loads of money '' ]
They won't say this, but ths is why the uk economy is f!(ked
It's going worse than to nowhere – it's going to birmingham!
HS2 is an irrelevant vanity project, conceived and driven by the UK construction industry in its own self interest, and now made even more irrelevant by advances in telecommunications technology.
They could have changed the laws to reduce the sheer amount of bureaucracy, paperwork and red tape involved in this god damn stupid country but I'm sure their mates have their fingers in that consultancy pie too
The comment section,this video and title are the main reasons why there is so much ignorance when it comes to high speed 2 and why it's been canned to the north for now.
Wcml is the busiest railway in Europe yet alone in the UK.
It's not down to speed. Trains are already fast on the existing wcml, the capacity is the issue. Unfortunately whilst 250mph trains will be great on HS2, it should've been sold to free up capacity. The current and previous government have completely miss-sold the benefits of HS2. This project will benefit a lot of people if used to it's full potential, by the existing wcml to have more freight trains which will take lorries off the roads, also more intercity traffic on HS2 will take the demand off domestic flights, which will be better for the environment
So who in any government in the last 50 years is an infrastructure expert, none I can think of, most of them have irrelevant degrees or don’t even have one , yet they sequester billions of tax payer funds and allow even more to be borrowed in our name so they can play little boy Hornby style games with no valid business case. Ah yes, no economics experts in any government either
Should have employed China to design and deliver – would have be done by now at a fraction of the cost.
Another poor video that ignores the real benefits and problems. Very few people even realise the benefits to local lines off the HS2 route. A significant portion of the extra cost comes from politics, laws and our unaccountable judiciary. No-one has yet pointed out the huge cost of cancelling HS2 north, probably more than the cost of building HS2 north.
“All parts of the country”? Hello from Tyneside and Teeside.
Greedy companies ripping the piss out of a corrupt government
Rich kids bought a train set and couldn't be bothered to put it together
We should have built a wall around the coast instead to protect us from the invaders!
we need more low speed local rail, Its easy to get to all the major hubs but to get to other small towns its almost impossible without a car
Who wants to get to birmingham 30 minute quicker
So many new millionaires were made during this time
😂😅😂😅😂😅 Ha ha ha
Brits love their cars. That won't change. The interenet is faster than the train. Most business is going to be done there rather than face to face. The UK railway could be brilliant but it's one of the worst in the developed world.
As for tourism, Brits love Spain & the Med which is easier to get to by plane.
In the end, the most expensive cycleway in the world.
This is nothing, come to Australia to see much bigger cost blow outs that make all this look like a baby