Hurry up HS2, the diggers are coming

Time is short for the government on HS2. That’s been the message this week as politicians and executives gather at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool.

Two key stories have emerged over the last couple of days in the Times and Telegraph.

One, an interview with Andy Burnham, who warned Starmer would doom the North to “Armageddon” unless he completes an extension of HS2 from Birmingham to Manchester.

The other, a report that ministers had been given until the end of the year to decide whether to run HS2 trains to Euston, the Central London terminus shrouded in uncertainty.

Both articles make one thing clear; the clock is ticking.

The Mayor of Manchester argues the West Coast Main Line (WCML), the busy railway corridor connecting London to Glasgow, is not “set up” to deal with the dual-carriage high speed trains planned for the section.

He’s not wrong either.

Those who follow the debacle surrounding HS2 will be well aware of a damming National Audit Office (NAO) report in July, which found Rishi Sunak’s move to scrap the Northern leg had created “uncertainties in a range of complex areas” going forward.

Although current plans mean HS2 will run only to the West Midlands, new HS2 trains will replace Avanti’s Pendolino rolling stock on WCML services north of Birmingham. This could mean capacity on the route is constrained by 17 per cent due to technical differences between the Pendolino’s and newer, less agile high-speed trains, the NAO found.

Higher ticket fares and a poorer service will be the inevitable result, but for Burnham the real danger is “doing nothing.”

Private sector investors must be found for any HS2 extension and building in the UK, as we know, is never as simple as it sounds. If no extension is planned, other preparations must be made.

The situation is arguably worse in London.

No one knows whether HS2 will end up in Euston or at Old Oak Common in London’s outer suburbs. It would be a pathetic (but fitting) end to the project if HS2 couldn’t even find its way into the UK capital.

The Times reported on Monday that a deadline for the government’s decision had been set for the end of 2024, but this is already too late.

That same NAO report in July concluded that a verdict on whether to tunnel between Old Oak Common and Euston was “needed by the summer of 2024 to avoid much higher costs in the future.”

And now the diggers are nearly here.

Two colossal tunnel boring machines, needed to drill the 4.5 mile tunnel between West London and Euston, will be fully delivered from Germany next month.

HS2 bosses have warned they won’t be able to afford any further delay to the work, which is set to begin next spring.

With “Armageddon” threatened in the North and the possibility the entire project is made a laughing stock in the south, Starmer can’t wait any longer.