HS2 boss admits new £100bn price tag is ‘terrible news’ and says Government ‘had lost control’ of rail fiasco – but claims new line will NOT be delayed any further

HS2’s boss has admitted it is ‘appalling’ that the budget for the massively delayed high-speed rail project has soared to £100bn.

Mark Wild, who rescued London’s troubled Crossrail project and then parachuted in to ‘reset’ the beleaguered project, also told MPs today he was convinced the project would not be delayed any further after years of setbacks.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander yesterday admitted costs would be between £87.7bn and £102.7bn at 2025 prices, with the first trains on part of the line likely to start between May 2036 and October 2039.

When it was first announced more than a decade ago, the cost of the London to Birmingham leg of HS2 was pegged at £32.7bn, with services scheduled to begin this year.

However, the project is currently delayed and greatly over budget; Trains will run slower than planned, with a maximum speed of 199mph instead of 224mph, although the tracks will be built to withstand higher speeds.

Speaking to the Transport Select Committee this morning, Mr Wild, himself a former London Underground boss, said: ‘Let’s acknowledge how bad news this is: that’s double the budget set at £42-43bn in April 2020.

‘This is terrible news and we need to think about the reasons for this.’

HS2’s boss said increases in inflation, particularly from the war in Ukraine, were partly responsible for rising costs, and construction of HS2 started in 2017 before the design was fully completed.

Rail minister Lord Hendy said taxpayers would be ‘rightly appalled’ by the problems that continue to plague the beleaguered rail project

The first operational HS2 route will run between Old Oak Common in West London and Birmingham’s Curzon Street station between May 2036 and October 2039.

They will not reach the newly built HS2 terminal at London Euston until May 2040 and December 2043; here services will also run to Handsacre Junction in Staffordshire before merging with the existing West Coast Main Line.

Mr Wild said that even now, with construction well underway, the design of HS2 is only ’80 to 90 per cent complete’.

And he openly admitted that the budget and timeline for HS2 were very different to high-speed projects in Europe, and that they were being built in ‘faster time’.

France has just signed off on plans to build 222km of high-speed railway between Toulouse and Bordeaux for superfast TGV trains.

It has almost the same distance as the HS2 line from London to Birmingham but has been budgeted at just €8.5bn (£7.3bn), a fraction of the cost of HS2.

In fact, the Artemis moonshot program has cost less to date; approximately $93 billion or £69.5 billion.

Asked if he could complete HS2 within the original budget and original timeline of £45bn and 10 years, Mr Wild said: ‘I don’t know.’

He admitted that HS2 bosses had ‘lost control’ of the project before those responsible were appointed, as it was revealed that HS2 bosses had only met ministers four times in the three years before the General Election.

But he promised that a year from now the project will have a ‘high fidelity’ program that will bring it back into line.

HS2’s original route was supposed to connect London to Leeds and Manchester, but its two northern legs were canceled due to rising costs and delays

He added: ‘By the time I got to his job the project had become completely uncoordinated. In April 2027, we will enter a situation where reserves and contingencies are under normal control.

‘I know I promised jam tomorrow but I believe the bookends of time are solid and the baseline will follow. ‘We will manage this project in an orderly and transparent manner.’

Rail minister Lord Hendy said anyone watching the hearing would be ‘rightly appalled’ by the progress of the project.

‘This is a disastrous place to be involved in a project at this stage,’ he said.

Addressing committee chair Ruth Cadbury, he added: ‘We are confident about this process but you would have wished it had started a long time ago, wouldn’t you?’

Transport Secretary Ms Alexander yesterday attributed the rising cost of HS2 to ‘historical misunderstanding, underestimation and inefficiency of the work required, problems within the control of HS2 Ltd, some of its suppliers and previous governments’.

He added that part of the work to remove the ‘gold plating’ of the project would include reducing the focus on ‘highest possible speeds’.

However, Labor Party MP and civil engineer Dr. Scott Arthur said of plans to slow trains: ‘We will design everything as intended lines but trains will run slower. This seems a bit odd, doesn’t it?’

Rail minister Lord Hendy said of the speed reduction: ‘An additional three minutes of journey time is neither here nor there.’