Nigel Harris
“That the British Government started building HS2 at the very moment that a pathogen you can’t see destroyed our economy (together with tens of thousands of jobs), was a ray of light amid relentlessly dark news.”
The Coronavirus pandemic has fanned the flames of the HS2 debate, with renewed speculation over costs and the future of key phases. So, what is the current state of play and what happens next? NIGEL HARRIS puts these questions - and more - to HS2 Ltd Chief Executive MARK THURSTON
February and April 2020 were crucial months for HS2 - and not just because on February 11 the Prime Minister confirmed in Parliament that HS2 should go ahead, nor that on April 15 the Government followed up with the formal ‘Notice to Proceed’ to the project.
Of equal importance to HS2 was that February was the month that COVID-19 leapt to prominence, while April was the first full month of the national lockdown ordered by Government to try to bring the virus under control.
HS2 couldn’t have been further from the headlines at the time, but I do remember thinking that the project was now absolutely secure and out of danger in general. After all, with normal life and the national economy literally crashing and burning around us, it struck me that no Government of any political persuasion would do anything to threaten Europe’s biggest civil engineering project. To date, £10 billion has been let in contracts with a further £10bn in the pipeline.
Thus far, £1bn has been spent on enabling works to prepare for the start of construction proper, in spring 2021. Total spend to date is £ 8bn, with more than £ 2bn spent on buying 1,274 properties and key sites, such as Euston. HS2 Ltd now owns 35% of the land needed to build the first phase.
The tens of thousands of jobs supported by HS2, not only directly but also in the supply chain and beyond, were always a crucial part of its appeal to Government, even before COVID-19.
But with the biggest economic crash in three centuries (since the Great Freeze of 1709, to be precise) wreaking havoc in every area of our individual and collective lives, HS2 suddenly took on even greater national importance - not least by keeping our construction industry busy.
And HS2’s benefits are already flowing regionally. The area around Birmingham’s Curzon Street HS2 station has already welcomed £ 724 million worth of investment as a direct result of HS2. Likewise, in Leeds, where £ 500m in investment has been attracted by the prospect of HS2 - which brings threats to the eastern leg into very sharp focus.
The West has a long history of turning to infrastructure when economies crash. In the 1930s, for example, Britain built a wave of new roads (some of them duplicating existing routes) and drainage schemes. In the US, Colorado’s mighty
Hoover Dam was approved in 1928 and built between 1931 and 1936, with Public Works Administration support. It has played a crucial role in regional power generation ever since.
That the British Government started building HS2 in April 2020, at the very moment that a pathogen you can’t see destroyed our economy (together with tens of thousands of jobs), was a ray of light amid relentlessly dark news that understandably went largely unrecognised at the time.
However, as my lingering worries about the first phases of HS2 to Crewe and Manchester Piccadilly (via the Airport) pretty much evaporated, I started, for the first time, to harbour serious concerns about HS2’s subsequent ‘eastern leg’ - from Birmingham, through the East Midlands to Toton and via Sheffield (in some shape or form!) to Leeds and beyond.
HS2 was already coming under cost pressure pre-COVID - and that’s no bad thing for a taxpayer-funded project, because we all want to see good value. But following the gargantuan financial cost to government of the pandemic, I worry that intense and growing pressure may escalate into a demand for a significant scaling back of the project that may prove hard to resist politically., whatever the Prime Minister has said thus far about building HS2 in full!
This is already happening around some aspects of the first phase - at Euston, for example. And if that momentum does continue to gather, the easiest way to cut significant cost at a stroke would be to shorten or even prune off HS2’s eastern leg. That would be disastrous - for it is potentially the most transformative aspect of the whole project.
Indeed, on the very day I was writing
“What you’ll see over the second half of 2021 is more and more of the major civils works becoming visible as things start to come out of the ground - and that’s then the start of a full year of our big construction programme.”
this interview feature (December 1), it was reported that the House of Lords had voted narrowly against compelling the Government to proceed with the eastern arm of HS2.
A cross-party amendment had sought to press ministers to lay eastern leg approval legislation before Parliament within six months of the western leg, north from Birmingham.
Separation of the legislative programme for further sections of HS2 into smaller chunks has led to speculation that Government is preparing to scrap the eastern leg. This House of Lords amendment would have prevented this by making it illegal - but the vote was narrowly lost, by 274 against to 265 in favour.
Lord Adonis, who as Secretary of State for Transport for the Labour Government launched the HS2 project in 2009, and who has been one of its staunchest and most articulate Parliamentary advocates, rightly declared: “If it’s a project just for one half of the country, then it will by definition leave the other half behind.”
He added: “Failing to deliver the HS2 eastern leg would be like the Victorians building a railway to Manchester but leaving canals to serve Sheffield and Leeds.”
So, with one part of HS2 now ‘over the line’ and under construction (although under cost pressure), and another key component seemingly under serious threat for the first time, it seemed like a good time to talk to HS2
Ltd Chief Executive Mark Thurston about where exactly we are with HS2 - and where are we going? Or not?
I’ve conducted dozens of ‘big name’ interviews in RAIL over the past 25 years, but this was the first one done remotely. Because of the pandemic restrictions, Thurston and I met virtually by Zoom, with his media minder. Another new experience - we got the job done, but there’s no question that face to face is preferable. Hopefully, vaccine approval means that a return to normal service is now in sight.
So, given that HS2 (and just about everything else) had been out of the headlines and national focus for several months since the Notice to Proceed in April, what’s the current state of play?
“We are now fully mobilised, developing all of the required legislation for the western line, so we’re now working to the Government’s instructions producing legislation with a target date of the end of next year,” he replies.
“We are working through the Parliamentary process to conclude Royal Assent for Phase
2A, from Crewe to Birmingham, and we expect that to be in January. We then move into a very different phase on 2A - as you can imagine, there’s lots of work going on behind the scenes. Likewise, on Phase 1, where we’re most advanced. We’re fully mobilised here at Euston, where permanent works are going into the ground.
“Similarly, at Old Oak Common, we have another big push this winter and for another year or so beyond on enabling work. There’s a big winter season on ecology and environmental clearance, which is probably the last big push ready for civils next year. There are also works on state utilities alongside a major interaction with Network Rail to facilitate the final railway.
“The first TBM [Tunnel Boring Machine] goes in at West Hyde [Colne Valley] in the spring, and then the second one goes in a month later. A third TBM at Long Itchington [east of Leamington Spa] then goes in later in the year.
“What you’ll see over the second half of 2021 is more and more of the major civils works becoming visible as things start to come out of the ground - and that’s then the start of a full year of our big construction programme. Our headcount will go from today’s 12,000-13,000 up to 25,000, all within 18-24 months. Our workforce will grow very rapidly.”
Where actually are the TBMs as we speak? “They’re in various stages of production, from the factory in Germany to being assembled on site in the UK. Our first ones are actually in transit [HS2 announed their arrival in the UK on December 8]. Our teams are ‘on the ground’ starting to assemble all the ‘gubbins’ needed to have the TBMs ready to go.
“The ‘cut of face’ is already in the ground, so you can see the ten-metre diameter face that’s been prepared, where the TBM will be put
“In a world where you have more choice around capacity planning in an expanded network with a new high-speed rail link, the longer-term resilience and performance of the railway can only benefit.”
together to actually break through and start tunnelling into the Chilterns, in spring 2021. TBMs 4 and 5, for the first two London tunnels, have already been signed for but haven’t started assembly yet.”
How have the pandemic restrictions delayed work on the ground?
“Well over 200 sites are now open on the Phase 1 line of route, so in terms of physical sites it’s significant. We paused work on 60% of our sites in the first few weeks after the COVID lockdown, to make sure we were safe. We’ve been getting more sites open through the summer and we’ve been opening more sites as the works expands.”
Not surprisingly, the ever-dwindling band of vociferous HS2 opponents is keen to point out that rail passenger travel collapsed to just 5% of normal levels within 24 hours of the first lockdown. They argue that the rapid and widespread adoption of Zoom and Microsoft Teams conferencing and of home working has destroyed HS2’s capacity argument. Has the pandemic changed the fundamentals of Britain’s case and requirement for HS2?
“No, I don’t think the fundamentals have changed - and that’s my long-term view. The fundamental premise in terms of network capacity pre-COVID, for providing greater capacity into our major north-south corridors, assumed High Speed 2 is built. At the moment, none of us can predict what sort of restored demand for rail there will be in the short to medium term. In the longer term, if demand returns to the levels that we were seeing pre-COVID, then the strategic case of capacity stands true.
“The second key point in terms of strategic demand or case for HS2 is connectivity. And as you know, when we connect Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds is where the case becomes most compelling.
“As much as we need to put more capacity into the north-south corridor between Birmingham and London, going further north is where we really start to drive a broader levelling-up.
“Most rail services around London and the South East outperform anything comparable to the cities and urban railway elsewhere. HS2 is a mass transit railway system for moving people around the country at speed in huge volumes, and we have nothing like that in the North today.
“The third of the three strategic reasons why HS2’s case continues to hold true is that it will truly decarbonise our economy.
“We have to invest in transport infrastructure that’s going to be green. And notwithstanding what it’s going to take to build the railway, as soon as we move to a much greener power supply to service the railway, then on any given metric rail travel is much greener than people getting in their cars or getting into airplanes.
“These reasons all still hold true, and they are why HS2 is still the right thing to do.”
Even with passengers coming back at the current modest rate and volume, our roads are pretty full already - they cannot possibly take all the displaced traffic which there is every reason to believe will return. Therefore, rail will indeed have a major role to play in rebuilding the economy - even if the full 100% pre-pandemic levels are not achieved.
“Indeed,” agrees Thurston. “When you’ve brought in a new high-speed railway between our major cities, and you still have the East Coast and West Coast Main Lines, there’s the opportunity to put more intermediate services onto the railway - and bring more freight onto the railway, too.
“In a world where you have more choice around capacity planning in an expanded network with a new high-speed rail link, the longer-term resilience and performance of the railway can only benefit.”
We move from the strategic and general to the specific and granular.
We start with Euston, which has generated controversial and fairly heated debate since the moment it became clear that the London terminus would not be at St Pancras.
By choosing Euston, this meant that our HS ‘network’ would be disconnected from High Speed 1, with no through running from anywhere north and west of London, via the Channel Tunnel, to European destinations.
This issue still rumbles on, although the view since the collapse (and massive waste of public money) of the Nightstar operation has been that the distances were too large, the market would be too small, and that it was better served by air.
All those things might now be judged differently. Who knows, in due course, maybe a highly disruptive new high-speed rail alignment will be carved alongside the North London Line to serve St Pancras International? But not anytime soon, so let’s just leave that for now.
There was a proposal that the Crossrail 2 station would have entrances at both Euston and St Pancras, enabling a pedestrian route from one to the other. It’s highly unlikely Crossrail 2 is going ahead anytime soon, so a different solution will be needed. Maybe a pedestrian Travelator (if that’s what ‘they’ choose) will do the trick? We’ll see. Let’s stick with Euston’s known problems, for now.
Last year’s big issue was the provision
(or not) of a grade-separated station throat ( Comment, RAIL 884).
It’s a simple enough issue at its most basic. It doesn’t matter what whizz-bang state-ofthe-art train control you have on the long open sections of line to give you up to 18 trains per hour (tph), which is HS2’s current ‘spec’. If those trains are arriving every few minutes and have to queue to get into their booked platform at Euston (regular Midland Main Line passengers to St Pancras will understand), then it is that factor which determines (translation = restricts) line capacity.
It’s all about ‘junction occupancy time’. A quarter-mile-long train running at low speeds through a flat station throat takes time to cross and clear all those points and crossings. While that’s happening, departures and arrivals are not possible, because trains have to cross each other, to the opposite side of the formation, in one direction or other.
You avoid this by creating a grade-separated approach, using flyovers or underpasses. Think Euston or King’s Cross. This enables a much more rapid pattern of arrivals and departures, because trains can cross each other’s paths without conflict. But such infrastructure is expensive, and in the short term you could indeed cut construction costs by installing a flat approach.
But here’s the harsh truth: yes, you may save a few hundred million pounds, but you will have baked in a restricted train capacity for the whole railway… for all time.
In Euston’s case, this would mean that HS2 would be limited to 14tph… for ever, rather than the 18tph it is currently specified for, and (crucially) on which the business case is built.
Cutting line capacity by 4tph (around 30 trains a day) would slash revenues (seats). HS2 would be hobbled. But politicians like the idea of cutting costs in the here and now.
Thurston nods as I rehearse this issue with him. So, what’s the latest? I tell him I’m picking up an industry vibe that this argument has been won?
“Yeah, so, following the Oakervee Review into HS2’s projected costs, we recommended to Government that it should ratify the levels, because obviously the Tube stations are currently supposed to be at different levels and the suggestion had been that you bring them all to the same level.
“We’ve dealt with that. The Tube stations are at separate levels and the high-speed station will be lower than the existing station. As for the throat, we’ve done the work since Oakervee to prove to DfT that a gradeseparated junction with some form of cavern out there is essential to give you at least 16+ trains an hour.”
So, you’re optimistic that this argument has been won?
“I’m more than optimistic,” he says.
I press him harder. Is that now definitive and set in stone? That there will be a gradeseparated approach?
“The key decision is still to be taken, but we expect to get a decision out of government imminently as to what version of the station they want. There’s also a related debate about how many platforms you build at Euston in terms of future-proofing capacity on the highspeed side.”
I’m suddenly uneasy again. It’s reassuring to know that the station throat argument looks as if it’s been won. But to ensure the sort of reliability this railway must achieve, you need enough platforms to accept, service, reverse and despatch trains every three minutes or so - right through the day, hour after hour.
If you’re tight on platforms, you’re back to the problem of trains queuing and awaiting a platform. And every piece of research I’ve seen says that you must have 11 platforms to make Euston work properly.
That means ten platforms for the scheduled service and effectively a ‘spare’, where
“Once we get a decision on Euston, then there’s obviously a gestation period before you physically can open a new Euston high-speed station, so we’ve been looking at how we might increase capacity and turn-back facilities at Old Oak Common, to run up to five or six trains an hour.”
either a replacement train summoned from Old Oak in case of train failures can stand awaiting loading and departure, or it stands ready to absorb disruption caused either by late running inbound or delayed departures outbound. In this, there may be trouble ahead.
How many platforms will Euston’s highspeed station have? Expert modelling indicates a requirement for 11 - minimum. At an earlier stage there was talk of 12 platforms, so this had already been reduced to 11.
“It’s ten or 11.”
Hmm. But if you don’t build enough platforms, you won’t get the full benefit of the grade separation… will you?
“Yes… so… yeah…. it’s really ten or 11 platforms, and then the question is about do you build Euston in one or two stages,” he replies.
“The default scheme under the Hybrid Bill was for 11 platforms, built in two stages. You would build one side of the station enabling you to open and run a service running out of six platforms, and then you’d build the other five and open them.”
The first six platforms would have handled Phase 1/2A services, after which WCML trains would have been transferred out of their existing platforms, releasing space to build the remaining five HS2 platforms.
This is where long-term benefits run head-on into the short-term issues of politics and construction costs.
If you build Euston in one go, it takes a very long time. But you cannot build 11 platforms in one go in any case, because it would compromise the existing Platform 16 at Euston, which NR needs to run the West Coast Main Line. Platforms 17/18 will have already gone. The risk is that in an attempt to reduce construction costs, we end up with an HS2 station which is too small, and a WCML facility which is too big.
You could slew some track and retain the existing Platform 16 in order to build the new station in one go, but it’s all… messy.
So, while building the new station in one go is economically the right thing to do,
it presents all sorts of short-term cost and political issues. My guess - and it is only a guess - is that as a compromise HS2 will end up building the station in one go (right answer), but it will only have ten platforms (very risky long-term outcome).
If the single-stage construction plan delays the availablity of HS2 platforms at Euston, then the Old Oak interim terminus will be in place longer, with all the problems that creates. Losing those early years benefits would pose a threat to the business case benefits.
If you did build a ten-platform Euston, what are the capacity implications?
“That would give you 16 trains per hour.” Is that 16 in total - or could you do 18…?
“No - it would be 16,” he makes clear.
“There is a view, I think, that you could accommodate a 17th train, but you would put risk into the system. So, fundamentally this is about how you build Euston with a 16-train timetable that allows you to accommodate both eastern and western legs.”
He concludes: “Ten platforms allows you to effectively service the sort of overall business case of HS2 without unduly compromising it.”
Hmm…’ unduly’? That sounds to me like something of an expedient political compromise (translation = fudge) is looming at Euston, in that we may end up with a station that will cope (when all goes well) at 16tph, but the moment things go awry, performance and reliability will nosedive.
Thurston continues: “What we’ve done with the Department on the back of the Oakervee recommendations is to look hard at what is the right solution.
“Clearly, there are choices there. I made the point to the DfT and ministers that this is not a perfect decision. By nature, it’s an imperfect decision - you have to sort of hedge to some extent how much money you want to spend: what’s the build ability… what’s the futureproof of capacity… what will it do to the overall business case?
“In that regard, it’s quite a complex problem. But I think we’re converging on ten platforms built in one stage, which will give us 16 trains an hour.”
I am left in no doubt that a final Government decision is still awaited, but that it’s imminent. I am not hopeful for an 11-platform Euston - hopefully I’m wrong!
We move on. I ask about the plan to open the Birmingham-London section in two phases, initially to a temporary terminus at Old Oak Common and finally on into London Euston, via the new tunnels, around a year later?
“We will open the railway to and from Old Oak Common,” confirms Thurston. “And we can comfortably service three trains an hour, to Curzon Street.” These could be additional to the WCML service.
Mercifully, a barmy proposal that HS2 should terminate permanently at Old Oak was ‘seen off’ - there’s no way that the station proposed could ever handle even the proposed initial 10tph Phase 1/A HS2 service, and there’s insufficient room to build one that would.
Euston will go ahead, but I suspect that any Old Oak service would need to go on rather longer than the year currently in the plan. Tunnelling to, building and commissioning Euston is a massive undertaking - one (I suspect) that is unlikely to run to schedule.
Thurston seems to share this concern: “Once we get a decision on Euston, then there’s obviously a gestation period before you physically can open a new Euston highspeed station, so we’ve been looking at how we might increase capacity and turn-back facilities at Old Oak Common, to run up to five or six trains an hour. At least we could run a service between the Midlands and Oak Oak - and remember, by then you’ll have an interconnection with Crossrail.
“So, at least you could get passengers back onto the conventional network and into central London, while you’re waiting for Euston to be completed and commissioned.”
This seems like a logical idea, but choosing which trains will be a challenge, because to create real benefits you would in all likelihood disrupt classic services.
There is no room on the existing network for additional trains to the current service, so any such trains would have to be substitutions. Handling opening and integration is going to be a major challenge for HS2.
Everywhere you look HS2 issues are complex. Any inaugural and interim service to Old Oak only would have to offer something materially different, with additional benefits, to the existing West Coast service which takes you into the city centre.
HS2 estimates that when the full route is open, one-third of passengers will disembark at Old Oak, with two-thirds going onto Euston. So, if inaugural HS2 services to
Old Oak replaced WCML trains to Euston, one-third of your customers would be happy, but you’d be leaving two-thirds (the Euston passengers) miles from where they want to be, facing a troublesome onward journey with luggage to the city centre.
If you don’t stop the WCML services when HS2 to Old Oak launches (which you need to do to secure released capacity benefits for other services), why would the Euston passengers consider switching to HS2’s inaugural services? You would end up with HS2 running two-thirds empty from the start - a PR disaster.
The estimate is that this would only be for one year, but we all know it’s likely to be longer. You only get the one chance to make a first impression and it is fundamental that HS2 gets this right from the outset.
There is clearly a very great deal of planning and talking to be done about how HS2 launches, but many other bridges will need to be crossed before then.
In Part 2 of this interview, I talk to Mark Thurston about the perceived threat to HS2’s eastern leg - from Birmingham, through the East Midlands and the new Toton hub to Leeds, and the complete mess of the unresolved question around Sheffield.
We also talk about dealing with protestors, whose actions are creating additional costs of tens of millions of pounds.
“As much as we need to put more capacity into the north-south corridor between Birmingham and London, going further north is where we really start to drive a broader levelling-up.”