HS2 doesn't need a 'reset'...this line never made sense

Nobody knows how much it will cost or when it will be done. With our creaking transport system, the mounting billions would be better spent elsewhere, says Chris Blackhurst

- Chris Blackhurst

The new year has not begun but already a strong candidate has emerged for word of 2025: it's "reset". We've just seen one in Keir Starmer's overhaul of government priorities. Now again, with Mark Wild, chief executive of HS2, telling MPs the highspeed railway requires a rethink. For emphasis, Wild prefixed it with "fundamental", so a "fundamental reset" is a must.

What's the betting we will see more of the same in 2025, in the economy, NHS, foreign relations, defence, climate change. The scope for tearing everything up and starting again, as if the previous mess never happened, is endless. Not that there is any rush. Don't imagine for a second that the HS2 "reset" will see a round-the-clock, all-out effort. HS2 may be designed to hasten travel time from A to B but Wild says the new plan will not be ready until mid-2026 at the earliest.

"We have to acknowledge that HS2 in its core mission to control costs has failed," he said. "We must break the cycle." Acknowledging the problem takes a nano-second, but breaking and starting over, we're apparently looking at 18 months - and bearing in mind this is HS2, that's a schedule that is likely to lengthen.

Wild also said: "Construction started way too early, The rush to start before mature design consents was really, in retrospect, a mistake." He added that "HS2's activities are all out of synchronism - we must form a new baseline programme." Will construction work cease while Wild and his team pore over the figures? No. But wait, didn't he say everything was out of sync? He did. It does not make sense. But then, where HS2 is concerned, not much has ever made sense. So blighted is the project that it's become a scar on the nation's soul, those two letters and a number, a byword for colossal mismanagement and grotesque financial waste.