Earlier in 2021, the next phase of the highly controversial HS2 high-speed railway line in the UK was given the go-ahead, meaning that the line is set to be extended from the West Midlands out to Crewe.
The planned HS2 development was conceived as a way to improve public transport across the UK, particularly for commuters travelling between London and the West; HS2 promises to cut travel times between Birmingham and London by over a third. And yet, when news about HS2 comes to print, controversy is never far behind.
Why is HS2 so controversial, and what lessons can we learn from this project management disaster?
HS2: What went wrong?
The HS2 project was first proposed in 2010, and initially, the first phase of HS2 was due to open in 2026. But already the project is way behind schedule, as well as being over budget. While politicians held the party line for years that the project was going ahead as planned, in 2018 it quickly became clear that more money was being fed into the project when billions of pounds were suddenly added to the budget of the Elizabeth Line (also known as the Crossrail line) and the opening date of the line was delayed from 2018 to 2021.
In late 2019, another document was published which revealed that HS2 may be delayed by up to five years, meaning trains wouldn’t be running on the line between Birmingham and London until potentially 2031. The same report, published by Allan Cook, the Chairman of HS2, also stated that the project’s budget had risen from an initial £62 billion to between £81 billion and £88 billion.
By 2021, every stage of HS2 is behind schedule and over budget. While unexpected delays often occur in large scale projects like this, sadly many of the obstacles that HS2 is facing could have been foreseen before the project even began. In 2019, when the delay was first announced by Transport Minister Grant Shapps, the report claimed that the delay had occurred because the original plans of HS2 had not accounted for the effect of building through densely populated areas.
When project managers who are working on a high-speed rail route between two of the UK’s biggest cities don’t account for building railway lines in densely populated areas, it’s a worrying sign. Part of the issue with the HS2 project seems to be that, right from the start, the project’s complexity has been vastly underestimated by all involved.
But it’ll all be worth it in the end, right?
I’m not so sure. For one, the delays in HS2 mean that by the time the project is finished, HS2’s technology might already be outdated. What’s more, many of the planned benefits of HS2 aren’t what they appear to be anyway. When it comes to carbon savings, increasingly it looks like the carbon emissions released in the building of HS2 will take decades to offset, while the modal shift – from air travel towards rail travel – is now thought to be minimal, at perhaps just 1%.
So, if the HS2 project is costing us more money than anticipated, taking longer to build, and offering few of the benefits it was first promised on, it begs the question: should HS2 proposals ever have been approved in the first place?
HS2: A lesson in project management
The HS2 project offers a fine illustration of some of the most dangerous obstacles in project management; if apparently “small” details are overlooked in the early stages of a project, these can be magnified to disastrous proportions a few years down the line. The HS2 debacle is a terrible example of what can happen when infrastructure finance and project complexity are overlooked early on, paving the way for an unmitigated disaster that will likely take the UK transport sector several years to recover from.
