[Dennip]

Mismanagement aside, HS2 required 8000+ different permits along its route [1], as well as years of opposition and legal battles from environmental groups and NIMBYs.

This is a significant portion of the cost, huge amounts of 'green tunnels' and cuttings are being created where they are not needed.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/07/cost-of-shed...

[Closi]

I suspect over-engineering and being allowed to generally spunk money up the wall was the main culprit.

The £100m bat shed isn't a sign to me of over-zealous environmentalists, it's a sign that the project was mismanaged because there wasn't enough pushback on spunking £100m up the wall with a mindset of "oh well, it's a big project, I guess £100m isn't much in the scheme of a project in the tens-of-billions things!.

[growse]

> The £100m bat shed isn't a sign to me of over-zealous environmentalists, it's a sign that the project was mismanaged because there wasn't enough pushback on spunking £100m up the wall with a mindset of "oh well, it's a big project, I guess £100m isn't much in the scheme of a project in the tens-of-billions things!.

The "£100m bat shed" is in the news precisely because the chair of HS2 brought it up. The point they're making is that something as fairly straightforward as an environmental protection structure is seized upon by a myriad of competing interests, all with their own demands and ability to block progress, which ultimately makes everything hugely expensive.

HS2 may well have a cost laissez-faire problem, but the bat shed is not evidence of it.

[fmajid]

Unnecessarily high speeds to show up the Continental duffers raised costs exponentially, then every Tory rural constituency claiming the line would disfigure their pristine arcadia had to be appeased with hugely expensive tunnels. But HS2 Ltd was also incredibly mismanaged. They made sure to rule out the manager of HS1 (successfully delivered under budget) as he would stop the gravy train (pun intended).

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/hs2-rishi-sun...

This was confirmed independently to me by a fellow alumni who worked on the project.

[MichaelZuo]

This is what I find really bizarre, huge sums spent on hypothetical risks based on pure conjecture, e.g. the bat shed, with apparently not even any compelling evidence presented for such risks.

[seabass-labrax]

I'm afraid it is not as simple as that, and there is a lot of misinformation about HS2 that should be addressed.

Firstly, the 'bat shed' (officially SWBMS) is expected to cost £100m. This is neither expensive nor wasteful for a structure nearly 1 kilometre long and "designed to accommodate up to 36 high-speed trains passing through the structure every hour of operation for 120 years, plus frequent conventional rail traffic in addition" as reported by Architects' Journal[1].

One should also refer to Natural England's own press release on the subject[2]. The first paragraph is worth quoting verbatim: "Natural England has not required HS2 Ltd to build the reported structure, or any other structure, nor advised on the design or costs. The need for the structure was identified by HS2 Ltd more than 10 years ago, following extensive surveying of bat populations by its own ecologists in the vicinity of Sheephouse Wood." It is absurd to think that Natural England would want to build a kilometre-long structure beside a forest if they didn't think it was of net benefit to the environment, yet that is the spin that most newspapers are putting on it.

Additionally, Louise Haigh is, as far as I can tell, a genuinely pro-rail minister. She is for instance the only cabinet member to have filed any significant MP's expenses for rail travel. However, it should also be remembered that the current Labour government's publicity strategy has consistently been to depict all projects started by the previous Tory governments as wasteful or corrupt; thus, we should take any of her communications with a pinch of salt.

I am very excited about HS2, which is being built to standard European loading gauges and will allow for high-capacity double-decker train services. Yet this does not have to be at the expense of local ecology, and these cuttings and tunnels are necessary to support both goals.

[1]: https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/transport-secretary...

[2]: https://naturalengland.blog.gov.uk/2024/11/08/natural-englan...

[blibble]

> "Natural England has not required HS2 Ltd to build the reported structure, or any other structure, nor advised on the design or costs."

yes, they didn't strictly require them to do it, but if they hadn't done it (or something very similar) they wouldn't have removed their objection to the planning application

standard quango double speak

> Yet this does not have to be at the expense of local ecology

the opportunity cost of this bat tunnel is massive

you could do a lot of good with £100 million of taxpayers money, vs. some giant concrete 1km long structure

additionally, it will be years after construction before the trains start running, and bats will inevitably end up roosting in the structure...

[michaelt]

I think the point of that article is more abstract than just the bat shed.

The issue is that, in this instance, government-in-the-form-of-HS2-Ltd has to negotiate an agreement between government-in-the-form-of-endangered-species-protection; government-in-the-form-of-local-planning-officers and government-in-the-form-of-the-treasury.

And the bat shed is just one example of something that happened over and over along the route.

In a less enlightened country, once the glorious leader had drawn a line on a map and ordered it to be built, no further approval would be required.

[eterm]

I don't understand how you can claim £100m is "not expensive", that's around £3 per tax-payer in the country, for one small aspect of the whole project.

Complaints about "waste" of government overspend went from [10s of thousands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cones_Hotline) in the early 1990s to [millions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Dome) in the late 90s to billions today.

Wages surely haven't gone up 1000x in that time, £100m is still a large cost, even if it's a drop in the ocean compared to the overall HS2 overspend.

[afavour]

> I don't understand how you can claim £100m is "not expensive", that's around £3 per tax-payer in the country,

I don't really think that's a useful statistic in isolation. Surely any investment is all about the eventual economic benefit? £3 per person to receive £1 is a bad deal. £3 per person to receive £5 is a good deal.

[eterm]

Sure, but It's a 1km concrete structure, what economic benefit do you think it'll deliver in isolation?

Overall HS2 might deliver billions of economic improvement, although current cost benefit analyses suggest it won't deliver much benefit compared to it's runaway costs. Most the ones I can find are already outdated, talking about improvements which will no longer happen or costs which have already been surpassed, and the cost/benefit ratios of those were already shaky.

[adammarples]

The economic benefits of the bat tunnel are zero. It would be a shame if this rare bat lost some habitat but it is not an economic measure.

[physicsguy]

The cuttings and tunnels mean lots of freight is on the roads right now, and half the project has been sacrificed because it was too expensive to continue in this way politically. In the mean time, we’ll be going well into the 2040s where we won’t be able to place more trains in and around Manchester. The plan to build Northern Powerhouse Rail is basically not possible without continuing on and building much of the now missing HS2 2a leg. Not to mention that the 2b leg isn’t going to go ahead.

Natural England are a statutory consultee for planning applications, so if they oppose the scheme there is a good chance it doesn’t go ahead. It’s crazy that a government can decide to build something only for other arms of the state to block it with a narrow focus only on one aspect.

[jemmyw]

>It’s crazy that a government can decide to build something only for other arms of the state to block it with a narrow focus only on one aspect.

Why is that crazy? It seems like a fairly standard way of operating in democratic nations, so it must have some benefit. Separation of incentives, pooling of expert knowledge, ability to apply rules evenly to state and private development?

[Closi]

> Firstly, the 'bat shed' (officially SWBMS) is expected to cost £100m. This is neither expensive nor wasteful for a structure nearly 1 kilometre long and "designed to accommodate up to 36 high-speed trains passing through the structure every hour of operation for 120 years, plus frequent conventional rail traffic in addition" as reported by Architects' Journal[1].

It might be good value for a 1km tunnel (or not, I don't know) but I think this argument misses the wood for the trees.

The main point is more "should we be spending £100m on a bat tunnel?"

i.e. What else could £100m of public money buy us, and would it be better than a 1km bat shed?

[brailsafe]

> i.e. What else could £100m of public money buy us, and would it be better than a 1km bat shed?

Can you think of anything?

It doesn't seem extraordinarily expensive given the cost of building anything these days, I'd question should the cost of building new things be so expensive, rather than should money be spent on this kind of project, because of all things to spend a large unit of money on, this does seem like a useful one.

[tomjen3]

How about the NHS?

You keep making the assumption that the building has to be built at all, and that 200 million isn't unreasonable. It does not have to be and its for _bats_.

[brailsafe]

Ya I was off the mark, didn't read the bit about it actually being a bat thing, seems absurd.

[blibble]

> It doesn't seem extraordinarily expensive

but you don't need to build it at all

you could fund a lot of bat reserves in perpetuity with even 10% of that money

instead of a 1km long concrete box

[brailsafe]

> you could fund a lot of bat reserves in perpetuity with even 10% of that money

Ya but funding bat reserves has nothing to do with a long concrete box, unless it also literally is a bat reserve. The money for the bats can come from the bat fund, and the concrete box should be able to come from the concrete box fund, if there's not enough for both, figure out which one is more impactful for the people paying the taxes and persuade them to let you save the bats, or let them do it through personal acts of charity.

[brailsafe]

I hadn't caught the part of the article (thanks alcohol ads) that did describe literally building a 1KM long "bat shed" with no evidence whatsoever that was necessary, (although I'd argue these bureaucracys often tend to get lost in spending the same amount on studies deciding whether something is worth it) The proposition seemed so unrelated and absurd that I thought it had to be hypothetical, and for this I'm deeply sorry lol this is so emblematic of Britain

[Closi]

> Can you think of anything?

Yes, lots! £100m could give a hospital a substantial renovation for example.

[secondcoming]

HS2 is using a different gauge!?

[growse]

Loading gauge, not track gauge.

[tacker2000]

This is a hilarious but also somewhat enlightening article.

[tharmas]

Im sure Regular rail like WCML would've been much cheaper and less disruptive.

[growse]

Not sure if this is sarcasm.

Assuming not.... No. The premium cost on the project related to its running speed is not significant. Planning and engineering a brand new 125mph railway doesn't cost much less than planning and engineering a brand new 250mph railway.

[TheOtherHobbes]

If the ultimate goal was to bypass freight - none of which travels at 125mph - wouldn't it have been cheaper to build a new freight line and upgrade the speed and capacity of the WCML?

Or does a 75mph freight railway cost as much as a 250mph passenger railway?

A reminder that the cost of the project, even unfinished, with none of the benefits of the lines to Manchester and Leeds, is of the same order as NASA's current moonshot budget.

[growse]

Performing major works on an existing line to upgrade its speed (which, given alignments might not even be possible) is probably the worst-case scenario in terms of cost and disruption.

For the WCML specifically, _we already did that_ in the form of the modernization program (early-2000s) which was over 10 years of disruption, and massively expensive.

And HS2 isn't just for freight, it's also for providing higher capacity and frequency of local stopping passenger trains. The WCML already connects the population centres, so the local stopping trains have to stay there. The thing that really kills capacity is the co-mingling of 125mph and lower speed (90/75) traffic. Remove the 125mph traffic (onto, say, a dedicated high-speed single-mode line) and you _massively_ increase capacity on the existing line.

> A reminder that the cost of the project, even unfinished, with none of the benefits of the lines to Manchester and Leeds, is of the same order as NASA's current moonshot budget.

This is not a railway problem. This is a government problem.

[lmm]

> Or does a 75mph freight railway cost as much as a 250mph passenger railway?

No, it costs more. The most expensive part of building anything in the UK, by far, is getting it through the local planning process, and as hard as that is with a sexy passenger railway that local residents can see a direct benefit from, it's much harder for a freight railway. Also freight railways need a much flatter route, which makes the route more constrained (increasing planning costs) and means more need for bridges and tunnels (increasing everything costs).

[avianlyric]

> upgrade the speed and capacity of the WCML?

Do you really think that hasn’t already been tried. We’ve already spent billions upgrading the WCML, and endured decades of disruption (where do think the meme about bus replacement services comes from?).

There’s simply no getting away from the fact that the WCML is a hodgepodge of some of the world’s earliest rail lines glued together. Rail lines that when originally designed, steam was still the high technology, it would have been utterly inconceivable for the original builders to imagine 200mph electric trains then. The design of the WCML, from its alignment, radius of bends, size of tunnels, heights of bridges etc all reflect the century it was originally built in, which is over 200 years ago (the core part of the WCML

[alimw]

The article suggests that the flexibility of route afforded by slower speeds would have reduced cost significantly.

[growse]

This is wishful thinking at best.

The route is not expensive because of speed. The route is expensive because the powerful NIMBYs wanted a huge amount of it tunnelled. No amount of mild wigglyness leeway gets around that fact.

For all the howling, I've yet to see any specifics about how and where the route could have been changed if it were only built for 125mph running, and how that would have saved any significant cost.

[alimw]

Well I'll only repeat what's said in the article: "Christian Wolmar told CNN Travel ... the route could have followed existing highway corridors.”

[stuaxo]

They already tried upgrading WCML at massive disruption over years and the gains weren't particularly much.

It was realised that new track was the way to go.