HS2 could cost up to £102.7bn and may not open until 2039 - and it would cost as much to scrap it as to carry on
HS2 could cost more than £100 billion and may not open until 2039, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has announced.
Cancelling HS2 altogether would have cost the same amount as continuing to build it, ministers were told earlier this year.
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The government briefly considered binning the beleaguered rail project again earlier this year amid attacks over the spiralling costs, LBC has been told.
But they concluded that the cost of cancelling it altogether at this point would be "unprecedented" and "in some situations exceed the cost of the build" in the first place.
The high-speed rail line - originally supposed to run to Northern cities including Manchester - has been repeatedly scaled back by several governments due to spiralling costs.
The first phase of HS2 was supposed to open this year.
However it has been delayed and will now cost between £87.7 and £102.7bn.
In 2011, the cost was estimated at around d £32bn. In order to save money, the high speed train service ill be slower - a maximum of 320 km/h (199mph), down from a previous maximum of 360 km/h (224 mph).
According to letters seen by LBC, the head of HS2 suggested that all land which has been built on so far would have to be returned to "condition prior to construction" to meet legal requirements, if it was binned.
Read more: Ministers put brakes on HS2 speeds to cut soaring costs
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That would involve filling in 100,000,000 cubic metres of earth which has been dug up, dismantling 46 miles of tunnels, 45 viaducts, and 132 bridges which have been started already.
Many of these structures would not have been designed to be dismantled at all.
It may have meant that land bought by the Government for the project could have been sold back to its original owners where appropriate.
One source said: "Cancelling it now could cost at least as much as finishing it, and you obviously get none of the benefits."
HS2 could cost more than £100 billion and may not open until 2039, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander announced today.
The Cabinet minister told the Commons she was “angry” about the “obscene increase in time and costs”, which she blamed on “the failures of successive Conservative governments”.
Ms Alexander said the expected cost of completing the high-speed railway was between £87.7 billion and £102.7 billion (in 2025 prices).
That means it will be more expensive than the Artemis II mission to send four astronauts to the Moon, which is estimated to have cost 93 billion US dollars to date (£69 billion).
Constructing HS2 from London to Birmingham – plus the now abandoned onward legs to Leeds and Manchester – was initially estimated to cost £32.7 billion (in 2011 prices), but the budget has spiralled.
The previous cost range was £35 billion to £45 billion (in 2019 prices), set under the Conservatives.
Services were planned to launch in 2026, but the new target schedule is between May 2036 and October 2039.
Ms Alexander also announced that HS2 trains will run slower than planned to save money.
She said the maximum speed of services will be 320km/h (199mph), down from the original design of 360km/h (224mph).
This could potentially save between £1 billion and £2.5 billion through factors such as reduced testing and earlier launch of services, Ms Alexander said.