Can HS2 be fixed?

Choose your expression: ‘stuck between a rock and a hard place’; ‘I wouldn’t start from here if I were you’; or simply ‘this is the biggest omnishambles in history’.

All these apply to HS2 as Louise Haigh, the Secretary of State for Transport, attempts to come up with a coherent strategy for a project that has now run for 15 years and has worked its way through around £35 billion – but is still only less than half-completed. Worse, on its way it has shed most of its sections, such as running to Manchester and Leeds or connecting with HS1, that would at least have made the end product a worthwhile addition to the country’s railway infrastructure.

Certainly, completing these two sections will at least invest some ultimate purpose in this deranged project

Instead, we now have a 135-mile-long line that has been dubbed the Acton to Aston shuttle, starting some five miles from the centre of London and ending up a mile from Birmingham’s New Street station, necessitating a tram ride to connect with it.