{"id":10177,"date":"2023-01-30T05:27:48","date_gmt":"2023-01-30T05:27:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tunnelingworld.com\/?p=10177"},"modified":"2023-01-30T05:27:48","modified_gmt":"2023-01-30T05:27:48","slug":"government-committed-to-delivering-hs2-to-manchester","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tunnelingworld.com\/?p=10177","title":{"rendered":"Government Committed to Delivering HS2 to Manchester"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, the government has committed to constructing High Speed 2<\/a> through to London Euston rather than closing it short at Old Oak Common. He told the BBC: “I don\u2019t see any conceivable circumstance in which that would not end up at Euston.”<\/p>\n

Hunt’s comments on January 27 pursued the assumption in The Sun that the Old Oak Common \u2013 Euston section could be postponed or scrapped. A rail industry group declared that this would indicate \u2019there would only be enough capacity to allow London \u2013 Birmingham shuttle services\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Department for Transport said to Rail Business UK that: \u201cthe government remains committed to delivering High Speed 2 to Manchester, as confirmed in the Autumn Statement\u201d. DfT expressed: \u201cas well as supporting tens of thousands of jobs, the project will connect regions across the UK, improve capacity on our railways and provide a greener option of travel.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, DfT argued that like the rest of the economy, HS2 Ltd. was facing considerable inflationary pressures.<\/p>\n

Hunt articulated that the country does not have a good record of delivering complex and expensive infrastructure quickly. Despite this, he had prioritized HS2 in the Autumn Statement and was \u2018incredibly proud\u2019 that “we have shovels in the ground, we are building HS2, and we\u2019re going to make it happen.”<\/p>\n

The High-Speed Rail Group pointed out: “cancelling Euston would be the height of folly”, remarking that “works have been underway there for five years and already hundreds of millions have been spent”.<\/p>\n

\"High<\/p>\n

The group claimed that Old Oak Common \u201chas nowhere near enough platforms to serve as the London terminus\u201d, and \u201cthere would only be enough capacity to allow London \u2013 Birmingham shuttle services\u201d on HS2.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn very simple terms, if Old Oak Common is the terminus, you cannot have HS2 services reaching Manchester. If you cut off Euston, you also cut off Manchester and the rest of the north.\u201d<\/p>\n

Postponing Euston’s opening “may save some money in the very short term”, but enabling more construction inflation to creep in would add to the overall cost and “be a completely false economy.”<\/p>\n

CEO of the Association for Consultancy & Engineering, Stephen Marcos Jones, argued that last-minute changes would “do nothing but add complication, delay and expense”.<\/p>\n

He noted: “our national infrastructure should not become a political football. We need to ensure that major projects can proceed confidently if they are \u2013 ultimately \u2013 to be successful.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, the government has committed to constructing High Speed 2 through to London Euston rather than closing it short at Old Oak Common. He told the BBC: “I don\u2019t see any conceivable circumstance in which that would not end up at Euston.” Hunt’s comments on January 27 pursued the assumption in The Sun that the Old Oak Common \u2013 Euston section could be postponed or scrapped. A rail industry group declared that this would indicate \u2019there would only be enough capacity to allow London \u2013 Birmingham shuttle services\u2019. The Department for Transport said to Rail Business […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-project-show-case","post--single"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tunnelingworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tunnelingworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tunnelingworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tunnelingworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tunnelingworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tunnelingworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tunnelingworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tunnelingworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tunnelingworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tunnelingworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}