HS2 is clearly just a deliberate money pit at this point, there’s no other reason a relatively short line like that could out cost the entire EU wide rail refurbishment project by a factor of almost 2.
They decided to make it a high speed line. This requires much wider curves, limiting how many obstacles could be avoided. In turn this led to expensive court battles and hideously expensive mitigation, such as the £100m bat tunnel.
Nimbys with Tory connections got the lines put into very expensive tunnels under the Chilterns. This was last minute and incurred an additional billion pounds.
Very high property prices, and poorer ground than expected leading to £5bn in extra remediation.
An overly-generous redundancy scheme at HS2 Ltd.
Deferrment of some elements such as the section to Euston incurred inflation.
The government decided to demand a much longer guarantee period than is normal - the time after completion in which the constructor is liable for any repairs - which bumped up the price of everything.
Bumped up the price sure but to 100 billion!? Its got to be the most expensive public works project on a per mile basis in human history, probably by a few orders of magnitude.
HS2 is clearly just a deliberate money pit at this point, there’s no other reason a relatively short line like that could out cost the entire EU wide rail refurbishment project by a factor of almost 2.
They decided to make it a high speed line. This requires much wider curves, limiting how many obstacles could be avoided. In turn this led to expensive court battles and hideously expensive mitigation, such as the £100m bat tunnel.
Nimbys with Tory connections got the lines put into very expensive tunnels under the Chilterns. This was last minute and incurred an additional billion pounds.
Very high property prices, and poorer ground than expected leading to £5bn in extra remediation.
An overly-generous redundancy scheme at HS2 Ltd.
Deferrment of some elements such as the section to Euston incurred inflation.
The government decided to demand a much longer guarantee period than is normal - the time after completion in which the constructor is liable for any repairs - which bumped up the price of everything.
Bumped up the price sure but to 100 billion!? Its got to be the most expensive public works project on a per mile basis in human history, probably by a few orders of magnitude.