HS2 trains will not run for another DECADE as cost balloons to £102.7billion
HS2 trains will not run for another decade, as the cost has ballooned up to £102.7billion, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander announced today.
Speaking in the Commons, Ms Alexander revealed the expected final bill reached the hefty sum, yet the high-speed rail will not open until at least 2039.
"It gives me no pleasure to say the expected cost of completing HS2 is now between £87.7billion and £102.7billion, priced in 2025," she told MPs.
The first services between Old Oak Common in London and Birmingham's Curzon Street station will not begin until May 2036 at the earliest.
However the opening could slip further to October 2039.
The Lewisham East MP said she was "angry" about the "obscene increase in time and costs".
"Two-thirds of this increase is down to past misunderstanding of the work required, underestimation and inefficiency, issues within the control of HS2 Ltd, some of its suppliers, and previous Governments," she complained.
"The remaining third is linked to inflation, which was not factored into previous cost estimates regularly enough," the Transport Secretary added.
She placed blame squarely on "the failures of successive Conservative Governments" for the spiralling costs.
The scheme has already exceeded its budget significantly and seen sections of the planned route scrapped entirely.
Ms Alexander went on to condemn the project's management under the Tories.
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The Transport Secretary described Labour as having inherited a "litany of failure" from the Conservatives.
Billions of pounds had been "sunk" into a section of the route that was later "abruptly cancelled", she told MPs.
"After more than five years of construction and over £40billion spent, the country was no closer to having an operational HS2 railway than when construction first began," Ms Alexander lamented.
She called this a "shocking legacy", adding most of the original budget had been exhausted "without laying a single metre of its track".
When first proposed, the entire project including legs to Leeds and Manchester was expected to cost £32.7billion in 2011 prices.
Those northern extensions have since been abandoned.
As services were originally scheduled to begin this year, the new timeline pushes the opening back by at least a decade.
The route will now run only between London and Birmingham, which is a far cry from the ambitious nationwide network initially envisaged.
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