There are government projects gone haywire – and then there’s HS2. The High Speed rail project should never have been given the nod in the first place. Costs spiralled out of control from the very beginning: it was estimated to cost £32.7 billion in 2012, now this is set to surpass £100 billion. The technology will be out of date before it even comes online. The government is right to ditch plans for an easterly arm of HS2 from Leeds to Birmingham. In contrast to the London to Birmingham section, no buildings have yet been flattened, no earth has been moved. Now is the chance to abandon it, before any more money and effort is spent.
But even with billions funnelled into the first leg of the journey, there’s still a strong case for scrapping the rail project completely. It is a scandal that successive governments have pressed ahead with the project, and even more scandalous that every leader has bought into the ‘sunk cost fallacy’, allowing wasted taxpayer money to justify wasting billions more.
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