Friends of the Rail Forum

Boris Johnson, the prime minister, is expected to decide within days whether to give the go-ahead for construction of Britain’s biggest infrastructure project since the second world war — the 250mph HS2 high-speed railway from London to Birmingham and on to Manchester and Leeds.

Experts and politicians are deeply divided on whether the scheme is worth the estimated price tag, which has almost doubled to more than £100bn even before construction has started. More than £8bn has been spent on preparatory work over the past 10 years.

But the project is already running seven years late and unlikely to be completed until 2040, while the National Audit Office, parliament’s spending watchdog, has pointed to management failures and warned that “it is not possible to say with certainty what the final programme cost may be”. Here the Financial Times considers the main arguments on both sides...

The mistake is to see HS2 solely as a high-speed service to and from London. In fact the new railway’s hidden worth is that it frees up capacity on lines that are almost full and run into cities like Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. By segregating the high-speed operator on to its own railway, more services can run on lines that currently have to deal with a complex – and inevitably sluggish – mixture of slow and fast trains. That is why city leaders back HS2 even though its first phase does not reach them...

For the country that invented railways, Britain has shown remarkably little interest in them lately. New networks have been built around Europe in the past few decades, but the only significant stretch of track laid in Britain in a century is the 67-mile (107km) hs1 railway that links London to the Channel Tunnel. Indeed, the country has half as much track as it had in 1963. Yet while Britain has an almost American reluctance to invest in railways, its commuting patterns are European: 10% of journeys are by rail, compared with 9% in Germany and less than 1% in America. The result is a lot of angry commuters.

Britain’s big problem is that, because it has built no new high-speed lines, it runs fast intercity trains on the same track as slow commuter ones. Long gaps have to be left between slow and express trains. The need to make way for high-speed trains thus limits the number of commuter services, and vice versa...

Eight years ago, the government decided to rectify this by building a new 345-mile railway from London to the north of England. Though branded as High Speed 2, its principal job was to boost capacity rather than speed...

Boris Johnson will give the final go-ahead to the first phase of the controversial HS2 high speed rail link early this week – despite fears over spiralling costs and strong opposition from at least 60 Tory MPs...

Downing Street made it clear last night that the green light for HS2 would be accompanied by details of a range of other infrastructure projects, particularly for the north of England...

PM brushes off Tory objections and says work on laying track could begin in April...

Country’s state-owned railway builder claims it can complete the rail link cheaper and faster

The UK and China have held "preliminary discussions" over giving Beijing's state-owned railway firm a role in building the HS2 high-speed rail line. However, government officials said no "concrete commitments" had been made. China's state railway company said it could build the line in just five years and at a much lower cost...

Andrew Stephenson has been appointed minister for HS2 - the high-speed rail link connecting London with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. He also has responsibility for the Transpennine and Northern Powerhouse Rail routes. Earlier this month Boris Johnson said he would appoint a minister to "restore discipline" to HS2...