High Speed 2 (HS2) is a planned high-speed railway line in England, the first phase of which is under construction in stages and due for completion between 2029 and 2033, depending on approval for later stages.
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The landmark contracts – worth an initial £2bn – will see the JV design, build and maintain a fleet of 54 state-of-the-art high-speed trains that will operate on HS2. They are the first trains in the world to achieve the British Standards Institute's PAS 2080 global accreditation.
The entirety of the HS2 rail link between London and Birmingham is to be scrapped and replaced with a train of Dacia Sanderos welded together, the government has announced.
The eastern leg of HS2 to Leeds is scrapped with no east-west line linking Leeds to Manchester being built, said the then Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps.
HS2 plagued by delaysThe initial opening date of 2026 has fallen back to 2033, while cost estimates have spiralled from about £33bn in 2010 to £71bn in 2019 - excluding the final eastern leg from the West Midlands to the East Midlands.
HS2 will be delayed by another two years and major roadbuilding schemes will be mothballed, ministers have confirmed, after soaring inflation added billions to the cost of transport infrastructure projects.
Britain only has a small section connecting London with the rail tunnel to mainland Europe. In terms of speed, HS2's planned top speed of 225 miles per hour (mph) could make it Europe's fastest rail network. Over the years, successive governments have pitched HS2 as a way to reduce regional economic disparities.
A joint bid from Hitachi and Alstom has won the contract for a long-awaited, $2.6 billion order for the fleet of trains to operate on Britain's new HS2 high speed line. The 54 eight-car electric trainsets, designed to routinely operate at 225 mph, are being described as the “fastest trains in Europe.”
How much will tickets cost? There is likely to be a premium of between 20 and 33 per cent for using the fast service. That would in theory push the cost of a London-Manchester Anytime ticket from £180 to £240 at 2020 prices, which works out at 6p per second.
The high-speed rail will provide the greenest, safest and most efficient form of transport. Although the cost was said to be over 100bn the investment will provide a major boost to business and the economy; the faster rail inks will help reduce the north-south divide and overcome the externalities of car use.
When operational, HS2 will generate sound. This will be both through the movement of trains along the line and from the equipment along the route needed to operate our trains.
HS2 was originally envisaged to operate more trains an hour and higher speeds than any comparable high-speed line elsewhere in the world. It has been estimated that this pushed up costs by about 10 per cent.
Journeys between Manchester Piccadilly and London Euston will take just one hour and 11 minutes on HS2, 54 minutes quicker than today's fastest time by rail.
High Speed 2 (HS2) Ltd is a non-departmental public body, wholly funded by the Secretary of State for Transport and sponsored by the Department for Transport. The HS2 project is one of the largest and most complex infrastructure projects ever undertaken in the UK.
The HS2 Action Alliance criticised the Department of Transport's demand forecasts as being too high, as well as having other shortcomings in the assessment methodology. Action Groups Against High Speed Two (AGHAST) claimed in 2011 that the project was not viable economically.