Prepare for the next instalment of the great HS2 fiasco.
Stories suggest the chancellor is preparing to shuffle the off-balance sheet financing deck, find £1bn-plus and give a thumbs up to start boring the tunnel from Old Oak Common to Euston.
Got to spend that money taken off pensioners on something, I suppose....
That decision will be motivated mainly by the sense that the high-speed line, already stripped of its northern legs by Rishi Sunak, would be even more of a national embarrassment if southbound passengers had to hop off at an industrial estate five miles west of central London.
They'd probably be safer.
But, if the tunnel is a go, we’re on to the far trickier question of what is to be done with Euston station.
Like HS2 itself, Euston seems to defy every attempt to impose control on costs. Two designs have already been ripped up. The last version came out at £4.8bn when the brief was £2.6bn.
I went via Euston on my trip to Chester, hadn't visited for a while. It's supposedly been 'refurbished' but it's not for the better. Seating with no view of the departure boards is just one obvious faux pas....
The final irony of the HS2 debacle will come if the next blueprint for Euston ends up looking like the original that was rejected as unaffordable in 2020. That, laughably, is probably the way to bet.
We are rapidly becoming a joke of a country.
2 comments:
Too late. We are already a laughing stock. But in a bit of good luck it isn't just us it is the rest of the West as well.
Given the endless problems we face as a country (Do I need to list them?), I really struggle to understand why we're still borrowing money to fund this monstrous white elephant. Has nobody the guts to say "stop"?
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