How Britain’s Dream of More High-Speed Rail Came Off the Track
The vast majority of the main line will run below ground level, raising costs and spurring speculation all that digging was done to overcome local opposition.
Workers behind hoardings at the HS2 Curzon Street development site in Birmingham on Sept. 26.
Photographer: Darren Staples/BloombergBritain’s plans to expand its high-speed train network looks pulled into a siding. The question now is why and will it ever get back on track.
A plan first hatched in 2017, the High Speed 2 line — HS2 for short — was supposed to expand Britain’s super-fast train network, now limited to services between London and the Channel Tunnel, northward to Manchester and Leeds, England’s third- and fourth-largest metro areas. After axing the Leeds leg in 2021, the UK government is now considering completing the line only between London and Birmingham, a section that is already largely complete, and ending the London leg outside central London.