The United Kingdom Is Building The World’s Most Expensive High-Speed Rail Project.

London; May 2026: The UK House Of Commons is expecting the transport secretary to announce significant reforms to the HS2 high-speed rail project today, amid spiralling costs and slow progress. Heidi Alexander will set out new costs and timetables for the project, which is seeking to build a fast train route between London and the West Midlands.

It builds on reforms to the project announced last year, and in March, she asked the new CEO of the project to explore “every opportunity to claw back construction time and save taxpayers money”. One of the big hold-ups is thought to have been a desire to have HS2 operate trains at 360 km/hour, despite the technology for this not being in use anywhere in the world currently. Alexander has already suggested the HS2 line could instead operate at the lower speed of 320 km/h to save money.

In this context it is noteworthy that East Japan Railway Company (JR East) developed this experimental Shinkansen. During trials, it has reached up to (400 km/h, and is specifically designed for a 360 km/h operational cruise speed. The production version (the E10 series) is targeted to debut around 2030.

Also, the Italian high-speed train Alstom AGV was built with permanent magnet motors designed to cruise at 360 km/h.

A review of the rail project will also set out the reasons for the fall-out of the project today, highlighting the previous government’s decision to focus on the “highest possible speeds”, rather than efficiency for money. The report, written by former national security advisor Sir Stephen Lovegrove, was ordered by the now PM Sir Keir Starmer.

Later on; a few while ago – Heidi Alexander told the Commons: “It gives me no pleasure to say the expected cost of completing HS2 is now between £87.7bn and £102.7bn, priced in 2025.

“Two-thirds of this increase is down to past misunderstanding of the work required, underestimation and inefficiency, issues within the control of HS2 Ltd, some of its suppliers, and previous governments. The remaining third is linked to inflation, which was not factored into previous cost estimates regularly enough”.

The cabinet minister has been giving an update to parliament on the scheme, which has run way over budget and had parts of the route cancelled. She said the first train services won’t begin running on HS2 until at least May 2036 and possibly not until October 2039. This will be the Old Oak Common in London and Birmingham’s Curzon Street station.

Full HS2 services from Euston to Handsacre junction won’t begin until May 2040 at the earliest and potentially as late as 2043, she added. Alexander also announced the trains will be made to run at 320km/h, rather than the original target of 360km/h, to save £2.5bn.

‘A symbol of this country’s decline’, said the Minister. In a lengthy statement criticising the government’s handling of the scheme, Alexander said Labour have inherited a ‘litany of failure’, with billions of pounds sunk into a section that was abruptly cancelled.

“Instead of signalling the country’s ambition, HS2 became a symbol of this country’s decline”, she added. “After more than five years of construction and over £40bn spent, the country was no closer to having an operational HS2 railway than when construction first began”. Alexander called this a shocking legacy, and has said most of the project’s original budget was spent ‘without laying a single metre of its track’.

A government source said: “The Lovegrove Report further confirms the astonishing extent to which previous Conservative governments had totally lost control of HS2, frittering billions of taxpayer’s money away and leaving the project no closer to being finished than when it started. It has been a sorry mess, but this government has done the hard yards to pull the project out of the dirt and deliver the better connections that have long been promised to the Midlands. Britain has the talent and capability to build big infrastructure projects. The transport secretary will harness that as she turns the project around”.

Team Maverick.