The High Speed Two (HS2) railway project could see trains running 16% slower in a bid to drive down spiralling costs and delivery times.
In a written statement to parliament, transport secretary Heidi Alexander set out a six-monthly report on HS2. A headline point from the report is how a reduction in the speeds the trains travel at could save “billions” and bring the HS2 into service sooner. HS2 trains were originally planned to run at 360km/h, which would have made them the fastest conventional high-speed trains anywhere in the world.
With HS2 officially given the green light in 2020, the project has since been beset by a string of failures and budget overruns, including the cancellation of routes ending in Leeds and Manchester. It was originally expected to be completed by 2033, but Alexander told the House of Commons in June 2025 that she was delaying the project even further due to a “litany of failure”.
At that time, she announced a reset to the project, tasking Mark Wild, the new...