Pros and cons of HS2

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced the scrapping of Phase 2 of the HS2 rail project. 

The second phase of the high-speed rail was meant to extend Phase 1, the under-construction London-to-Birmingham route, further north to Manchester, but "delays and spiralling costs" have led to the government axing the northern leg of the project, said Sky News.

The prime minister promised to use the money saved to invest "in alternative transport projects in the north", a similar promise to that made by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson who "pulled that trick" when he cancelled the extension from Birmingham to Leeds in 2022, added Sky News.

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But the delivery of HS2 has been fraught with "incompetence and financial mismanagement" from the start, wrote Madeline Grant in The Telegraph, and has left Britain looking "uniquely incapable of delivering major infrastructure projects". It was pitched with the promise to "slash travel times and boost rail capacity", said Wired, and its scrapping could have "serious repercussions" for the "future of rail investment".

Here are the pros and cons of the HS2 railway.

Pro: greater connectivity 

HS2 launched with the commitment to deliver "a high-speed line connecting central London to the northern cities", said Politico, but it currently looks "unlikely to reach Manchester, Leeds – or even central London".

Still, a properly executed HS2 would be a "boost for connectivity between major cities" in the north, and create "more space for stopping services and freight trains" on the West Coast Main Line, said Sky News.

The Department for Transport said the high-speed rail would "triple the number of people" able to travel between the cities and provide a much-needed upgrade to infrastructure "built by the Victorians more than 100 years ago", said BBC Newsround.

Con: increasing costs

A government report in the run-up to the project said it should cost "no more than £69 billion", said The Times. That, however, turned out to be a severely "undercooked figure" and a "dissenting report" said it would cost a "much more realistic £106 billion".

Since then, the estimate of the total cost for the project is £180 billion, with the "London to Birmingham leg alone costing almost £100 billion".

There's "no denying this is an almighty mess", The Times added, with the estimated cost a "ridiculous price tag for a 140-mile railway".

Pro: new jobs

When HS2 first broke ground the government was "expecting to create 22,000 jobs" through the project over the first few years with "women and under-25s the core focus for recruitment and skills investment", said the BBC. The government said the project would "re-balance the UK's economy" and promote "investment outside London" added the BBC's business correspondent Theo Leggett.

As of 2022, HS2 had increased its "current total workforce to just under 30,000" and had around 2,500 "formerly unemployed now working on HS2". The Stop HS2 campaign's Joe Rukin, however, told the BBC that the project would "permanently displace almost that many jobs" in its construction.

Con: the time

Even if the Manchester extension was going ahead, the timeline for it to open would have been delayed significantly. The London to Birmingham branch was originally slated for 2026 but was "pushed back" to "between 2029 and 2033", while the second phase was delayed until 2040 from 2032, before being "apparently shelved altogether", said Yahoo News.

There is also a penalty for scrapping HS2 though, with the "weekend closures on other mainline railways to upgrade existing lines" in its absence lasting up to "14 years", said The Guardian. It could also spell the end of the Northern Powerhouse Rail and result in "further decades elapsing" on a high-speed rail link in the north from east to west.

Pro: reduction of carbon footprint

One of the "principal arguments in favour" of developing HS2 was that it would "help the UK cut its carbon emissions" by linking many of its currently disconnected parts with London and continental Europe, and in turn "lessen demand for carbon-intensive air travel, road freight and car journeys", wrote Patrick Barkham in The Guardian. However, its "overall construction and operation" will still create significant carbon emissions.

But "far more road schemes will be needed if we can't shift traffic to more efficient rail", argued Jon Stone in the Independent, with high-speed rail "proven the greenest way to get people off short-haul flights". 

Con: environmental impact

The government was accused of having "major problems" with its estimates of HS2's impact on surrounding wildlife and nature, and "more than 50% of natural habitats could be lost overall" in the work between London and the West Midlands, reported ITV News. The Wildlife Trusts said the assessment of the impact on biodiversity was "fundamentally flawed" and called for construction to be paused while the impact was re-evaluated. The trusts said on BBC Newsround that while they were in favour of "sustainable transport solutions", the HS2 construction came "at an unacceptable cost for our natural world".