This article is prompted by the conjunction of reading Marc Dunkelman’s book titled Why Nothing Works while thinking about the problems which led to the fiasco that is the HS2 project.
"HS2 is largely separate from the West Coast Main Line, running close to the Chiltern Line out of Marylebone Station which does not serve passengers travelling from Birmingham to London"
Chiltern has a good service to Birmingham, which is popular, not just from intermediate stations, but also to and from London, even though it's significantly slower than the WCML. This is because it's much cheaper and less crowded, but also more reliable because Chiltern don't have to share most of the route with other passenger and freight trains.
Sorry, I was trying to save space and was not clear enough. I know the Chiltern Line well. Over many decades and under different names, members of my family and I used it frequently from Leamington, Banbury and (later) Gerrards Cross. However, almost no-one ever used it as a fast route from London to Birmingham, so it doesn't affect capacity constraints on the WCML. If HS2 had really been designed to increase capacity on the WCML it would have taken a route via Milton Keynes.
Using the Chiltern Line ensured that there was no sensible stopping point before Birmingham because none of the intermediate towns generate enough traffic. From a different perspective by taking the Chiltern Line route the planners avoided what would have been strong pressure to stop at Milton Keynes which would have greatly reduced time savings on the Birmingham segment. In transport/traffic terms it is a stupid design whose purpose was to look good for a few inter-city segments. The justification of increasing capacity on the WCML was entirely invented when the project ran into opposition.
There was a costed plan to upgrade (electrify and straighten a few bits) of the Chiltern line. Of course, if the real problem was capacity constraints on the WCML, HS2 was completely the wrong solution - a new 4-track mainline (perhaps utilising some of the existing trackbed of the Great Central closed by Beeching) with 150mph speeds and serving more intermediate stations such as MK and Coventry, could have been built for a small fraction of the cost.
Absolutely correct but for nearly 10 years the argument has been that the real justification for HS2 is lack capacity on the WCML - read many articles by Christian Wolmar who generally reflects the views of the railway lobby. As I alluded to in my piece, the railway industry was completely scarred by what they thought was the appalling experience of the last WCML upgrade. They wanted to avoid anything similar again. In addition, any suggestion that the earlier upgrade wasn't adequate was hardly likely to be well-received.
The other element is the collusion between politicians and high speed train enthusiasts for whom a 150 mph rail line wasn't "ambitious" enough. Large projects are often based on a coming together of fantasies formulated by different lobby groups, none of whom admit to being parents of failure but all of which want to claim to be the progenitors of grand visions.
An excellent analysis of why grand projects fail. If I may suggest some other factors in play in the HS2 case:
- when the purpose of a project changes radically - in this case from speed between city centres to extra capacity, surely that suggests the desire to build something trumps delivery of real benefits. In the private sector such a large malinvestment would face contact with reality far earlier in its lifecycle. Also if an investment is so important, why are we prepared to wait wait 20 years from initiation to go live? This itself suggests it's not a vital investment after all.
- the political class are obsessed with large projects, believing instinctively they drive growth as night follows day. In its very early days the likes of Adonis and Mandelson were flag wavers; Osborne was reportedly impressed by the Japanese high speed rail system and felt we had to have one too, and that somehow it would spur on the Northern Powerhouse idea (itself wishful thinking). Osborne has also said that it would be wrong to cancel HS2 because of the egg on face - any project once started must be seen through - the sunk cost fallacy made flesh.
- I understand the delivery vehicle HS2 Ltd was specifically set up to insulate construction from political interference from DoT etc. This suggests a troubling faith in unaccountable bodies to deliver. Sure enough there have been many reports of over-engineering the solution, free from awkward question being asked.
Surely HS2 will always require heavy subsidy (especially if its end points don't work for the real journeys passengers want to make). Any attempt to make it pay its way will result in extortionate ticket prices. I always felt it highly likely it will never go live. That remains a real possibility whatever our political class may say.
I agree with most of your points and had included a couple (indirectly) in my notes for the follow-up article. The idea that large projects drive growth is a recurring theme, perhaps because it is so self-serving - along the lines that only politicians can push forward large projects. And, of course, they can never admit failure.
Reliance on arms-length bodies is a technocratic delusion, which particularly stupid in such cases. You cannot get remove politics from projects that do a lot of harm (as well, perhaps, as good). Technocrats have no alternative but to throw money to mitigate, whereas (competent) politicians could come up with alternative forms of compensation.
You are correct in noting that the delays indicate that there is no pressing need for the project. However, my fear is that the sunk cost fallacy is so large that no one has the courage to abandon HS2. It is collective political madness at this point but I suspect that even Reform will make the judgement that they have better things to spend their political capital on than this. Remember the response to Sunak when he faced incontestable reality and cancelled the northern extension. What Reform might do is refuse to provide subsidies and force the ticket prices to be very high. They can point to the folly as the taxation of non-metropolitan England to benefit metropolitan elites.
On the point of mega projects, with thoughts about reconstructing our electricity system in my head, I wonder if you might have any comments on this hypothesis.
Looking back on a couple of horrific oil developments I was peripherally involved in, one of which destroyed a co-venturer, the other being saved only by the oil crash that allowed pressure to be put on contractors to reduce cost, projects don’t “fail” because they’re technically unfeasible, but because they are insufficiently scoped. A wish to shorten time frames by parallelising scoping with design and design with construction; an overwhelming urge by senior management to bootstrap projects, to get their babies off the ground, by lowballing cost estimates; and poor EPC strategy that leaves too much risk unaddressed leave projects doomed to break time and cost budgets almost before they start.
The core problem is EPC, where information asymmetry kicks in. Developers run major projects infrequently; contractors all the time. Contractors can see when project design is under specified and know the risks better that developers. But they aren’t motivated — and not compelled — to share those risks. Contract variations, after all, are where the pot of gold lies. In consequence, when work starts contingency is rapidly exhausted and the project swiftly goes over budget; a budget that was likely optimistic in the first place.
All this raises a question: in a choice between offshore wind, in fact any wind, and nuclear, all wind projects — as with oil and gas development — are unique; at best they are variations on a theme. In contrast, a fleet of identical reactors should be just that, identical projects with minimal differences (ground works, access, export routes). The core of the project, the power plant itself, is a certified and brutally well specified deliverable. We should be starting with something very well scoped, not something that continuously creeps or morphs. Add in an EPC framework that requires, at tendering stage, contractors to disclose the risks they are NOT accepting, and cost control should be easier. By having contractors disclose unacceptable construction risk early in the process, developers can choose to accept the contract variations that will flow if it arises, or take steps to investigate further and mitigate.
I’m not pretending that building new nuclear isn’t a huge challenge, or minimising the problems of rebuilding a supply chain, but it does strike me that the prospects for lowering nuclear “overnight” build costs over time are better than for wind.
I agree with most of what you say about scoping and the asymmetry between developers and EPC contractors. I recall conversations with construction firms comparing low bid federal contracts with commercial contracts, especially when experienced developers were involved. The whole game in federal contracts was to identify items or sections of work that the government's agents had failed either to scope properly or had got wrong. This was how they could make their money. However, this wasn't possible in repeated contracts with experienced developers. It is all relatively simple theory of one-shot or repeated games.
Your points about offshore wind vs nuclear are partly right, though large wind developers attempt to standardise their designs as much as possible. Now this is close to a bilateral monopoly - there are very few developers with sufficient money and experience, but equally few suppliers of turbines and electrical equipment. That is why prices are settling at realistic levels which are much higher than in the past.
With respect to nuclear the problem, especially in the US and Europe, has been the failure to standardise designs and the components. That is why the Koreans (and Chinese) are the only suppliers capable of building cost-effective large reactors. That is the logic behind SMRs - i.e. you minimise EPC risks - but the nuclear industry remains utterly awful at standardisation. For example, the RR so-called SMR is nothing of the kind, just a scaled down large reactor. Genuine SMRs should be built in the 10s every year and almost no-one is willing to commit to that kind of project flow. Also, nuclear safety regulators are in practice anti-nuclear agencies, because they reflect the hostility of many politicians to nuclear power.
In terms of overall benefits to society at large and individuals in particular it would be much more effective and efficient to improve existing railway service which is literally falling apart.
The Xeno analogy is brilliant but unfortunately approximate. Should we use it literally then for every year that passes the timeline of the project would be extended by 6 months. I can only image a future PM, say in 2150, waiting an eternity, scissors in hand in front of the inaugural ribbon, for the last millisecond to pass by.
I agree with your first point but it is mundane, hard work and generates very few political kudos. In economic terms no-one should consider a large project until all possible smaller improvements have been implemented. Consider how much passengers numbers at Heathrow have grown since a 3rd runway was said to be critical to maintain its role. All too often flagship projects are a "one bound and he was free" escape from daily reality.
Of course you are right about the Xeno's arrow analogy - I was trying to add some arcane levity to the discussion of a topic that, it will be clear, I find very annoying.
Gordon, your first point aligns with a recent article I read on Iberian wildfires, the author of which pointed out that the biggest positive impact in avoiding losses of property and life would be the slow and painstaking work of clearing areas to deprive fires of fuel, but for a politician, nothing beats being pictured in front of a gleaming new fire truck or helicopter.
True but there are other considerations. If we put aside pure stupidity such as California rules that prohibit clearance on environmental grounds, the obvious thing to do is to make insurance conditional on a demonstration that vegetation has been cleared twice a year. It is not just long-lasting scrub but heavy vegetation growth following heavy rainfall that have played a crucial role in both the US and Europe.
Shoving loads of HS2 into tunnels was baked on as far back as 2015 yet its trotted out as an excuse why its so overspent and behind schedule. This project has screwed up due to a catastrophic contracting strategy with no incentive to drive the project forward. Its judged more on its elf & safety and environmental credentials. Yes both are important but they exerting far too much influence over getting the line built.
Correct about tunnels. In fact, their cost can be partially offset by lower land compensation. I had a flat in the Barbican directly on top of CrossRail - tough luck if you want compensation for noise and vibration.
I am not convinced that it is all regulatory compliance. My view is that the cost estimates up and beyond parliamentary approval were pure fantasies based on bureaucratic wishful thinking endorsed by consultants inclined to make the most optimistic assumptions. What all this tells us is the need for a different system of accountability by which everyone - politicians, advisers, bureaucrats, consultants, etc - contributing to such a fiasco is effectively bankrupted. Pretty harsh, but pour encourager less autres. It is the endless avoidance of accountability and payment for failure that creates the public outrage, which fuels the inclination to reject all large public projects.
About putting transmission lines underground. I should say I'm a fully paid up nimby. I live in Shropshire and a few years ago we were faced with the prospect of a high voltage transmission line running along our valley right in font of our house. This was intended to carry electricity from windfarms in mid Wales via a large substation near Newtown to eventually join the grid near Shrewsbury. As you can image there was a big campaign against it. I won't go into all the details but one thread of the argument was why couldn't National Grid take it underground. We were told by NG that 1. it would be far too expensive to install and 2. it would vastly increase maintenance costs for the line. The underground option was flatly turned down. The total length of the line was about 15 miles I think. In the end NG grid selected a route which avoided our valley altogether and went across further north. In fact they did have a short section of about a mile underground. This was to avoid spoiling the attractive village of Meifod.
Power lines are put underground in every city and most towns in the world. In Hong Kong almost all power lines are underground, even in what they regards as rural areas. NG's position is pure dogma based on the costs they believe Ofgem will allow them to recover. If lines are put underground they are allowed to recover both capital and operating costs. What is really going on is a stupid regulatory game in which they are forced to pretend that they won't or can't put lines underground until they are told that it is underground or no line at all. Also charging properly for underground lines would make many wind farms uneconomic, so wind farm operators lobby against it.
The trouble is that the rules and procedures are a load of nonsense that are promoted by the likes of NG and Ofgem for different but equally spurious reasons. They are rarely challenged by people who know as much as they do. Incidentally, it is not true that underground lines have higher operating costs - provided they are built properly. In Hong Kong the electricity companies told me that underground operating lives and costs were lower than overground ones for modern gas-insulated cables and that was nearly 20 years ago.
There's an interesting book called "Why most things fail" by Paul Ormerod which is worth a read. Many excellent examples of government failure in there.
Also here is a clip from the Planning and Infrastructure Bill committee where Sam Richards from the group "Britain Remade" gives evidence and describes some terrible and embarrassing examples of planning failure including HS2 and Hinckley C power station and so on. It would be funny in other circumstances.
Thank you. I taught Paul Ormerod at Cambridge long ago and know his book. There is another set of papers and books by Bent Flyvbjerg and colleagues which examine why many large projects fail. The Dunkelman thesis isn't new but it fits into the Britain Remade line of argument that changing planning rules will solve the problem. It won't because technocrats won't acknowledge why large projects generate such vehement opposition.
Oh no, we are certainly not alone. Read about the Stuttgart railway station or the Big Dig in Boston. Of course, the recommendation is more and better preparation - but then many projects wouldn't go ahead which doesn't make politicians happy.
Thank you for the link. I agree with what you say about the sunk cost delusion for HS2 but the political costs of acknowledging that a huge amount of money has been wasted will prevent any change of course. However, I don't agree with your remedies for building infrastructure quicker and more cheaply. All these would do is to ensure that more bad projects will be designed and then implemently slowly & expensively.
HS2 was clearly a rotten idea from the very outset. I looked at the economic analysis back in the early 2010s and remember giving lectures which described it as a poorly conceived vanity project that would never justify its original costs. Of course it has been made worse by the failure to sort out the problem of getting the lines into Euston & Birmingham but that is symptomatic of a political and bureaucratic system incapable of doing anything competently.
Finally, we should be clear that these fiascos are not unique to the UK. Arguably the California High Speed Rail link is even worse and the money wasted will probably be larger.
Thank you Gordon for an excellent article, but what a tale of woe! I have a ragbag of comments, the first being that if HS2 had ever been about economic growth in the north, construction would have started at that end. The most remarkable claim for HS2 I read was a midlands MP asserting it would create 1 million jobs in the Birmingham area. I was taken with the lateral thinking displayed by Rory Sutherland, who suggested that instead of boosting speed, it would be much more cost-effective to make rail journeys more pleasant and productive, and came up with a number of ways this could be done. That in turn took me back to walking through a Concorde on display at Duxford and being shocked at the dismal level of passenger comfort - you would definitely want as short a journey time as possible. As to the plebs, I guess if they had ever been asked, they would have been pleased with pleasant carriages on existing trains that ran on time, and on new transport infrastructure, a good road or two to the south-west, and a rail line to that part of the world which didn't get swept into the sea occasionally.
Well MPs are paid to act as credulous fools, whether or not they believe what they say. A significant part of the problem is that high-speed trains and planes hold an allure for both politicians and the media that isn't matched by anything else. Even now countries get judged by how many miles of high speed lines they have. In the US they have none but everyone ignores the amazing long distance freight network that keeps mid-America going.
I think that some, even many, politicians privately recognise the enormous importance of just keeping things running efficiently but they are simply unable to articulate and present that consistently in the face of the demand of the media (and their advisers) for things that are novel and flashy. Things won't improve until those at the top give the message that being competent but boring is more important than being flashy and achieving nothing. However, that in turn require true accountability for failure or success. The absence of genuine accountability is the primary issue of modern politics and administration.
Thank you again! I remember former Times editor Simon Jenkins remarking when a coalition minister committed some motoring offence, on how the media go into a frenzy, yet appalling mistakes in public office, adversely affecting millions of lives, go unremarked and unpunished.
"HS2 is largely separate from the West Coast Main Line, running close to the Chiltern Line out of Marylebone Station which does not serve passengers travelling from Birmingham to London"
Chiltern has a good service to Birmingham, which is popular, not just from intermediate stations, but also to and from London, even though it's significantly slower than the WCML. This is because it's much cheaper and less crowded, but also more reliable because Chiltern don't have to share most of the route with other passenger and freight trains.
Sorry, I was trying to save space and was not clear enough. I know the Chiltern Line well. Over many decades and under different names, members of my family and I used it frequently from Leamington, Banbury and (later) Gerrards Cross. However, almost no-one ever used it as a fast route from London to Birmingham, so it doesn't affect capacity constraints on the WCML. If HS2 had really been designed to increase capacity on the WCML it would have taken a route via Milton Keynes.
Using the Chiltern Line ensured that there was no sensible stopping point before Birmingham because none of the intermediate towns generate enough traffic. From a different perspective by taking the Chiltern Line route the planners avoided what would have been strong pressure to stop at Milton Keynes which would have greatly reduced time savings on the Birmingham segment. In transport/traffic terms it is a stupid design whose purpose was to look good for a few inter-city segments. The justification of increasing capacity on the WCML was entirely invented when the project ran into opposition.
There was a costed plan to upgrade (electrify and straighten a few bits) of the Chiltern line. Of course, if the real problem was capacity constraints on the WCML, HS2 was completely the wrong solution - a new 4-track mainline (perhaps utilising some of the existing trackbed of the Great Central closed by Beeching) with 150mph speeds and serving more intermediate stations such as MK and Coventry, could have been built for a small fraction of the cost.
Absolutely correct but for nearly 10 years the argument has been that the real justification for HS2 is lack capacity on the WCML - read many articles by Christian Wolmar who generally reflects the views of the railway lobby. As I alluded to in my piece, the railway industry was completely scarred by what they thought was the appalling experience of the last WCML upgrade. They wanted to avoid anything similar again. In addition, any suggestion that the earlier upgrade wasn't adequate was hardly likely to be well-received.
The other element is the collusion between politicians and high speed train enthusiasts for whom a 150 mph rail line wasn't "ambitious" enough. Large projects are often based on a coming together of fantasies formulated by different lobby groups, none of whom admit to being parents of failure but all of which want to claim to be the progenitors of grand visions.
An excellent analysis of why grand projects fail. If I may suggest some other factors in play in the HS2 case:
- when the purpose of a project changes radically - in this case from speed between city centres to extra capacity, surely that suggests the desire to build something trumps delivery of real benefits. In the private sector such a large malinvestment would face contact with reality far earlier in its lifecycle. Also if an investment is so important, why are we prepared to wait wait 20 years from initiation to go live? This itself suggests it's not a vital investment after all.
- the political class are obsessed with large projects, believing instinctively they drive growth as night follows day. In its very early days the likes of Adonis and Mandelson were flag wavers; Osborne was reportedly impressed by the Japanese high speed rail system and felt we had to have one too, and that somehow it would spur on the Northern Powerhouse idea (itself wishful thinking). Osborne has also said that it would be wrong to cancel HS2 because of the egg on face - any project once started must be seen through - the sunk cost fallacy made flesh.
- I understand the delivery vehicle HS2 Ltd was specifically set up to insulate construction from political interference from DoT etc. This suggests a troubling faith in unaccountable bodies to deliver. Sure enough there have been many reports of over-engineering the solution, free from awkward question being asked.
Surely HS2 will always require heavy subsidy (especially if its end points don't work for the real journeys passengers want to make). Any attempt to make it pay its way will result in extortionate ticket prices. I always felt it highly likely it will never go live. That remains a real possibility whatever our political class may say.
I agree with most of your points and had included a couple (indirectly) in my notes for the follow-up article. The idea that large projects drive growth is a recurring theme, perhaps because it is so self-serving - along the lines that only politicians can push forward large projects. And, of course, they can never admit failure.
Reliance on arms-length bodies is a technocratic delusion, which particularly stupid in such cases. You cannot get remove politics from projects that do a lot of harm (as well, perhaps, as good). Technocrats have no alternative but to throw money to mitigate, whereas (competent) politicians could come up with alternative forms of compensation.
You are correct in noting that the delays indicate that there is no pressing need for the project. However, my fear is that the sunk cost fallacy is so large that no one has the courage to abandon HS2. It is collective political madness at this point but I suspect that even Reform will make the judgement that they have better things to spend their political capital on than this. Remember the response to Sunak when he faced incontestable reality and cancelled the northern extension. What Reform might do is refuse to provide subsidies and force the ticket prices to be very high. They can point to the folly as the taxation of non-metropolitan England to benefit metropolitan elites.
On the point of mega projects, with thoughts about reconstructing our electricity system in my head, I wonder if you might have any comments on this hypothesis.
Looking back on a couple of horrific oil developments I was peripherally involved in, one of which destroyed a co-venturer, the other being saved only by the oil crash that allowed pressure to be put on contractors to reduce cost, projects don’t “fail” because they’re technically unfeasible, but because they are insufficiently scoped. A wish to shorten time frames by parallelising scoping with design and design with construction; an overwhelming urge by senior management to bootstrap projects, to get their babies off the ground, by lowballing cost estimates; and poor EPC strategy that leaves too much risk unaddressed leave projects doomed to break time and cost budgets almost before they start.
The core problem is EPC, where information asymmetry kicks in. Developers run major projects infrequently; contractors all the time. Contractors can see when project design is under specified and know the risks better that developers. But they aren’t motivated — and not compelled — to share those risks. Contract variations, after all, are where the pot of gold lies. In consequence, when work starts contingency is rapidly exhausted and the project swiftly goes over budget; a budget that was likely optimistic in the first place.
All this raises a question: in a choice between offshore wind, in fact any wind, and nuclear, all wind projects — as with oil and gas development — are unique; at best they are variations on a theme. In contrast, a fleet of identical reactors should be just that, identical projects with minimal differences (ground works, access, export routes). The core of the project, the power plant itself, is a certified and brutally well specified deliverable. We should be starting with something very well scoped, not something that continuously creeps or morphs. Add in an EPC framework that requires, at tendering stage, contractors to disclose the risks they are NOT accepting, and cost control should be easier. By having contractors disclose unacceptable construction risk early in the process, developers can choose to accept the contract variations that will flow if it arises, or take steps to investigate further and mitigate.
I’m not pretending that building new nuclear isn’t a huge challenge, or minimising the problems of rebuilding a supply chain, but it does strike me that the prospects for lowering nuclear “overnight” build costs over time are better than for wind.
Any thoughts?
I agree with most of what you say about scoping and the asymmetry between developers and EPC contractors. I recall conversations with construction firms comparing low bid federal contracts with commercial contracts, especially when experienced developers were involved. The whole game in federal contracts was to identify items or sections of work that the government's agents had failed either to scope properly or had got wrong. This was how they could make their money. However, this wasn't possible in repeated contracts with experienced developers. It is all relatively simple theory of one-shot or repeated games.
Your points about offshore wind vs nuclear are partly right, though large wind developers attempt to standardise their designs as much as possible. Now this is close to a bilateral monopoly - there are very few developers with sufficient money and experience, but equally few suppliers of turbines and electrical equipment. That is why prices are settling at realistic levels which are much higher than in the past.
With respect to nuclear the problem, especially in the US and Europe, has been the failure to standardise designs and the components. That is why the Koreans (and Chinese) are the only suppliers capable of building cost-effective large reactors. That is the logic behind SMRs - i.e. you minimise EPC risks - but the nuclear industry remains utterly awful at standardisation. For example, the RR so-called SMR is nothing of the kind, just a scaled down large reactor. Genuine SMRs should be built in the 10s every year and almost no-one is willing to commit to that kind of project flow. Also, nuclear safety regulators are in practice anti-nuclear agencies, because they reflect the hostility of many politicians to nuclear power.
In terms of overall benefits to society at large and individuals in particular it would be much more effective and efficient to improve existing railway service which is literally falling apart.
The Xeno analogy is brilliant but unfortunately approximate. Should we use it literally then for every year that passes the timeline of the project would be extended by 6 months. I can only image a future PM, say in 2150, waiting an eternity, scissors in hand in front of the inaugural ribbon, for the last millisecond to pass by.
I agree with your first point but it is mundane, hard work and generates very few political kudos. In economic terms no-one should consider a large project until all possible smaller improvements have been implemented. Consider how much passengers numbers at Heathrow have grown since a 3rd runway was said to be critical to maintain its role. All too often flagship projects are a "one bound and he was free" escape from daily reality.
Of course you are right about the Xeno's arrow analogy - I was trying to add some arcane levity to the discussion of a topic that, it will be clear, I find very annoying.
Gordon, your first point aligns with a recent article I read on Iberian wildfires, the author of which pointed out that the biggest positive impact in avoiding losses of property and life would be the slow and painstaking work of clearing areas to deprive fires of fuel, but for a politician, nothing beats being pictured in front of a gleaming new fire truck or helicopter.
True but there are other considerations. If we put aside pure stupidity such as California rules that prohibit clearance on environmental grounds, the obvious thing to do is to make insurance conditional on a demonstration that vegetation has been cleared twice a year. It is not just long-lasting scrub but heavy vegetation growth following heavy rainfall that have played a crucial role in both the US and Europe.
Shoving loads of HS2 into tunnels was baked on as far back as 2015 yet its trotted out as an excuse why its so overspent and behind schedule. This project has screwed up due to a catastrophic contracting strategy with no incentive to drive the project forward. Its judged more on its elf & safety and environmental credentials. Yes both are important but they exerting far too much influence over getting the line built.
Correct about tunnels. In fact, their cost can be partially offset by lower land compensation. I had a flat in the Barbican directly on top of CrossRail - tough luck if you want compensation for noise and vibration.
I am not convinced that it is all regulatory compliance. My view is that the cost estimates up and beyond parliamentary approval were pure fantasies based on bureaucratic wishful thinking endorsed by consultants inclined to make the most optimistic assumptions. What all this tells us is the need for a different system of accountability by which everyone - politicians, advisers, bureaucrats, consultants, etc - contributing to such a fiasco is effectively bankrupted. Pretty harsh, but pour encourager less autres. It is the endless avoidance of accountability and payment for failure that creates the public outrage, which fuels the inclination to reject all large public projects.
About putting transmission lines underground. I should say I'm a fully paid up nimby. I live in Shropshire and a few years ago we were faced with the prospect of a high voltage transmission line running along our valley right in font of our house. This was intended to carry electricity from windfarms in mid Wales via a large substation near Newtown to eventually join the grid near Shrewsbury. As you can image there was a big campaign against it. I won't go into all the details but one thread of the argument was why couldn't National Grid take it underground. We were told by NG that 1. it would be far too expensive to install and 2. it would vastly increase maintenance costs for the line. The underground option was flatly turned down. The total length of the line was about 15 miles I think. In the end NG grid selected a route which avoided our valley altogether and went across further north. In fact they did have a short section of about a mile underground. This was to avoid spoiling the attractive village of Meifod.
Power lines are put underground in every city and most towns in the world. In Hong Kong almost all power lines are underground, even in what they regards as rural areas. NG's position is pure dogma based on the costs they believe Ofgem will allow them to recover. If lines are put underground they are allowed to recover both capital and operating costs. What is really going on is a stupid regulatory game in which they are forced to pretend that they won't or can't put lines underground until they are told that it is underground or no line at all. Also charging properly for underground lines would make many wind farms uneconomic, so wind farm operators lobby against it.
The trouble is that the rules and procedures are a load of nonsense that are promoted by the likes of NG and Ofgem for different but equally spurious reasons. They are rarely challenged by people who know as much as they do. Incidentally, it is not true that underground lines have higher operating costs - provided they are built properly. In Hong Kong the electricity companies told me that underground operating lives and costs were lower than overground ones for modern gas-insulated cables and that was nearly 20 years ago.
There's an interesting book called "Why most things fail" by Paul Ormerod which is worth a read. Many excellent examples of government failure in there.
Also here is a clip from the Planning and Infrastructure Bill committee where Sam Richards from the group "Britain Remade" gives evidence and describes some terrible and embarrassing examples of planning failure including HS2 and Hinckley C power station and so on. It would be funny in other circumstances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Plxrsryxw
Thank you. I taught Paul Ormerod at Cambridge long ago and know his book. There is another set of papers and books by Bent Flyvbjerg and colleagues which examine why many large projects fail. The Dunkelman thesis isn't new but it fits into the Britain Remade line of argument that changing planning rules will solve the problem. It won't because technocrats won't acknowledge why large projects generate such vehement opposition.
I was a little encouraged by the fiasco of the new Berlin Airport. Ten years late and double the original budget. It meant we were not alone.
Oh no, we are certainly not alone. Read about the Stuttgart railway station or the Big Dig in Boston. Of course, the recommendation is more and better preparation - but then many projects wouldn't go ahead which doesn't make politicians happy.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thebluearmchair/p/oh-mr-porter-what-shall-i-do-i-wanted?r=5kmhkr&utm_medium=ios
Thank you for the link. I agree with what you say about the sunk cost delusion for HS2 but the political costs of acknowledging that a huge amount of money has been wasted will prevent any change of course. However, I don't agree with your remedies for building infrastructure quicker and more cheaply. All these would do is to ensure that more bad projects will be designed and then implemently slowly & expensively.
HS2 was clearly a rotten idea from the very outset. I looked at the economic analysis back in the early 2010s and remember giving lectures which described it as a poorly conceived vanity project that would never justify its original costs. Of course it has been made worse by the failure to sort out the problem of getting the lines into Euston & Birmingham but that is symptomatic of a political and bureaucratic system incapable of doing anything competently.
Finally, we should be clear that these fiascos are not unique to the UK. Arguably the California High Speed Rail link is even worse and the money wasted will probably be larger.
Thank you Gordon for an excellent article, but what a tale of woe! I have a ragbag of comments, the first being that if HS2 had ever been about economic growth in the north, construction would have started at that end. The most remarkable claim for HS2 I read was a midlands MP asserting it would create 1 million jobs in the Birmingham area. I was taken with the lateral thinking displayed by Rory Sutherland, who suggested that instead of boosting speed, it would be much more cost-effective to make rail journeys more pleasant and productive, and came up with a number of ways this could be done. That in turn took me back to walking through a Concorde on display at Duxford and being shocked at the dismal level of passenger comfort - you would definitely want as short a journey time as possible. As to the plebs, I guess if they had ever been asked, they would have been pleased with pleasant carriages on existing trains that ran on time, and on new transport infrastructure, a good road or two to the south-west, and a rail line to that part of the world which didn't get swept into the sea occasionally.
Well MPs are paid to act as credulous fools, whether or not they believe what they say. A significant part of the problem is that high-speed trains and planes hold an allure for both politicians and the media that isn't matched by anything else. Even now countries get judged by how many miles of high speed lines they have. In the US they have none but everyone ignores the amazing long distance freight network that keeps mid-America going.
I think that some, even many, politicians privately recognise the enormous importance of just keeping things running efficiently but they are simply unable to articulate and present that consistently in the face of the demand of the media (and their advisers) for things that are novel and flashy. Things won't improve until those at the top give the message that being competent but boring is more important than being flashy and achieving nothing. However, that in turn require true accountability for failure or success. The absence of genuine accountability is the primary issue of modern politics and administration.
Thank you again! I remember former Times editor Simon Jenkins remarking when a coalition minister committed some motoring offence, on how the media go into a frenzy, yet appalling mistakes in public office, adversely affecting millions of lives, go unremarked and unpunished.