High Speed 2

High Speed Two (HS2) is the company responsible for developing and promoting the UK’s new high-speed rail network. It is funded by grant-in-aid from the Government

HS2 will link eight of the UK’s major cities and serve millions of people. Travelling between the cities of the Midlands and the North will become much easier.

HS2 will free up extra capacity for local passenger and freight services on the existing network. So, as well as efficiently carrying millions of people, the new railway will benefit those who never use it.

Economic value

HS2 will begin rebalancing the UK economy long before the trains start running. It’s already beginning to boost economic development in the Midlands and the North, and to ease pressure on London by creating opportunities elsewhere.

HS2 will create around 25,000 jobs and fuel economic benefits worth over £103 billion to the UK.

High Speed Two (HS2) is the company responsible for developing and promoting the UK’s new high-speed rail network. It is funded by grant-in-aid from the Government

HS2 will link eight of the UK’s major cities and serve millions of people. Travelling between the cities of the Midlands and the North will become much easier.

HS2 will free up extra capacity for local passenger and freight services on the existing network. So, as well as efficiently carrying millions of people, the new railway will benefit those who never use it.

Economic value

HS2 will begin rebalancing the UK economy long before the trains start running. It’s already beginning to boost economic development in the Midlands and the North, and to ease pressure on London by creating opportunities elsewhere.

HS2 will create around 25,000 jobs and fuel economic benefits worth over £103 billion to the UK.

Stations

On 13th December 2017 it was reported that some of the UK’s biggest contractors had formed joint ventures to bid for the opportunity to deliver London’s two planned HS2 stations. The combined deal would be worth a total of £3 billion.

One station, Old Oak Common in west London, will be brand new and is believed to cost £1.3 billion to build. The other, Euston station, will be redeveloped at a cost of £1.7 billion. Both projects are targeted for completion by 2026.

Route

HS2 will connect London to Edinburgh and Glasgow, running from Euston through the new station at Old Oak Common and then onto Birmingham. From there it will split off and run to the East Midlands Hub in one direction and to Manchester Piccadilly via Crewe in the other direction.

That first stretch to Birmingham is Phase One which is expected to be completed by 2026. The second is Phase Two. It will be delivered in two phases: Phase 2a extends from the West Midlands to Crewe and is due to open in 2027. Phase 2b continues the line to Manchester and also joins the existing railway just south of Wigan. Meanwhile Phase 2b’s eastern leg runs from Leeds via HS2’s East Midlands Hub to Birmingham. Phase 2b services will begin in 2033.

The remainder of the journey north will use the East Coast Mainline to connect the East Midlands Hub to Newcastle.

Cluster effect

Part of the goal of HS2 is to create different clusters in areas of the UK outside of London. One example of this is in the digital sector.

The digital sector is a significant source of growth and employment in the UK, employing over 1.6 million people and with turnover that grew by over twenty per cent between 2011 and 2015. The North of England is home to digital clusters that employed over a quarter of a million people in 2014. Manchester is the largest digital cluster outside of London by number of employees. Leeds has expertise in health technology, Big Data and FinTech7. Newcastle is home to thousands of software, electronic gaming and creative businesses.The Sheffield City Region is home to over five thousand technology companies.

Liverpool has strengths in the areas of gaming and connected devices.

HS2 aims to help cities such as Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and Birmingham to strengthen their offers as destinations for conferences and business visitors, providing networking opportunities for local businesses.

Another cluster that HS2 aims to cultivate is in the financial services sector. Cities and regions in the Midlands and the North find it harder to secure the same degree of scale and success as their counterparts in the Southeast. In the North the population is spread across a number of cities and the density of employment in urban areas is lower than in the rest of England.

This smaller scale of urban areas is compounded by poorer levels of transport connectivity compared to the Southeast. For example, a 52-mile rail journey from Birmingham to Nottingham takes one hour and nine minutes. A comparable rail journey between Southampton Central and Reading of fifty miles is around twenty minutes faster.

HS2 is intended to increase the number of skilled workers that businesses based in the UK’s cities can access – both directly on HS2 services, and by releasing capacity on the existing rail network for local commuter services. For example, the combination of changes to conventional rail services alongside new HS2 services has the potential to more than double evening peak seats compared to today’s services from Manchester Piccadilly towards Stoke-on-Trent and Crewe.

Journey times

The big selling point of HS2 is of course the speed at which passengers will be able to make their way around the country, with journey times reduced.

The biggest impact will be felt on the Leeds to Birmingham Interchange route. That journey currently takes almost two and a half hours, HS2 will make the trip in 46 minutes.

Passengers travelling from Leeds and Preston to London will see their travel times cut by 50 minutes to around one hour and 20 minutes for both routes.