Tuesday 5 September 2017

How HS2 Limited fooled parliament on M18 saving

How HS2 Limited fooled parliament on costs

  1. Purported £1billion saving Meadowhall V M18

The Truth:

The actual figure was £985m , however that was on the Consulted Meadowhall route v M18



in fact in 2015, HS2 Limited had refined the Meadowhall route saving £212m by scrapping tunnels at Hoyland and contrary to claims in 2016, used this route as the comparator rather than the Consulted Route.

This meant the actual saving

Refined Meadowhall Route V M18 was £773m


Cost assumptions

  1. Midland Mainline Electrification costs £300m
  2. Loop Line Upgrade £400m
  3. South Yorkshire Parkway £200m

So the real cost of the M18 route is plus £127m more than Meadowhall on capital costs


Hidden Mitigation & Engineering Costs

As local campaigners have pointed out additional mitigation costs on M18 would involve compensation, tunnelling and mining subsidence aleviation adding hundreds of millions to this, - Crofton has asked for an 8km deep tunnel to mirror the Chilterns Tunnel which would cost £1.6bn

So in reality the £ 1 Billion capital saving was actually £127m of additional cost