Latest DfT report into project out this afternoon but will not give update on cost and schedule range which is now due by July
The latest six month review of HS2 is expected to announce plans to save money by reducing the speeds at which trains will run at on the line.
The Department for Transport will publish its latest report into the scheme this afternoon with one of the key recommendations being a reduction in the top speed trains on the 140 mile line will run at.
Trains are supposed to be running at 224mph on the route between London and Birmingham but cutting this back is being seen as a way to save the project billions of pounds.
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander will update Parliament later today on the progress of the country’s biggest infrastructure project.
But she is not expected to spell out many details of the reset being carried out by the scheme’s chief executive Mark Wild, specifically the cost and schedule range.
This had been expected in this afternoon’s report but is now due to be announced before the summer recess on 16 July.
Wild’s reset is expected to definitively say when the project will be completed and how much it will cost.
Wild, who took over in 2024, is understood to have been talking to firms for several months about renegotiating the value of construction contracts on the job in a bid to bring costs down.
Services on the section between Birmingham and Old Oak Common in west London are due to start between 2029 and 2033. But Wild has already said the earlier date is unlikely while plans to build the line into its original start and finish point at London Euston are not expected to be finished until the 2040s. The work at Euston, due to be carried out by a joint venture of Mace and Dragados, was mothballed three years ago.
HS2 declined to comment.
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