Ten years ago, I walked the route of HS2, the 140-mile railway proposed too run from London to Birmingham, to discover what lay in its path. Nothing had actually been constructed of this, supposedly the first phase of a high-speed line going north. The only trace was the furtive ecological consultants mapping newts and bats and the train’s looming presence in the minds of those who lived along the route. For many, it was a Westminster vanity project, symbolising a country run against the interests of the many to line the pockets of the few.People whose homes were under threat of demolition were petitioning parliament, campaigning for more tunnels or hoping the project would collapse before their farms, paddocks and ancient woodlands were wiped out.

The line, we were told a decade ago, would be completed by 2026. Like many of the early claims about the longest railway to be built in Britain since the Victorian era, that fact no longer stands. the fast train is running – very – late. The official finish date of 2033 was recently revised upwards. “The best guess is that it will begin with a ‘4’ when you can catch a train,” one well-informed observer told me. There’s similar uncertainty about its cost, but one thing is sure: it is indeed catastrophically over budget.When complete,HS2 will almost certainly be the most expensive railway in the world. Nearly 20 years ago, HS1, the line from the Channel tunnel to St Pancras, was completed on time and on budget for £51m per mile (£87m in today’s prices). It was criticised for being twice as expensive as a high-speed route constructed in France.HS2 may cost almost £1bn per mile.

A map of the HS2 route

In 2020, construction formally began at last.The line is being built by HS2 Ltd,a government-owned company funded entirely by taxpayers’ money. A decade after my first walk,I rThe only people I encountered on the first morning of my walk were HS2 contractors in orange PPE: sentries at access gates or strimming this or that.Employees are instructed not to talk to passersby. I passed a posse of yellow diggers, here to excavate a basin where flood water can collect.Several drivers were asleep in their cabs. it was midday.

An hour’s walk north-west, South Harefield village looked tired and dusty, its roads busy with tippers and other construction traffic. It was a relief to reach the green towpath of the Grand Union canal and Colne valley regional park, a broad mosaic of woodland, lakes and farmland wich is the first meaningful green space west of London. Five years ago, campaigners built treehouses to try to stop HS2 from destroying a swath of the park. Back then, I visited their jolly, idealistic camp, but they were eventually evicted and pursued through the courts. Trees were cleared and construction began.

When I reached the pewter swoosh of the viaduct – 2.1 miles of concrete columns stretching high above the lakes of the Colne valley – I was surprised by its grace and slenderness. A paradox of HS2 is that its twin-track width is not much wider than a single-carriageway A-road but its construction gobbles up a much broader swath of land. The viaduct,the longest rail bridge built in Britain as the 1887 Tay Bridge in Scotland,had only been finished the previous week and its pale concrete was untarnished by graffiti. (The only graffito I saw that day was on a noticeboard beside a footpath. “Fuck the HS2,” it said. “The” is significant: for many,HS2 is the Man,the system,the establishment.)

Colne valley viaduct near Harefield. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

This viaduct looked as fine in reality as it did in the artistic impressions of a futuristic railway that sold the original vision. Conceived in the final months of the last labour government, HS2 was designed to sweep commuters between London and Birmingham in 49 minutes and on to Leeds (one leg of a Y-shape) or Manchester (the other leg) at 250mph – faster than any high-speed train in Europe, where the quickest operating speeds are just under 200mph. This vision, first proposed by Labour transport minister Andrew Adonis in 2010, was enthusiastically embraced by the incoming Conservative PM David Cameron. But later, as the bill became longer, the route got shorter, despite a government-commissioned review concluding it only made financial sense if built in full. The Leeds leg was axed in 2021; the Birmingham-manchester leg scrapped in 2023. High speeds – and HS2’s potential track speed has been revised down to about 225mph

The long shadow of HS2: Walking a fractured landscape

“It brings out all the wrong emotions,” said Statham, voicing a sentiment echoed by many living under the shadow of HS2. “You see a man with HS2 on his back in the Co-op and you feel like hitting them.” The reality of the high-speed rail project is a constant presence: thousands of lorries on local roads; floodlights illuminating once-dark rural skies; endless roadworks, traffic lights, diversions.

It is difficult, living with such upheaval. Clank-clank-clank. Jugga-jugga-jugga. Beep-beep-beep. The sounds of construction permeate the landscape,heard walking through the Chiltern beechwoods and across the Vale of Aylesbury,where the chalk turns to mudstone.

[Image of Joggers on Waddesdon Greenway. Photograph: jill Mead/The Guardian]

Trudging in the rain, repeatedly diverted where footpaths were closed as of this epic, linear building site, was no fun until I found the Waddesdon Greenway, a four-mile cycle and footpath constructed in 2018 from Aylesbury Vale Parkway railway station to Waddesdon Manor. Even on a wet Wednesday there were joggers, coffee-clutching walkers, and a rider on an e-scooter.

At the outset of HS2, a cycling and walking path running alongside the whole of the route was suggested. John Grimshaw, a civil engineer, produced a report for the Department for Transport in 2013 identifying cycling routes from London to Manchester and Leeds. A six-meter wide, “very high quality” works access road has been built alongside much of HS2. Grimshaw knows this firsthand – he cycled along it, chased by HS2 security. “It’s the best road in Bucks. If it had been built just 10 metres to either side, it could’ve been turned into an end-to-end cycle path.” Rather,the road,estimated to have cost £200m-300m,will be dug up once the line is built. “Completely wasted” millions, according to Grimshaw.

day four: Bernwood Forest to Brackley, 19 miles

Ten years ago I met Christopher Prideaux, who explained how HS2 would take 40 hectares of his land, divide his farms and run past his Grade II* Elizabethan manor house. Christopher died two years ago, still fighting HS2. His son David now lives in their ancestral home in a rural corner of buckinghamshire that was once the royal hunting forest of Bernwood. The ancient hedges here were once as big as a train, but they did not protect David.

HS2: Why is Britain’s High-Speed Railway So Expensive?

The Chiltern hills are scarred with construction. A vast swathe of woodland near Sheephouse, Buckinghamshire, has been felled to make way for HS2, Britain’s controversial high-speed railway. But it’s not simply the destruction that’s striking, it’s the lengths to which engineers are going to mitigate the damage. Here, a £126m “bat tunnel” is being built – a concrete structure designed to allow rare barbastelle bats to continue foraging across the line.

Sheephouse Wood is a nationally important site, because its ancient trees are home to colonies of rare barbastelle bats. The high-speed trains will block foraging routes, which is why the railway is being covered as it passes Sheephouse. This bat tunnel was cited by Keir Starmer as an example of how environmental protections can hamper growth. On the day I visited, curved concrete sections of the tunnel were being lowered into place by six cranes. The construction had left the edge of the wood a mess.

Mark Wild, HS2’s chief executive, has defended the tunnel, telling MPs that it was “not the case that the engineers have gone away with the fairies. These are engineering responses in some of the most sensitive bits of the country.” They couldn’t be avoided, he said, because of high-speed’s requirement for arrow-straight alignment.yet the tunnel has even frustrated environmental campaigners. “They cut down bat roosts to build the bat tunnel,” Thomson-Smith said. “It’s maddening the way politicians talk as if it’s environmentalists that are causing money to be wasted.”

Supporters as well as detractors mostly agree on the causes of HS2’s spiralling cost. Wild himself believes the build began too early: HS2 should have spent much longer surveying and planning and then there would have been less muddle, revision and delay during the build. The initial “costs plus” contracts for construction were disastrous: a budget was agreed for each section, but rather than the standard penalties or agreements to split costs of unanticipated complexities, the government guaranteed it would pay almost all unforeseen expenditure. This didn’t simply remove the incentive for contractors to reduce costs – it incentivised overspending.

HS2 is now undergoing a “reset” under Wild, who did a similar troubleshoot on London’s Crossrail before its prosperous opening as the Elizabeth line. It is cutting more than 300 permanent corporate roles to become “a simplified, more cost-effective company” and is “relentlessly” focusing on “improving productivity, without compromising on safety”. A spokesperson said it was also “aiming to secure a better commercial deal with suppliers” that will reduce costs and increase productivity.

many argue HS2 is proving so expensive because of its original aspiration to be faster than other European high-speed railways. This led to its very straight alignment, requiring expensive engineering – tunnels, cuttings and earth mounds – where it met villages or ancient woodlands.

The human costs of HS2 are also mounting up. As well as homes being demolished (including several hundred flats in Camden, north London), hundreds of farms have been divided by the line. Farm tracks have been closed for months or even years while replacement bridges are built. Near Sheephouse, I bumped into a cattle farmer of 54 years who said the HS2 construction work had displaced badgers living further down the valley. New badgers had moved on to his land and introduced TB to his cows. He lost a prize bull and a long bloodline of good cattle.

The Shadow of HS2: One Falconer’s Decade of Disruption

clank-clank-clank. Jugga-jugga-jugga. Beep-beep-beep. Ten years ago, north of Cubbington, I stumbled across Bob Edwards’ magnificent birds of prey in an aviary behind a cottage on busy Leicester Lane. He was a falconer with a smooth,deep voice like a radio DJ,and he feared the railway would prevent him from taking clients and his raptors on to surrounding farmland to hunt rabbits. He was now 80 and living, literally, in the shadow of HS2. A vast crane loomed over his cottage. Behind the cottage was a huge bank of earth for the rerouted Leicester Lane.

Edwards was one of hundreds of HS2-affected residents to petition parliament, standing before a select committee of MPs in 2016 to explain how his livelihood would be affected. The committee specifically asked HS2 to solve his problems. “In principle,I won my case,” he said. MPs told HS2 to “pay this man for what he is claiming and do it swiftly”, Edwards remembers. “There is no time limit on ‘swiftly’. They just did precisely nothing.”

As directed by the MPs,HS2 bought his home in 2019,and he now rents it from them. He stayed, initially, because he was still flying his birds. But HS2 taking over surrounding farmland has meant the rabbits disappeared and he could no longer practice falconry. His birds have died of old age, but he hasn’t been able to move house as his wife is seriously ill. “It would be a catastrophe to move her. It would kill her,” he said. HS2 offered him £16,000 for “loss of business” over 15 years, which Edwards said is far below his genuine losses. They haven’t managed to agree a final compensation figure. Why has HS2 been so slow to resolve his claim? Is the railway waiting for him to die? “It would appear so,” he said.

According to HS2, business owners must show evidence of loss of earnings. “We continue to seek a resolution to settle this claim,” said an HS2 spokesperson. “To support Mr Edwards,we suggested that he seek the support of an independent advocate to assist him in dealing with the process. An advocate was appointed in April 2025, the cost of which is being borne by HS2.”

The HS2 Paradox: Building for No Growth

Across England,particularly around Birmingham,a startling conversion is taking place. Construction crews and dumpers are turning greenbelt land into expanses of brown and gray. A time-traveller from any previous decade would witness this colossal, frenzied construction and assume the 2020s heralded an enormous economic boom. However, the reality is far more complex. We would have to explain that this is a different stage of capitalism: all this striving and mess for… virtually no economic growth.

I was forced into my car to return to London, and the scale of the HS2 project is truly breathtaking. It’s not just the railway itself, but the associated infrastructure – the roads, the compounds, the temporary access routes – that carve up the landscape. The sheer volume of earth being moved is remarkable.Yet, this massive undertaking is occurring during a period of economic stagnation, a time when productivity growth has flatlined and real wages are falling.

The Illusion of Growth

Traditionally, large infrastructure projects like HS2 were seen as engines of economic growth. They created jobs, stimulated demand for materials, and improved connectivity, boosting productivity. However, the current economic context is different. Much of the demand is driven by financial speculation and asset price inflation, rather than genuine investment in productive capacity. The benefits of HS2, if any, are likely to be unevenly distributed, accruing primarily to landowners and construction companies, while the costs are borne by taxpayers and the environment.

A Symptom of Deeper Problems

HS2 isn’t an isolated case. It’s a symptom of a broader malaise afflicting advanced economies: a tendency towards over-investment in unproductive activities and under-investment in things that actually matter,like education,healthcare,and green technologies. The focus on mega-projects frequently enough serves as a substitute for genuine economic strategy, a way to create the illusion of dynamism while failing to address the underlying structural problems.

Key Takeaways

• HS2 is a massive infrastructure project being built during a period of economic stagnation.
• The conventional link between infrastructure spending and economic growth is weakening.
• HS2 may primarily benefit landowners and construction companies, with limited benefits for the wider economy.
• The project highlights a broader tendency towards over-investment in unproductive activities.