HS2 is the wildest white elephant in British history. Please put it out of its misery | Simon Jenkins

HS2 is projected to cost up to 102.7bn after a 15-month review. Train services may not start until 2039. The transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, criticized the original design as massively over-specced and the resulting increases in time and costs as obscene. She said the project made her angry and presented a defense of the project’s conduct. Promises were made about clearing issues, turning to a new page, and installing new management to bring the project under control. The project is characterized as a total dud and a superfluous railway that has run wild. The criticism includes claims that the route, speed, and termini were wrong from the start and that failure was likely due to contractual cost escalation and consultant-driven complexity.

"After a 15-month review by the new chief executive, the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, has revealed that HS2 will now cost up to 102.7bn and trains may not start until 2039. Alexander called the original design a massively over-specced folly and called the increase in time and costs obscene. Indeed it possibly ranks as the wildest white elephant in British history."

"This week, Alexander, the ninth transport secretary since HS2 was proposed, admitted the project made her angry. As she dusted off her department's latest defence of its appalling conduct of this fiasco, she tried to feign surprise. She has been in office 18 months. Don't tell us she did not know. We thus got the usual promise of a clear-out, of a new page turned and a talented new management team bringing the project at last under control."

"The HS2 project remains what it always was, a total dud. It is a superfluous railway that has simply run wild. There are plenty of fast trains to Birmingham and other ways of running more. This was always a vanity project of the David Cameron coalition. As the former Downing Street in-house HS2 expert, Andrew Gilligan, admitted to the Sunday Times 18 months ago, HS2 was certain to fail from the start, with the wrong route, wrong speed and wrong termini."

"The trouble is the usual one, that projects on this scale, once begun, offer huge scope for contractual cost escalation. They arm themselves with consultants and accountants and soon outgun and outsmart those who must find them money. They exploit"

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