140 miles. £102 billion. A £216m bat shed. And a cost per mile that makes even Alpine tunnelling look cheap. Here’s everything you need to know.
Cost Per Mile — How Does HS2 Stack Up?
Spain built 2,500 miles of high-speed rail for what HS2 costs to build 140.
Spain’s entire national high-speed network — connecting Madrid to Barcelona, Seville, Valencia, Bilbao and beyond — cost roughly £65 billion in total. HS2 Phase 1 alone is now expected to cost up to £102 billion, for a single 140-mile route between London and Birmingham.
The Bat Cave — £216 Million for a Shed
The Scale of It
Up from an original estimate of £33bn in 2010. The project has more than tripled in cost before a single passenger has travelled on it.
France’s Tours–Bordeaux TGV cost around $40m per mile. HS2 comes in at $416m. Same continent, same era, radically different outcomes.
Germany’s Wendlingen–Ulm line runs through actual Alpine mountains and still cost less than a third of HS2 per mile.
Over £33 billion has been spent on HS2 so far. Not a single mile of high-speed track has opened to passengers.
Spain’s entire national high-speed network. Multiple cities. Cross-country routes. Built for roughly what HS2 costs for London to Birmingham.
Risk manager Stephen Cresswell was awarded £319,000 after being fired for warning that HS2 was systematically underestimating its own costs.
A Timeline of Cost Overruns
50,000 Pages of Planning Documents
Standard A4 office paper weighs 5 grams per sheet. 50,000 sheets × 5g = 250kg for a single printed copy — heavier than two average adults. To read it within the 60-day consultation window, the public would have needed to get through over 800 pages every single day — the equivalent of reading War and Peace 35 times.
The House of Commons had to change its own rules to allow HS2 to submit the document electronically. Physical copies still had to be deposited at council offices, libraries and affected community locations along the entire route. Multiply 250kg by the number of deposit points and you get into tonnes — which is where the “weight of a small car” figure in the press comes from.
Why Does It Cost 10× More Than France?
| Factor | UK / HS2 | France / Spain |
|---|---|---|
| Planning process | Decade-long consultations, judicial reviews, thousands of objections each requiring a formal response | Streamlined national infrastructure planning — route decided at government level, faster approvals |
| Land acquisition | Compulsory purchase requires market value + substantial compensation + legal costs on both sides | Faster compulsory purchase, lower compensation norms, less litigation |
| Environmental rules | Every protected species triggers mitigation. The bat shed is the most famous example. | Environmental rules exist but are applied more pragmatically against whole-network benefits |
| Contract structure | Large fixed-price contracts — when costs rose, renegotiations were expensive and slow | More flexible contracting, competition keeps prices lower |
| Project management | Multiple leadership changes. Whistleblower fired for flagging cost risks. Costs systematically understated. | More stable governance with professional rail delivery organisations |
The Man Who Said It Would Cost More — And Got Fired
Stephen Cresswell, Risk Management Practitioner
Stephen Cresswell worked for HS2 and repeatedly raised concerns that the project was systematically understating the true costs. Rather than acting on his warnings, HS2 Ltd chose not to renew his contract. He took them to tribunal.
He was awarded £319,000 in compensation in June 2025. He was right about the costs. The project subsequently confirmed figures far beyond what management had publicly stated.
The Questions Worth Asking
“If Spain built 2,500 miles of high-speed rail for what we’re spending on 140 miles — where exactly is the extra money going?”
“If UK government projects routinely cost 5–10× more than equivalent projects elsewhere, what does that tell us about investing in UK infrastructure?”
“The bat shed has been cited in Parliament 10+ times to argue for planning reform. Is that the right lesson, or is the real problem management?”
“Over £33 billion already spent, nothing yet running. At what point does continuing cost more than stopping — and who decides?”
This Isn’t Just About Trains
HS2 matters to investors because it’s a live case study in how the UK handles large capital projects — and the answer, right now, is not well. The same planning system, the same land acquisition laws, the same contracting norms affect everything from housing to data centres to energy infrastructure.
That doesn’t mean HS2 should have been stopped — a functioning high-speed rail connection between London and the Midlands would have genuine economic value. The problem was never the destination. It was how we chose to get there.