All the latest news and views.
The High Speed Rail Group welcome today’s announcement that the Government has issued the formal “Notice to Proceed” (NTP) to allow the construction of HS2 to commence. Following the news, an army of women and men will now set about the task of building Britain’s new north-south railway line with Read more…
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) have announced they are amending their 2020 work programme in response to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak. The CCC will refocus its annual Progress Report to Parliament in June to include advice on supporting a resilient recovery following the pandemic, alongside the statutory assessment of Read more…
How the UK tackles its transport emissions is critical to its ability to show leadership when co-hosting November’s COP26 climate conference. Domestically, surface transport now emits more than any other sector while the UK’s aviation industry has the third highest emissions of any country in the world. With our submission Read more…
No major project has ever been subjected to as much scrutiny as HS2, and this is right and proper given the public money being spent. But having had leading experts analyse HS2 for the last six months, the Government has rightly concluded that going ahead with the project is essential for their vision of ‘levelling up’ Britain and delivering a transformation of regional economies across the country.
With the decision taken, the industry’s focus must now be on delivering every penny of that public investment as efficiently as possible and wringing every benefit from the project. Now the debate on whether to build HS2 has been resolved, we can focus on (more…)
‘Get HS2 Done’ by our High Speed Rail Group Director Jim Steer, published by the Yorkshire Post, sets out why proceeding with just the northern part of the HS2 project is not an option. The article points out the need to understand a key aspect of HS2: that it is Read more…
Lord Berkley’s intervention is once again way off the mark. Possible alternatives to building HS2 have been tested and rejected countless times. Passengers would not thank any of us for the years of disruption and weekend closures these projects would cause, and at the end of the painful process, we Read more…
Following the leaking of the Oakervee Review into HS2 to the Financial Times newspaper, we welcome its conclusions and published a letter to the Prime Minister urging him to “get HS2 done” and make an immediate decision to proceed with the project in line with the findings of the government-commissioned Read more…
Our members – engineering and professional services consultancy WSP, working with SME Expedition Engineering, have continued to undertake a series of value engineering reviews for Old Oak Common, following the station designs which were revealed earlier this year. Taking advantage of the results from wind tunnel tests and a snow load Read more…
2019 was a critical one for HS2. There has been increased scrutiny of the project, culminating in the Government’s announcement of the Oakervee Review at the end of August, which dominated our end of year activity. Here we set out a year view of the variety of activities we have Read more…
Reports such as the one released by the Wildlife Trust not only misrepresent the substantial environmental case for HS2, but figures contained within it make misleading claims as to what is actually happening on the ground. For example, the report asserts that 693 Classified Local Wildlife Sites are affected. In Read more…