HS2 contractors say they plan to press ahead with digging tunnels to Euston, despite the Government having effectively sent the high-speed link to central London crashing into the buffers.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last month ordered the cost of the Euston leg to be reduced by £6.5bn – meaning it will only be built if it can be part-financed with private investment.The order to cut costs – alongside the axing of the Birmingham to Manchester section – was despite years of preparatory works having turned Euston into a vast construction site.But during a HS2 media event on Wednesday, designed to showcase the vast amount of work continuing on site at Old Oak Common station in north-west London, tunnelling contractor Skanska Costain made clear its intention to start digging towards Euston in 2026.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 This enormous construction site behind me is where the HS2 station at Old Oak Common is being built.
00:06 Now you might think that HS2 has been scrapped or has hit the bumpers after what the Prime
00:11 Minister said at the Tory party conference. Now I'm here to find out what's happening and whether
00:17 this project will ever get back on track and will ever make it all the way to Euston.
00:22 It's been a difficult time in the last few weeks but I think what's important to remember is we're
00:26 still working here on the biggest construction scheme in Western Europe. The first stage of the
00:30 railway from here, Old Oak Common, to Birmingham Curzon, fully underway. You've seen today, you can
00:36 see over my shoulder, 1,900 people working on the Old Oak Common scheme, 1,200 of them on the sites
00:43 today, delivering for that first stage which we will open between 2029 and 2033. What we've focused
00:50 on here is the customer experience at the end of this. So there are two things to reference within
00:56 that. One is we're looking far more for the airport style feel, the airport terminal type feel, than we
01:02 are a pure historic railway station type feel. And the second thing is eight years away no one's really
01:09 clear in terms of what technology will be available. If you look eight years back from here we do things
01:13 very very differently today in terms of buying tickets, how we operate in terms of stations.
01:18 So what we have is a range of options that we're working around those technological solutions to
01:23 make the customer experience the centre of everything we're doing on the first day of opening.
01:29 We're absolutely committed to taking HS2 to Euston at the end of the day. This is purely a temporary
01:35 service and we have capacity for it to be a temporary service. Plenty of people working on
01:40 funding solutions, design solutions etc but we are, like I said, we are absolutely focused on
01:46 delivering Old Oak Common as a temporary service and absolutely focused on that long-term aspiration
01:51 of going to Euston. There are a very limited number of things to do at Old Oak Common to change it
01:56 from being a pure through station to a temporary service. The best example probably is train
02:01 crew accommodation and catering facilities, catering preparation. So those are the sorts of
02:07 things that we're working on and we have capacity within the station complex to provide those on a
02:12 temporary basis. Behind me here we're completing the civil engineering of what we call the east
02:17 end of the box. We're tunnelling into it. In the next few weeks we'll have access to the tunnel
02:22 which will take machinery, people in and out of the box below ground. During next year, 2024,
02:28 we'll be dropping two huge tunnel boring machines into the ground ready to tunnel to Euston when
02:34 there is a funding solution to do that. So what we'll have is we'll have tunnel boring machines
02:38 ready to go and as I said earlier, a tremendous number of people working on funding solutions
02:43 as we speak. This will be the ninth railway I'll be part of opening by the time we finish.
02:48 Every single one of those in my 33-year career has opened in incremental parts, whether it's
02:54 Dockers Light Railway, the Jubilee Line extension, HS1, the Channel Tunnel railing or Crossrail,
02:59 even London Overground. Building blocks which creates a bigger railway eventually. HS2 is no
03:05 different from around there. Nobody chose to live next door to a HS2 worksite. So we're very
03:10 cognisant and sensitive to how we deal and how we interact with everybody affected by our works.
03:16 Second part of that actually is whilst people talk about Old Oak Common or talk about HS2
03:22 terminating at Old Oak Common in the middle of, I'm going to say nowhere, the University of
03:27 Commerce, the truth of the matter is we're creating a brand new eight platform station
03:33 specifically to handle that interchange. So what's happening behind me is a creation of 14
03:38 platforms, the biggest thing we've built since the Victorian age in the UK, six high-speed platforms
03:44 below ground, eight platforms above ground, four of which will be dedicated to the Elizabeth Line.
03:50 So we have simple journeys from here onwards to Bond Street, the city and Canary Wharf,
03:56 simple interchanges. So whilst today Old Oak Common is relatively difficult in a way to be
04:02 able to access through public transport, that will change drastically once we open.
04:07 I'm in an area known as the Western Box. It's about 10 or 15 metres underground and it's like
04:14 a massive concrete rectangle with steel all over the floor. They're about halfway through
04:20 construction. Behind me is the way they're heading into New School and the aim is that
04:25 when this is finished there will be six platforms here for high-speed 2 trains. Elsewhere in this
04:31 season will be the Elizabeth Line and the Great Western trains on a different level.
04:37 So the tunnelling that's required from here out to West Roystead to enable the service from Old
04:43 Oak Common to Birmingham to start to move towards the actual rail systems phase, that section of
04:49 tunnelling will be completed by the end of next year. So we'll be looking at 2024, at the end of
04:55 that year, that tunnel will be formed. The tunnel that goes from here to Euston will commence in
05:00 2026 and then will take around about two years to complete so we're expecting that to be concluded
05:05 in 2028. What the Prime Minister said was that actually we're committed to go to Euston but we
05:11 need to find a funding mechanism that enables some of that funding to be supported by the private
05:15 sector. I think that's a reasonable challenge with regard to infrastructure. It does provide
05:21 a great deal of benefit for the community in those areas, the businesses and the new housing.
05:28 So really I think what we're looking at is how that funding is going to take place. That's
05:32 something that's going on in central government. From our point of view as the contractors
05:35 delivering these tunnels we continue exactly as we are. So we're planning currently to start those
05:41 tunnels in 2026 and actually meet with our works down in Euston at that point in time.
05:45 All of this being reviewed at the moment from a funding point of view, we're also looking at how
05:49 we can look at the scheme and make it as economic as possible and that obviously has its biggest
05:54 impact in Euston. So that's being reviewed in Euston. We have to look at ourselves and make
05:58 sure that we've got the right solution here as well. But from a point of view of actually where
06:02 we're currently at, that recommitment was made, the funding needs to be resolved,
06:07 but the plan currently stands that we start this in 2026.
06:10 Thank you.
06:11 [end]