Britain is building one of the world’s most expensive railways

I'm afraid it is not as simple as that, and there is a lot of misinformation about HS2 that should be addressed.

Firstly, the 'bat shed' (officially SWBMS) is expected to cost £100m. This is neither expensive nor wasteful for a structure nearly 1 kilometre long and "designed to accommodate up to 36 high-speed trains passing through the structure every hour of operation for 120 years, plus frequent conventional rail traffic in addition" as reported by Architects' Journal[1].

One should also refer to Natural England's own press release on the subject[2]. The first paragraph is worth quoting verbatim: "Natural England has not required HS2 Ltd to build the reported structure, or any other structure, nor advised on the design or costs. The need for the structure was identified by HS2 Ltd more than 10 years ago, following extensive surveying of bat populations by its own ecologists in the vicinity of Sheephouse Wood." It is absurd to think that Natural England would want to build a kilometre-long structure beside a forest if they didn't think it was of net benefit to the environment, yet that is the spin that most newspapers are putting on it.

Additionally, Louise Haigh is, as far as I can tell, a genuinely pro-rail minister. She is for instance the only cabinet member to have filed any significant MP's expenses for rail travel. However, it should also be remembered that the current Labour government's publicity strategy has consistently been to depict all projects started by the previous Tory governments as wasteful or corrupt; thus, we should take any of her communications with a pinch of salt.

I am very excited about HS2, which is being built to standard European loading gauges and will allow for high-capacity double-decker train services. Yet this does not have to be at the expense of local ecology, and these cuttings and tunnels are necessary to support both goals.

[1]: https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/transport-secretary...

[2]: https://naturalengland.blog.gov.uk/2024/11/08/natural-englan...

> "Natural England has not required HS2 Ltd to build the reported structure, or any other structure, nor advised on the design or costs."

yes, they didn't strictly require them to do it, but if they hadn't done it (or something very similar) they wouldn't have removed their objection to the planning application

standard quango double speak

> Yet this does not have to be at the expense of local ecology

the opportunity cost of this bat tunnel is massive

you could do a lot of good with £100 million of taxpayers money, vs. some giant concrete 1km long structure

additionally, it will be years after construction before the trains start running, and bats will inevitably end up roosting in the structure...

I don't understand how you can claim £100m is "not expensive", that's around £3 per tax-payer in the country, for one small aspect of the whole project.

Complaints about "waste" of government overspend went from [10s of thousands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cones_Hotline) in the early 1990s to [millions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Dome) in the late 90s to billions today.

Wages surely haven't gone up 1000x in that time, £100m is still a large cost, even if it's a drop in the ocean compared to the overall HS2 overspend.

> I don't understand how you can claim £100m is "not expensive", that's around £3 per tax-payer in the country,

I don't really think that's a useful statistic in isolation. Surely any investment is all about the eventual economic benefit? £3 per person to receive £1 is a bad deal. £3 per person to receive £5 is a good deal.

Sure, but It's a 1km concrete structure, what economic benefit do you think it'll deliver in isolation?

Overall HS2 might deliver billions of economic improvement, although current cost benefit analyses suggest it won't deliver much benefit compared to it's runaway costs. Most the ones I can find are already outdated, talking about improvements which will no longer happen or costs which have already been surpassed, and the cost/benefit ratios of those were already shaky.

HS2 is using a different gauge!?

The cuttings and tunnels mean lots of freight is on the roads right now, and half the project has been sacrificed because it was too expensive to continue in this way politically. In the mean time, we’ll be going well into the 2040s where we won’t be able to place more trains in and around Manchester. The plan to build Northern Powerhouse Rail is basically not possible without continuing on and building much of the now missing HS2 2a leg. Not to mention that the 2b leg isn’t going to go ahead.

Natural England are a statutory consultee for planning applications, so if they oppose the scheme there is a good chance it doesn’t go ahead. It’s crazy that a government can decide to build something only for other arms of the state to block it with a narrow focus only on one aspect.

I think the point of that article is more abstract than just the bat shed.

The issue is that, in this instance, government-in-the-form-of-HS2-Ltd has to negotiate an agreement between government-in-the-form-of-endangered-species-protection; government-in-the-form-of-local-planning-officers and government-in-the-form-of-the-treasury.

And the bat shed is just one example of something that happened over and over along the route.

In a less enlightened country, once the glorious leader had drawn a line on a map and ordered it to be built, no further approval would be required.

Loading gauge, not track gauge.

> Firstly, the 'bat shed' (officially SWBMS) is expected to cost £100m. This is neither expensive nor wasteful for a structure nearly 1 kilometre long and "designed to accommodate up to 36 high-speed trains passing through the structure every hour of operation for 120 years, plus frequent conventional rail traffic in addition" as reported by Architects' Journal[1].

It might be good value for a 1km tunnel (or not, I don't know) but I think this argument misses the wood for the trees.

The main point is more "should we be spending £100m on a bat tunnel?"

i.e. What else could £100m of public money buy us, and would it be better than a 1km bat shed?

> i.e. What else could £100m of public money buy us, and would it be better than a 1km bat shed?

Can you think of anything?

It doesn't seem extraordinarily expensive given the cost of building anything these days, I'd question should the cost of building new things be so expensive, rather than should money be spent on this kind of project, because of all things to spend a large unit of money on, this does seem like a useful one.

> It doesn't seem extraordinarily expensive

but you don't need to build it at all

you could fund a lot of bat reserves in perpetuity with even 10% of that money

instead of a 1km long concrete box

How about the NHS?

You keep making the assumption that the building has to be built at all, and that 200 million isn't unreasonable. It does not have to be and its for _bats_.

The economic benefits of the bat tunnel are zero. It would be a shame if this rare bat lost some habitat but it is not an economic measure.

>It’s crazy that a government can decide to build something only for other arms of the state to block it with a narrow focus only on one aspect.

Why is that crazy? It seems like a fairly standard way of operating in democratic nations, so it must have some benefit. Separation of incentives, pooling of expert knowledge, ability to apply rules evenly to state and private development?

> Can you think of anything?

Yes, lots! £100m could give a hospital a substantial renovation for example.

> you could fund a lot of bat reserves in perpetuity with even 10% of that money

Ya but funding bat reserves has nothing to do with a long concrete box, unless it also literally is a bat reserve. The money for the bats can come from the bat fund, and the concrete box should be able to come from the concrete box fund, if there's not enough for both, figure out which one is more impactful for the people paying the taxes and persuade them to let you save the bats, or let them do it through personal acts of charity.

I hadn't caught the part of the article (thanks alcohol ads) that did describe literally building a 1KM long "bat shed" with no evidence whatsoever that was necessary, (although I'd argue these bureaucracys often tend to get lost in spending the same amount on studies deciding whether something is worth it) The proposition seemed so unrelated and absurd that I thought it had to be hypothetical, and for this I'm deeply sorry lol this is so emblematic of Britain

Ya I was off the mark, didn't read the bit about it actually being a bat thing, seems absurd.