UK: Secretary of State for Transport Heidi Alexander has told high speed line project promoter HS2 Ltd to look at lowering the maximum speed of future train services from 360 to 320 or 300 km/h, with the aim of reducing costs and delays to the overall programme. This will form part of an ongoing ‘reset’ of the London to the West Midlands high speed line project which is being undertaken by HS2 Ltd CEO Mark Wild, who is to report back to the Secretary of State this summer. In a sixth-monthly written update to parliament about HS2 which was published on March 23, Alexander said ‘I am determined to explore every opportunity to remove the over-specification and complexity from this project to bring down costs and delivery timelines. This will ensure the updated cost and schedule estimates are robust, rather than rush the process and risk publishing figures that we do not trust.’ A more detailed update on the progress of the HS2 reset is to follow ‘shortly’, with new cost and schedule estimates to be published once they have been ‘fully assured and approved’. According to the BBC, Wild’s announcement has been put back until after the local elections to be held in May. Not so high speed Show Fullscreen Alexander said Wild had now been asked to ‘assess how much money and time could be saved by adopting a specification for HS2 that is more in line with the high speed railways successfully delivered by the rest of the world. This could involve relying on proven technology and reducing the top operating speed of the railway in line with HS1 and other European counterparts.’ HS2 was originally designed for a maximum operating speed of 360 km/h, although the working assumption since the early stages of the programme have been that trains would not need to exceed around 320 km/h to keep to time. In addition, the large proportion of tunnelled and sub-surface alignment on the sections of HS2 now being built mean that operating speeds are already likely to be lower than was initi
