Heathrow ‘must wait’ for HS2 rail link, report suggests
HS2 high-speed rail line will be built between London and the North
- Published in News.
A government-commissioned report has suggested that Heathrow airport should not be connected to the HS2 high-speed rail line to be built between London and the North during the initial stages of construction.
The airport should only be connected after the line has been built to Manchester and Leeds, Lord Mawhinney’s report found.
Mawhinney said that diverting the high-speed route via Heathrow would cost between £2-4 billion and is “not likely to represent value for money to the taxpayer or the train operator”.
Mawhinney said: “As the network expands there will be greater demand for access to Heathrow from cities in the north and Scotland, which might make a direct high-speed rail connection to Heathrow more viable and economically attractive.
“The evidence suggests that this would only be in prospect after the high-speed network had been extended at least to Manchester and Leeds.”
High Speed 2, a company commissioned by the government to produce detailed London-Birmingham high-speed rail plans as well as options for extending it further north, estimated the cost of the network would be around £30 billion.
Mawhinney said he hoped links could be extended to Scotland but warned it could take between “two and three decades” to complete.
The project, which could take 30 years to complete, was expected to cost about £1 billion a year, he added.