HS2 “will be afflicted by the same delays and inefficiencies as the rest of the rail network unless its design is radically altered”, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph.

[High speed rail service HS2 will suffer the railways’ usual delays, expert warns, Henry Bodkin, Daily Telegraph, 30 June 2016] Professor Rod Smith, the former Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Transport, said linking the new high speed lines to the existing network would be a “disaster” that would “ruin reliability and punctuality”. He said H2S could be delivered for just over half the predicted price of around £55 billion if it was built and operated as a fully separate network, as is the case with high speed rail in Japan. […] “The existing plan really is a dog’s dinner that’s built with considerably more expense than it needs and will produce less favourable results,” he said. “It’s just crazy to continue with the plan. It should be reviewed urgently.”

Prof Smith appears to be a chum of HS2 Ltd’s Professor Andrew McNaughton – who also seems to favour a closed Shinkansen-type system – but who was reported as saying that HS2 high speed trains ‘would never be late’.

It would be crazy to be continue with HS2 as an open system. But it would also be crazy to build HS2 as a closed system. The rational course of action is, ‘Do not build HS2’.

[Wikipedia] The six phases of a big project is a cynical take on the outcome of large projects, with an unspoken assumption about their seemingly inherent tendency towards chaos. The list is reprinted in slightly different variations in any number of project management books as a cautionary tale. One such example gives the phases as: Enthusiasm, Disillusionment, Panic and hysteria, Hunt for the guilty, Punishment of the innocent, and Reward for the uninvolved.