Leaders | The ur-snafu

How not to do a megaproject 

The lessons of HS2 for Britain and beyond

A worker walks past the HS2 construction site at Euston Station, London
Photograph: Vuk Valcic/Zuma/Eyevine

THE LIST of the world’s biggest infrastructure snafus is long. The Berlin-Brandenburg Airport missed so many opening dates (seven) that Germans joked it required a new tense, the impossible future. A high-speed train-line between Los Angeles and San Francisco was first proposed in 2008; so far $9.8bn has been spent and not a single track laid. But Britain has an entry that will prove hard to beat.

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This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “How not to do a megaproject ”

From the February 17th 2024 edition

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