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Outside In | UK high-speed rail fiasco: the West has much to learn from China in building infrastructure
- The failures of Britain’s HS2 stand in stark contrast to the successful launch of Indonesia’s belt and road railway
- For all the West complains about Chinese subsidies, it has much to learn from China in building future-critical infrastructure
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As the United Kingdom’s embarrassed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak takes a hatchet to the long-controversial HS2 high-speed rail project intended to link London to the northwest, Professor Tony Travers at the London School of Economics reflected the mood of many when he called it a “tragic case study in how not to plan and deliver public infrastructure”.
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The embarrassment is all the more acute when just days ago, Indonesia inaugurated its first high-speed rail line, cutting the 142km journey from Jakarta to Bandung from three hours to 40 minutes. The project, built in partnership with China under the Belt and Road Initiative, cost US$7.3 billion. President Joko Widodo named the railway “Whoosh”, after the acronym in Indonesian for “timesaving, optimal operation, reliable system”.
Like so many long-gestation projects worldwide, it was controversial, late – by four years – and over budget – by US$3 billion. But the British government’s HS2 shambles is in a class of its own, a victim of “budget overruns, time delays, contract fiascos and management failings”, as the Financial Times put it.
By the time Sunak had announced the paring back of the HS2 to a 176km line to Birmingham, the cost had soared and was heading past US$120 billion. To save face, he is promising to take the more than US$40 billion he hopes to save and spend it on transport projects across northern England – including US$10 billion on pothole repairs. Yes, repairing Britain’s potholes will cost more than the entire Jakarta-Bandung high-speed line.
The HS2 line, conceived 14 years ago and still at least six years away from operation, is estimated to be almost six times more expensive, per kilometre of track, than the Jakarta-Bandung line (which cost around US$51 million per km), and nine times more expensive than the global high-speed average.
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It raises massive questions about the competence of the British government. (The Hinkley Point C nuclear power project, for instance, is at least two years delayed and also massively over budget.) But more broadly, it raises questions about both the capacity and the ambition of Western economies to compete with China in building the critical infrastructure of the future.
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