Latest Rail News

21.02.13

HS2 Ltd awards first contracts for phase 2

The first contracts for phase 2 of HS2 have been awarded, covering engineering and environmental services for the line north of Birmingham.

Under the professional services framework, the companies will provide engineering designs and prepare sound demonstrations for consultation on the second phase, which is due to start later this year.

HS2 Ltd has awarded a £3.1m engineering contract to AECOM Ltd on the route from Birmingham to Manchester, and a £3.2m contract to Mott MacDonald for the Birmingham to Leeds route, awarded to March 2015.

Arup has been awarded a £1.1m environmental contract to March 2015.

Alison Munro, chief executive of HS2 Ltd, said: “HS2 will transform the UK through bringing our major cities closer together, helping to promote economic growth, driving regional regeneration, creating thousands of jobs and providing a long-term solution to the capacity crunch facing our existing rail network.

“We have already created 1,200 jobs through our Professional Services Framework for Phase One of the scheme and Phase Two will create thousands more.

“We have achieved a tremendous amount so far and we now have an excellent team in place to take Phase Two forward to the next stages including the consultation, which has been brought forward to start later this year.”

Tell us what you think – have your say below, or email us directly at [email protected]

Image c. OpenStreetMap contributors. OpenStreetMap data is available under the Open Database License. Map tiles are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license (CC-BY-SA 2.0).

Comments

Mikeb   21/02/2013 at 20:22

Let us hope that HS2 Ltd, in conjunction with Network Rail, will look at the possibility of upgrading the "classic" line north of Crewe, in order for Liverpool to London services to be even faster. The recently announced timing of 1 hr. 36 mins is pretty poor when compared with the proposed Preston to London time of 1 hr. 24 mins. Improvements north of Crewe would also be of great benefit to those services which will call at Warrington. Finally, does anybody in the rail industry ever read the comments on this site or are contributors merely wasting their time?

DFB   26/02/2013 at 14:10

HS2 is an expensive mistake, the money (yet to be found) would be better spent on upgrading current rail services rather than ravaging the countryside with this white elephant. I'm pretty certain that this line will become the land equivelant of Concorde, a tool for the very rich to get to the office in record time. Also spare a thought for people such as myself who live within 200metres of the proposed line, and one of the deepest cuttings in Yorkshire, and are already blighted by this development, I'm only 56 but chances are I'll be dead before the work is completed and now have no chance of fulfilling my dream to move to the coast with my pension. Thanks Cameron and HS2 ! Build your train set if you must but please treat us right. Fat chance. Oh and Mikeb, yes we are wasting our time, nobody is looking or listening DFB

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