HS2 Bickenhill tramway costed at £872 million

The meretricious extension of the West Midlands Metro tramway from Birmingham city centre to the Airport and the HS2 ‘Interchange’ station site at Middle Bickenhill is now costed at £872 million, according to the West Midlands Combined Authority. This sum is comprised of £137 million for the section from Corporation Street to Adderley Street, and £735 million for the rest.

No buses operate over the proposed tram route to the airport, because of its indirectness and low demand, and fast trains from New Street to ‘Birmingham International’ (the airport station) take just 10 minutes. The National Express West Midlands X1 (former 900) buses are timed to reach the airport from central Birmingham in half an hour. Demand for travel from places such as Chelmsley Wood to the airport is low, as shown by the X12 bus running at 20-minute intervals, even at ‘peak’ time.

The airport tramway is part of the WMCA ‘HS2 Growth Strategy’, which has an estimated cost of £5.139 billion. This is additional to the cost of the “£55.7 billion” HS2 ‘Core Programme’, as are the HS2 expenditures of Network Rail and local authorities such as Cheshire East, Stoke, Sheffield, Greater Manchester, and Leeds.