THE TIMES DIARY
HS2’s measurements are a feet of engineering
The Times
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Narrated by Patrick Kidd
Rishi Sunak’s decision to shunt the northern part of the HS2 railway into a long siding means that at last Andrew Percy can go back to thinking in imperial. For the past year the Tory MP for Brigg and Goole, who chairs the HS2 select committee, has fought a running battle with officials who insist on giving him distances in kilometres. When Percy first made a plea for “proper measurements”, saying that talk of a 16km tunnel was meaningless to most people, Tim Smart, managing director of phase two of HS2, told Percy that he just had to “times by 1.64”, though I think he meant “divide by 1.61”. No wonder costs got out of control. Helpfully, Martin Vickers, another Conservative MP on the
