Derailed: The Story of HS2: Trailer

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

When you're looking for high performance, look no further than the DT12V, the transmission that powers profitability.

The Detroit DT12 Vocational Series transmission is built for everything the job demands.

Features like off-road mode, power launch, and hill-start aid make it easier than ever to reach peak performance in extreme terrains.

With the DT12V powering your truck, the toughest challenge doesn't stand a chance.

When you demand performance, visit demanddetroit.com.

When disaster takes control of your life, ServePro helps you take it back.

ServePro shows up faster to any size disaster to make things right, starting with a single call, that's all.

Because the number one name in cleanup and restoration has the scale and the expertise to get you back up to speed quicker than you ever thought possible.

So whenever never thought this would happen actually happens, ServePro's got you.

Call 1-800-SURFPRO or visit SurfPro.com today to help make it like it never even happened.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

A good railway is a satisfying thing.

Powerful engines whizzing along in smart, straight lines, rigorous, predictable timetables, the iron law of the quiet carriage.

Trains promise a vision of order in our chaotic universe.

And 15 years ago, some of the brightest minds in British railway engineering sat down to draw a new train line across the country, High Speed 2.

Designers hoped it could rescue the overburdened Victorian train network and in the process join up our divided nation, break through economic stagnation and chart a path into a brighter future.

The new line would run straight and fast through a thicket of regulation and into conflict with individual rights up against environmentalists and landowners, farmers, homeowners and proud local councils.

It would carve through the wildness of our countryside, through forests, over rivers and under hills, obliterating the homes of badgers and endangered bats.

You know, other countries have got high-speed rail networks.

We need to have them too.

That bold idea has collided with reality.

They're being asked to sacrifice for a business case that doesn't stack up and become, quite frankly, an almighty mess.

With growing concerns over the project's spiralling costs.

Well done, Geoffrey.

You've just cost us another couple of hundred million this afternoon.

We're in a hole.

We're in a mess.

Everybody along the line was against it.

The absurd spectacle.

I mean, that's an absolute disgrace.

It makes me so angry when I wander around it because it's just, you know, it is just a hole in the ground at the moment.

We are going to get this done.

15 years later, HS2 is a cautionary tale of waste, mayhem and delay.

So I've set out to answer the real question.

What went wrong?

It's taken me down an extraordinary rabbit hole of thousands of pages of documents, leaked files and endless footage of committees and debates.

And it's allowed me to meet those involved from the original architects of the plan.

We must reimagine what railways can do for this country and build that.

To build a new one that's fit for the 21st century.

Could you imagine for a railwayman anything more exciting?

To the ordinary people who set out to challenge the British state.

So I'd gone from being this middle-class, middle-aged, menopausal hairdresser housewife to suddenly being this person that was now in a very leaking tent, thinking, I know this is exactly the place in the whole wide world I need to be right now.

All the way to the top of HS2.

You do realize that HS2 is a poison chalice.

There was a really long pause and I think I said, really, Prime Minister?

And even to Downing Street itself.

Great infrastructure projects depend on politicians having the will to keep going because these are investments in the the future.

What I've found isn't the story you might think you know.

The tale of HS2 drives a straight line into the heart of Britain and exposes our national dysfunction.

That is a living monument to the way Britain has been run, where one half of the country gets one thing and the other half of the country gets another.

I'm Kate Lambell, and coming soon to understand from BBC Radio 4 is derailed: the story of HS2.

Listen first on BBC Sounds.

Ready to buy a car, a home, or just want to take control of your money?

Your FICO score matters and 90% of top lenders use it to make decisions.

Check your FICO score for free today without hurting your credit score.

Visit myfico.com slash free or download the MyFICO app today.

My FICO gives you the score lenders use most, plus credit reports and real-time alerts to help keep you on top of your credit.

Visit myfico.com slash free and take the mystery out of your FICO score.

Sups!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be honest.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs.

Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.