New HS2 chairman Sir David Higgins pledges to look at costs and delivery speed

SIR David Higgins, who has taken up his role as the new chairman of HS2, has said he will look into the possibility of delivering the high-speed rail project more cheaply.

He also said he wants HS2 to be build more quickly than scheduled so that economic benefits will be felt in the Midlands and North as soon as possible.

The current estimate of the cost of the project – which will link Birmingham and London via 225mph trains from 2026 and add links to Leeds and Manchester six years later – is £50bn including rolling stock.

Critics of the scheme have suggested this is unrealistic and have suggested the project costs could spiral and end up as high as £80bn.

But Higgins, the former Network Rail chief executive, said he had been asked to report back to transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin by early to mid-March on savings based on the £50bn figure.

However, he told the BBC his first priority is to examine the length of the project’s building programme.

He said: “The first thing I want to look at is the overall deliverability. Time – can we make it quicker? Can we get benefits to the north earlier? And then how can we deliver it most effectively? Hopefully that will deliver cost savings.”

Higgins said HS2 is a “huge step forward”, and would see 18 new “train paths” on the west coast of the UK, with trains that could take up to 1,000 people at a time.

He said: “There’s no other way of making this step-change to the transport capacity of the country.”

Higgins was responsible for ensuring the Olympic Park was built on time and on budget, ready for the 2012 Games, as chief executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority.

He was appointed as chairman of HS2 last September.