•    Major construction milestone reached as first HS2 tunnel into Birmingham excavated  
•    More than 30,000 jobs supported along the 140-mile route, providing highly skilled opportunities and driving up living standards, part of the government's Plan for Change.  
•    HS2 will connect the UK’s biggest cities with faster and more reliable train journeys 

Passengers are closer to benefitting from faster, more comfortable between London and Birmingham as the first HS2 rail tunnel in Birmingham is completed.  

Today [Friday 9 May], HS2’s tunnelling machine finalised the first excavation of the 3.5-mile Bromford tunnel, which connects Warwickshire and Birmingham.  

Alongside slashing journey times and providing more seats for passengers, this major milestone will free up track space on the heavily congested West Coast Mail Line, and allow more services to connect people to job opportunities that will put more money in their pockets, as outlined in the Plan for Change.        

Lord Hendy, Rail Minister, who attended the breakthrough event, said:  
“Today marks a major milestone for the country’s biggest infrastructure project, opening up the HS2 gateway to Birmingham.
“This is the longest railway tunnel ever built in the West Midlands. It’s truly a monumental feat of engineering and represents huge progress. 
“Creating jobs, providing opportunities, and supporting economic growth are at the heart of this project. 10,000 people and 400 businesses across the West Midlands alone are delivering this project as we speak, bringing £10bn to the region’s economy over the next decade. 
“There is a lot of hard work still to do to get this project back on track. But today people in the West Midlands can start to see this Government’s Plan for Change connecting people with jobs, housing, and opportunity.” 

The Bromford Tunnel, which will soon become the longest railway tunnel in the West Midlands, starts in the Warwickshire village of Water Orton and ends in the Birmingham suburb of Washwood Heath.  

The Washwood Heath site has spurred the development of a 24-hectare brownfield site, which will unlock land for commercial use and logistics space, creating opportunities for employers and the community, and more than 1,000 new jobs for local people. 

The Tunnel Boring Machine which created the Bromford Tunnel was named Mary Ann, by the local community, after the Warwickshire-born writer better known by her pen name George Eliot.  

Mary Ann excavated around one million tonnes of spoil during the tunnel drive. In line with HS2’s sustainability policy, the excavated earth is being reused to support construction of the nearby Delta Junction, a complex network of 13 viaducts that will enable high speed trains to travel between London, Interchange Station in Solihull and Birmingham Curzon Street Station. The excavated material is transported via dedicated haul roads to minimise the number of construction vehicles on public roads. 

The Department for Transport is currently overseeing a fundamental reset of the HS2 programme to make sure the railway can be delivered safely and for the lowest reasonable cost.