A government-commissioned report says the alternative to a new HS2 high speed rail link would see 14 years of weekend route closures and longer journeys.
The report, by Network Rail and Atkins, says upgrading existing rail lines would severely affect the East Coast, Midland and West Coast mainlines.
It says that would double travel times between Leeds and London.
The study will inform the government's updated business case for HS2, which will be presented on Tuesday.
It will be the fifth official presentation given by the government on HS2.
HS2 is designed to shorten journey times between London and the Midlands and north of England, but has attracted stiff opposition from some quarters because of doubts that the cost - last estimated at £42.6bn - will bring sufficient benefit.
Those living along its route also fear the disruption it will bring to their areas.
A previous report in September, by the consultants KPMG, said the project would be markedly beneficial to the UK economy, and boost overall growth by 0.8%.
However, that report failed to convince critics and KPMG itself included a caveat which said it had made the "implicit assumption" that transport connectivity was the only supply-side constraint to business location, and that it had ignored other possible constraints to growth, like labour or land shortages.
I've managed to get hold of this small taster of what's in tomorrow's new official business case for HS2.
I understand it will say that beefing up the UK's three main north-south train lines, instead of building a new one, will cost about half as much, but will cause years of weekend travel chaos.
And it will only add between a third and a half of the extra seats provided by HS2.
There's a lot riding on the government's business case tomorrow. It'll be the fifth one since the scheme began.
The last four have been ridiculed by critics for using flimsy assumptions and 12-year-old data.
The report says that, in total, improving the existing lines, a plan seen by some as a better use of public money, would require 2,770 weekend closures involving 144,000 hours of work.
The BBC's transport correspondent, Richard Westcott, says he has been told it would cost £20bn to upgrade the UK's three existing north-south train lines.
Modelling a typical weekend, the report argues that the journey time from London to Leeds could be increased by two hours and 10 minutes to more than four and a half hours while the work is going on.
A journey between Huntingdon and Peterborough would be doubled to an hour.
Atkins has also concluded that residential and commercial demolitions would be required.
A government source said: "We need to do something because our railways are nearly full, but the alternative to HS2 is a patch and mend job that would cause 14 years of gridlock, hellish journeys and rail replacement buses.
"The three main routes to the north would be crippled and the economy would be damaged."
On Sunday, the Treasury Minister, Danny Alexander, told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme that he was "very confident" the HS2 high-speed rail project would be delivered within its £42.6bn budget.
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