Paul Salveson asks “but when?”
The Government announced seemingly ambitious plans for the North’s railways back in January. The announcement was for a three-phase approach starting with some incremental improvements mainly in West and South Yorkshire, and including a new high-speed line from Liverpool to Manchester via Manchester Airport (dubbed ‘Northern Powerhouse Rail’). Improved links across the Pennines will be provided, including a new through station at Bradford, although located on the edge of the city centre. A ceiling of £45 billion was put on the project. The response from the North’s city-region mayors (Rotheram, Burnham, Brabin in particular) was very positive. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said, “For too long the North has been held back by underinvestment and years of dither and delay – but that ends now”.
Err, well, maybe, maybe not. The main problem with the plans, if they can be called that, is that they are so long-term as to be meaningless. The proposal for a new high-speed line from Birmingham to Manchester, strongly promoted by Burnham and the former West Midlands Mayor Andy Street, received warm words – “a long-term objective” – but nothing firm.
The announcement has all the appearance of a political sop to the North, which has been crying out for improved regional services, as well as links to the West and East Midlands, for years. This announcement is very much ‘jam tomorrow’ which, it is hoped, might win Labour a few votes ’up North’. I doubt it.
The highly-regarded industry magazine Modern Railways commented: “There are three…problems with this ‘plan’ (we use the inverted commas deliberately). First, while the intention to improve the North’s rail network is laudable, there’s no specification of what should be built, what it should achieve and what the benefits are.” The editorial continues to fume, observing that “these ‘plans’ are nothing of the sort. They’re an undefined, unspecified, unfunded wish list.”
It’s hard to disagree with that. The much-vaunted ‘high-speed’ line from Liverpool to Manchester is unlikely to become a reality (if it ever does) before the mid 2040s. Based on the Government’s own statements, the journey time from Liverpool to Manchester, with a detour via Manchester Airport, will take about the same time as existing trains going via the Earlestown route (the historic Liverpool and Manchester Railway). Improvements to the existing lines (there are two, the other goes via Warrington) would make more sense, particularly at the Manchester end (see below).
Whilst the Government has announced these long-term ‘plans’ for a railway which the North probably doesn’t need (see last Chartist) some much-needed projects received no mention. Extending HS2 from where it is currently planned to end, at Handsacre, where it would join the existing West Coast Main Line from Euston to Glasgow, didn’t merit a mention. Yet failure to complete HS2 as far as Crewe will mean the West Coast Main Line will be over capacity when the line from London to Birmingham opens sometime in the next decade. Equally, the chronic problems of congestion in central Manchester, between Castlefield, Deansgate and Manchester Piccadilly are ignored. Yet it’s this – the notorious ‘Castlefield Corridor’, a two-track line through which huge volumes of passenger and freight trains pass – which doesn’t feature.
So it’s fair to say that the situation is a mess. Andy Burnham and his Liverpool City Region equivalent, Steve Rotheram, could, if they were given the power and resources, get on with it and transform the North West’s rail network. But they have neither. Burnham’s vision for an underground station at Piccadilly to accommodate future high-speed trains gets a nod from the Government’s plans, which Burnham trumpeted as some sort of breakthrough, but it isn’t really – and he knows that, surely. Perhaps if he were Prime Minister, we’d see some more real action on the ground, but that’s not the point. The strategic mayoral authorities should have powers and the necessary funds to progress big regional projects, such as the Castlefield Corridor. The fact that they’re dependent on the largesse of the Department for Transport – and the Treasury – ensures it will be a very long time before we see anything happening.
Of course the North-West is more than just the city regions of Liverpool and Greater Manchester. Yet the plans, and the associated Northern Growth Strategy, have nothing to say about the region north of Preston. Important, and relatively simple, schemes such as electrification of the Windermere line, combined with improved capacity achieved through a passing loop on the single line, have been talked about for years but seem no nearer to completion. Re-signalling and capacity improvements on the Cumbrian Coast Line would be another quick win, if there is such a thing in today’s railway.
So, where does Great British Railways fit in with all this? Good question!