The next lot of railway arriving MUST be for
THE Huddersfield Examiner has joined forces with five other major Northern titles - The Gazette in Teesside, The Journal and The Chronicle in Newcastle, the Manchester Evening News and the Hull Daily Mail – to publish co-ordinated front pages as part of our Choose the North campaign.
Our design – inspired by the poster for the classic 1990s movie Trainspotting – urges Boris Johnson’s Government to finally keep its rail promises by delivering Northern Powerhouse Rail and HS2 in full to deliver hundreds of thousands of jobs, shorter journey times and take cars off the road.
It comes ahead of the publication of the Integrated Rail Plan, expected this
Thursday, where the Government will set out its plans for major rail infrastructure schemes in the North and Midlands.
Reach’s Northern titles, including the
Liverpool ECHO, come together under the banner of The Northern Agenda to lobby with one voice on behalf of our proud and diverse region of 15 million people.
You can keep up with the latest political news from the North by signing up for The Northern Agenda’s daily newsletter, which drops into your inbox just before lunch every weekday. A weekly podcast goes into the big issues affecting the region in more depth.
Sign up at www.thenorthernagenda.co.uk.
TODAY the North calls on government to finally put its money where its mouth is.
With ministers poised to release their long-delayed plan for railway investment this week, we warn it is time to replace rhetoric with reality where the North of England is concerned.
Enough’s enough. The prime minister has been prepared to use chronic central government neglect of Northern England to his political advantage. It is time to keep his side of the bargain.
Where rail investment is concerned, that does not mean a smattering of piecemeal upgrades dressed up as a transport revolution, ready for deployment on leaflets at the next election.
It means new inter-city lines to and across the North, a move supported both by Northern leaders and the Conservative manifesto.
His plan must now include those Northern
Powerhouse Rail
lines. We are calling on ministers to deliver the project, in full.
That does not mean merely upgrading the existing Manchester to Leeds railway line while shunting other parts of the project down the tracks in the meantime.
It means doing for us what successive governments have done for the capital.
In Boris Johnson’s own words, just after becoming prime minister in 2019: “I want to be the PM who does with Northern Powerhouse Rail what we did with Crossrail in London.”
If that promise is to be met, it means seamlessly connecting the Western leg of HS2 through to West Yorkshire via an underground station at Manchester Piccadilly – and a new station in Bradford city centre. It means a new train line from Liverpool to Manchester, via Manchester Airport. It means that in the North East, Newcastle and Durham are connected into the other side of the high speed network.
A real strategic plan means the government