Burnham: We wanted a Premier League option but ended up with Championship
MAYOR SLAMS NORTHERN RAIL PLAN - BUT SAYS MANCHESTER FARES BETTER THAN SOME AREAS
THE mayor of Greater Manchester has warned the government’s plan for Northern rail infrastructure is second class – and not what was promised.
Calling the announcement a ‘Championship’ rather than a ‘Premier League’ option, Andy Burnham said the government must now spend an extra £4bn building a full new high speed rail route from Manchester to Leeds, via Bradford, instead of a stretch of new line merged into the existing Transpennine route near Huddersfield.
He also said the new lines would not even come forward before the 2040s, despite claims from ministers that their proposal would be faster than previously mooted.
The mayor demanded a free vote in Parliament on the plan, particularly on the need to spend extra on a full new line to Leeds.
He was speaking to the M.E.N. after government released its long-awaited £96bn Integrated Rail Plan. Transport secretary Grant Shapps called it an ‘unparalleled’ exercise in levelling up.
That plan faced an immediate backlash in Yorkshire, where the Eastern leg of HS2 will no longer go to Leeds, as well as in Liverpool, where government is not paying for a new station or building out a high speed line from the city.
The new proposal for Northern Powerhouse Rail would now see a high speed line built from Warrington to near Huddersfield – rather than a full new line between Manchester and Leeds via a new city centre in Bradford.
Overall, the plans for NPR cost £18bn less than those proposed by Northern leaders, roughly half what had been previously mooted.
The mayor said Manchester had fared better than other areas in the plan ‘and that is recognised.’ However, he added: “If the test is connectivity across the North, then this plan comes up short.
“What you’ve got is a Championship option when we need a Premier League option.
“If you’ve going to level up, you can’t level up with second best – you can only level up with the most ambitious proposals and that is not what this is. You’d be hard pushed to say levelling up would be in the core consideration of this.”
While Manchester will see new high speed lines coming from Warrington and back out towards Yorkshire, the loss of a connection in Bradford city centre and on to Leeds needs to be rectified, he said.
“If the government spent just £4bn more than what they are proposing to spend, Manchester, Bradford and Leeds in particular would have a much higher degree of connectivity than this plan delivers.
“And I believe the economic benefits of that would be much greater than this plan would deliver.”
The loss of the Bradford connection also has implications for the Manches
ter Airport HS2 station, to which – unlike other areas - Greater Manchester is expected to contribute hundreds of millions of pounds in funding itself. Without
a Bradford link, he said, the business case is undermined. There are also specific proposals missing from the plan in Manchester city centre, he noted, including the request for an underground station at Piccadilly - without which, believe leaders here, valuable economic regeneration opportunities will be taken up with a surface station.
There is also a ‘genuine concern’ that the high speed line might have to go out on ‘hugely disruptive’ viaduct-style infrastructure ‘that you might see in China,’ he said, as a result.
Meanwhile, the plan also fails to deal with the longstanding bottleneck in Castlefield, which has been subject to repeated reviews and has once again been delayed for further consideration. In 2014, extra platforms were promised at Piccadilly to deal with that, along with an expansion of Oxford Road, but they have still not been signed off.
“This is a capacity constrained system as it is,” he said of the logjam in the centre of the city, which affects the whole of the North. “We’ve still got a bottleneck in central Manchester for other traffic that’s not HS2 or NPR services.
“We’ve got to solve the whole of the capacity thing. That issue should have been dealt with as part of this.”
Ultimately this plan was not what had been sold by ministers, whom he said had repeatedly promised a new Manchester to Leeds line - so MPs should now be allowed to vote on the plan.
“At this stage I believe Parliament should express a view on this plan, preferably in the form of a free vote,” he said, adding: “We are not prepared to consign our grandchildren, great grandchildren and beyond to being second class citizens.”