TUNNEL VISION
AS M.E.N. CAMPAIGN GATHERS PACE, RAIL MINISTER SAYS UNDERGROUND STATION WOULD COST ‘CRAZY MONEY’
A GOVERNMENT minister has revealed building a new underground HS2 station at Piccadilly could cost £5billion and described it as a ‘crazy amount of money’ – despite its potential to transform rail travel in the North.
Despite plans for London’s HS2 ‘super hub’ – Old Oak Common in West London which will be served by six underground tunnels – and the fact the capital’s Crossrail line – now the Elizabeth Line – recently opened nearly four years late and £4bn over budget, Rail Minister Wendy Morton rejected calls for a similar proposal and expenditure in Manchester.
She said tunnelling would cause ‘major city centre disruption,’ delay the opening of services into Manchester by ‘more than seven years’ and potentially lead to an extra 350,000 HGV journeys during construction.
She added: “It would also add around an additional £5bn to the cost of the Crewe-to-Manchester scheme alone. That is an absolutely crazy amount of money to spend on something that is quite frankly worse.”
It was widely expected that a new underground station on the northern flank of Piccadilly train station would be built as part of the HS2 line from London to Manchester, via Birmingham, Crewe and Manchester Airport.
But in April, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the underground option had been ruled out because it would ‘take a lot of money out of other parts of the network.’
Instead the Government is proposing a cut-price overground station, which would involve trains emerging from tunnels in Ardwick before travelling on a mile-long viaduct, of up to 12 metres in height, to reach the new surface station.
Leaders in Greater Manchester say the plan is short-sighted, will result in the loss of 500,000sq metres of prime development land, cut off Metrolink lines and blight the city centre by turning swathes of land into a building site Speaking in a debate on the HS2 Crewe-Manchester Bill in the Commons on Monday night, Denton and Reddish Labour MP Andrew Gwynne described plans for an overground station at Piccadilly as ‘suboptimal.’ “They will economically damage the growth potential around Piccadilly, and the interrelationship between HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail will be far worse than the Transport for Greater Manchester underground station option,” he said. Withington Labour MP Jeff Smith said: “Would it not be better to do this properly and have an underground station at Manchester Piccadilly that properly links to Northern Powerhouse Rail and future-proofs the network?”
Mr Smith later claimed the added economic value of the ‘once-in-a-century project’ would recoup the £5bn cost in around 15 years.
But Heywood and Middleton Conservative MP Chris Clarkson said he was ‘pretty agnostic’ about an underground station.
“My concerns, essentially, are that the project calls for a huge tunnel to be built under the station which is larger than anything that has ever been drilled before,” he added.
“It cannot be situated under the existing station, so it needs to be either alongside it, as is the case with the overground station anyway, or somewhere else altogether, which is largely pointless.”
On Monday the M.E.N. launched a campaign calling on the Government not to botch one of the most important transport projects ever to be built in the north of England – by doing it on the cheap.
Crucially, the current proposals for a turn-back surface station, rather than an underground through-hub, mean the Government’s Northern Powerhouse Rail – downgraded in Grant Shapps’ Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) in November last year – could not be brought back to life in the future as the hub will hit full capacity from day one.
Current plans for a surface station, say experts, also hinder onward journeys via other public transport.
Chancellor Lane – one of the main roads into the city centre from Ardwick – would be closed for good and a huge new road interchange built at Pin Mill Brow.
Experts say this will increase car travel, pollution and cut off yet more areas of the city, while jeopardising the proposed tram-train extension.
Meanwhile, the closure of the Ashton line will force tram passengers on to a bus service for two years.
So far, pleas for a rethink have been ignored.
As Bev Craig, leader of Manchester City Council, has said: “You would not see a scheme like this proposed in London, or another city in the south east. So why should Manchester have to deal with something that’s substandard from day one and that doesn’t deliver on the rail opportunities that HS2 gives?”
After Monday’s reading of the Bill, all parties have 25 days to submit their petition to the Government. These objections are then considered by a Select Committee which has not yet been appointed.
That is an absolutely crazy amount of money to spend on something that is quite frankly worse Wendy Morton