HS2 cash could fund rail rival
THE spirit of Isambard Kingdom Brunel would be revived through a new high-speed rail line between Manchester and Leeds, Prime Minister Boris Johnson believes.
The Sunday Express has seen a consultation document for Northern Powerhouse
Rail (NPR) set to be made public this week. It would add about 3,000 passenger seats an hour to high-speed services between the cities, with journeys taking just 30 minutes.
Civil service sources revealed the PM wants to build NPR, which would cost an estimated £39billion if it was extended to Newcastle.the cost could be taken from the £50billion put aside for the controversial High Speed 2 (HS2) project.
According to a source, under the Downing Street plans agency Transport for the North would get £50billion to build NPR before building HS2 from Manchester rather than its current proposed starting point of London. This would in reality “take the line to Birmingham at best”.
HS2’S future is being decided by former project chairman Douglas Oakervee. But it is understood that the PM would prefer to focus on NPR.
Northern Powerhouse Minister and Lancashire MP Jake Berry, appeared to confirm this when he said: “[For] us in the North, our... priority is to get east-west connectivity.
“We can get to London relatively easily. I can get on the train in Stockport station and be in London in 1hr 53min, but if I wanted to mirror that same journey to Newcastle, I would probably just jump in my car because it would be a very difficult journey from my home to do on public transport.”
The consultation document has seven options on the first stage of NPR between Manchester and Leeds, costing between £10 billion and £20 billion.
Sources have said that the PM and Transport for the North prefer Option One, which involves drilling through granite with 70 per cent of the line underground. There would also be a super station in Bradford.
Department for Transport (DFT) officials are pushing for the cheapest, Option Six, which would ignore Bradford and take the line through Huddersfield above ground. But sources say this would involve “demolishing a significant part of Huddersfield”.
A Northern Powerhouse source said: “Basically, Boris [Johnson] is on the side of the angels here. He wants to revive the spirit of Isambard Kingdom Brunel with a truly transformative project.
“No 10 are very keen on the full Northern Powerhouse plan involving Option One as they would able to say they have delivered early on their new ‘Blue Wall’ Tory seats.
The case for the project was laid out in a report by Sir David Higgins in 2015, which showed that productivity in the North is 25 per cent below the rest of the country.
It is believed NPR could create 15,000 new jobs and an increase of £15billion in the GDP of Leeds alone.