Burnham: “derailment of the Northern Powerhouse”

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham reacted with surprise and disappointment to reports in the Financial Times on July 21 that plans to electrify the main transPennine route to Manchester and improve Piccadilly station could be dropped.

Burnham published an open letter to Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling saying: “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that both electrification and the enhancement of Piccadilly were firm promises by your Government. If they are now not going ahead, as your comments yesterday seemed to indicate, that would represent a major broken promise to the people of Greater Manchester and the North, and the derailment of the Northern Powerhouse.”

There was further reaction on July 24 when Grayling confirmed his support for London’s Crossrail 2, mooted at £30 billion. Burnham said: “This statement from the Transport Secretary will cause widespread anger across the north of England. With every day that passes the promise of a Northern Powerhouse becomes ever more distant. People here have had to put up with substandard rail services for decades and will simply not accept that spending millions more on London is the country’s highest priority for transport investment.”

Piccadilly’s improvements would consist of adding two through platforms to the station’s western side and quadrupling tracks from there towards Oxford Road, which is a corridor busy with freight and passenger trains. Combined with Ordsall Chord, which Network Rail has almost completed, this would allow TransPennine Express to run to and from Manchester Airport via Victoria station, removing crossing moves from Piccadilly station’s throat.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Grayling suggested that digital technology could create more capacity on Piccadilly’s congested twin-track corridor.