Analysis
PHILIP HAIGH examines the ambitious plans outlined in West Midlands Rail Executive’s 30-year rail investment strategy
Birmingham’s aspirations.
RAIL planners in the West Midlands are considering the responses they’ve received to this autumn’s consultation on the future shape of services in their region.
The West Midlands has ambitious plans to increase rail use on the back of High Speed 2’s arrival, using some of the capacity it will release on current lines, and a range of improvements to those existing lines - such as the longplanned chords at Bordesley that will open Snow Hill station to more destinations. There is also talk of hewing new tunnels under Birmingham to avoid hotspots such as Proof House Junction, but that’s a long way into the future.
Introducing October’s 30-year rail investment strategy, West Midlands Rail Executive (WMRE) Chairman Roger Lawrence said: “Many substantial committed service, train and station improvements will be delivered by the West Midlands rail franchise between now and 2025.
“In this strategy we set out our ambitions and priorities for developing services in the medium and long-term towards 2047, supported by clear economic evidence. We wish to build on the opportunities generated by High Speed 2 and Midlands Connect’s ‘Midlands Rail Hub’, and strike a balance between expanding passenger services and accommodating rail freight growth.”
Midlands Connect covers a swathe of England stretching from Grimsby and Skegness on the East Coast to Shrewsbury and Ross-on-Wye on the Welsh border. Birmingham and the West Midlands sit as its major economic and population hub.
Midlands Connect includes Midlands Rail Hub, which is looking to increase services between its main economic centres with an unallocated ambition of an extra 24 trains per hour. It wants two extra trains per hour between Birmingham and Bristol/Cardiff, Kings Norton, Derby, Nottingham, Leicester and between Coventry and Leicester, while BirminghamWorcester-Hereford and Nottingham-Lincoln would receive an extra train every hour.
Midlands Rail Hub is looking closely at building the two chords at Bordesley (also known as Camp Hill Chords), to allow access to Moor Street station from Worcester/Hereford and Tamworth/ Nuneaton. A study a decade ago put the costs of these chords at £120 million. Construction will certainly disrupt local businesses.
Other areas under the Hub’s eye are a fourth platform at Snow Hill, remodelling of King’s Norton and Water Orton Junctions, two more platforms and stabling at Moor Street, improved junctions and signalling elsewhere, and some minor electrification.
West Midlands Rail Executive’s 30-year strategy contains seven sections, looking from short to long-term. It estimates that by 2032, the area’s transformed rail services will add £325m a year to an economy that is today worth £128 billion each year. By 2047, that £325m will be £540m, it says.
Initial improvements come with the West Midlands Trains franchise that Abellio started running in 2017. Under the headline of ‘quick wins’, WMRE expects services from Birmingham to Coventry and to Stafford, Walsall and Rugeley to be linked, to create a corridor across the city.
It is planning new stations at Willenhall and Darlaston (to be served by reinstated WalsallWolverhampton trains), and new services on the Camp Hill line to new stations at Moseley, Kings Heath and Hazlewell (all three lost their passenger service in 1941 and have been proposed for reopening regularly in recent years).
It’s also keen on a direct service between Leamington Spa and
Nuneaton via Coventry. There’s a longer-term ambition to extend this service beyond Nuneaton to Leicester, which will need track alterations at Nuneaton if trains are to reverse in a platform or pass without reversing.
Further quick wins come from increasing off-peak and Saturday services to two trains per hour (tph) on the Chase Line to Rugeley (on which overhead wires were recently energised) and the route to Shrewsbury; upgrading University, Snow Hill and Perry Barr stations; and increasing car parking capacity to tempt drivers away from roads. (WMRE notes that rail now has the largest peak-time share of any transport mode into Birmingham.)
The region is promoting a 6-4-2 service frequency with 6tph for stations in the West Midlands urban area, and 4tph for principal stations serving major towns or park-andride sites (such as Worcestershire Parkway station, which is being built where the Worcester avoiding line passes under the OxfordWorcester line). Local stations will receive 2tph where they have sufficient footfall to justify the service and don’t need extensive infrastructure spending to allow it. WMRE notes that these frequencies can come from any service - local, regional or long-distance.
Looking towards 2032, WMRE expects expansion to concentrate on five corridors where it anticipates the greatest growth in population and economic activity. In practice, there are only six corridors in Birmingham’s suburban network, with WMRE targeting all except the route to Lichfield via Sutton Coldfield (because this already has high-frequency electric services).
The five corridors are: Wolverhampton-Coventry, Cannock-Walsall-Birmingham, Birmingham East-TamworthNuneaton, Birmingham SouthWorcester-Hereford, and the Snow Hill Lines (Stratford-upon-Avon/ Leamington Spa-Stourbridge/ Worcester).
Of these, WMRE ranks the Wolverhampton-Coventry corridor as the most important because it extends north via Stafford to Stoke-on-Trent and Crewe, and to Leamington, Rugby and Northampton at its southern end. Its report notes: “Even with HS2 being introduced, the corridor will play an increasingly vital role in facilitating improved local, regional and long-distance travel.”
It is HS2 that permits this corridor’s improvement, as it removes many of its long-distance trains to London. They can be replaced by local trains or (as WMRE suggests) by diverting Reading-Newcastle trains to run via Coventry rather than Tyseley. This allows such trains to call at Birmingham International, which will have an HS2 station as well as airport links.
HS2 itself will have Birmingham at its centre, with a line to London set to open in 2026 and lines to Leeds and Manchester opening in 2034. Its lines northwards will halve journey times. WMRE estimates that the line will deliver £344m in economic benefits every year for its region by 2047.
By then, WMRE suggests that its network will need to look very different if it is to cope with developments such as the proposed UK Central Hub at Solihull. It expects there to be demand for new travel opportunities across Birmingham and around the wider region, which might involve avoiding the city itself.
It says in its October report: “We need to assess the case for new capacity separately supporting reliable local and longer-distance services. We need to consider how Birmingham New Street, Moor Street and HS2’s Curzon Street station can operate in the most effective, integrated ways.”
This new capacity is likely to be expensive, and could include (according to WMRE) laying four tracks along the WolverhamptonCoventry corridor and tunnels under central Birmingham to avoid bottlenecks such as Proof House Junction (where the lines from Coventry, Nuneaton, Tamworth and Lichfield converge before approaching New Street station). There is the prospect of a Metro line between Wolverhampton, Walsall and Lichfield, and the extension of Coventry-Nuneaton services to Leicester.
Overlaid on WMRE’s ideas is the need to accommodate freight. HS2 will release some capacity, and WMRE is looking to reopen Round Oak to Walsall as a strategic freight corridor. British Rail closed it in 1993 and left the line to decay. Since then reopening plans have come and gone. WMRE is now talking about returning passenger services to the line using either trams or heavy rail as well as freight.
To deliver its plans, WMRE will need to work closely with West Midlands Trains as the current local operator, with Network Rail, and with the Department for Transport to shape future franchises. It has pledged to continue engaging with Midlands Connect, NR and DfT to make the case for the Midlands Rail Hub and its proposed increase in train paths. There will also need to be close work with HS2 Ltd.
Several of WMRE’s proposed improvements will need to go through the DfT’s rail enhancements pipeline, proving their worth at every stage with no guarantee of success.
Whatever happens, it’s clear that the West Midlands Rail Executive has a clear route towards providing Birmingham and its surrounding towns and cities with rail services that can cope with further growth in population and economic activity.
“WMRE expects there to be demand for new travel opportunities across Birmingham and around the wider region, which might involve avoiding the city itself.”