ã530m railway investment plan proves worth of Northern Way
The Northern Way has often been dismissed as a navel gazing talking shop that has achieved very little.
A couple of years ago I was sent to report on its conference in Newcastle, and to be perfectly frank it was hard to find anything of any real meaning to report on.
I came away dismissing the Northern Way as a nice idea - that northern towns and cities would work together to narrow the gap between the north and the south - but ultimately one that would end up in failure.
But the Northern Way may have produce a piece of work that will lead to tangible benefits for the North. In fact its probably no understatement to say that the study is probably the single most useful thing the Northern Way has done and/or will achieve.
Today we report on plans to dramatically improve rail links across the North, as announced by Network Rail.
This is as a direct result of work by the Northern Way's transport group which is lead by the very able expert David Begg.
Sorting out rail services across the North of England is just as important as securing a high speed rail link to London.
Ten years ago I was a fresh faced student at Newcastle University who visited my then girlfriend (now wife) at Liverpool University every couple of weeks. The train journey took about three and a half hours, to my knowledge times have improved little since then.
Getting rid of the bottleneck around Manchester is the cornerstone of the ã530m plan to improve connectivity, and is long overdue.
So well done Northern Way. Convincing Network Rail to tackle this may turn out to be your crowning achievement.
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David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
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And by happy coincidence, transport minister, Lord Adonis is in town tomorrow night. He sets off from Durham at 4.00pm. It'll be interesting to find out how long he takes, and how he travels - by ministerial car, or by trans-Pennine boggler. If the latter, I'd not expect him any time before 8.00pm. It is of course a ludicrous length of time to cross a small island by rail. One snag though: I don't hear the Tories signing up for this (we can of course ignore the LibDems on the matter). None of these proposals will see the light of day under a Tory government pledged to cuts.
Spot on Ron.
The Northern Hub plans:
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- Trains @ 15 minutes from Liverpool to Manchester and Yorkshire. 4 expresses per hour via Chat Moss.
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- Liverpool to Manchester in 33 minutes via new electrification of line.
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- New direct routes from Liverpool to Bradford and Halifax.
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- Chat Moss route from Liverpool and the Trans-pennine routes, to have passing loops to accommodate fast trains.
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- Extra platforms at Mcr Piccadilly & Manchester Airport
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- Ordsall curve in Manchester to relive a bottleneck.
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As Manchester airport runs trains into and out mainly empty this is a waste of money.
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Liverpool John Lennon from 8 to 1 passenger to Manchester 10 years ago, is now at 3 to 1. The airport desperately needs a station and the Halton Curve uprated to get trains in from North Wales and Chester.