UK: Metro Mayor for the West Midlands Andy Street and his Greater Manchester counterpart Andy Burnham report that they have held constructive talks with the Secretary of State for Transport, Rail Minister and senior officials from the Department for Transport regarding their work to assess how connectivity between the West Midlands and Greater Manchester can be improved in light of the cancellation of High Speed 2 Phases 2a and 2b.
In a joint statement following the January 31 meeting the mayors said ‘our work is centred on the strategic economic case for connectivity between the two regions, and the potential private sector funding models and interventions needed to accelerate both connectivity and growth.
‘Ultimately there are capacity challenges on the West Coast Main Line between Birmingham and Manchester, and so we have decided to seek the help of the best private sector brains to look at how we might creatively resolve that without a significant bill on the public purse.’
The Prime Minister’s decision in October last year to cancel the northern section of HS2 means that traffic heading towards Manchester and other northern destinations will join the existing WCML at Handsacre before heading through a section of the route which is already experiencing significant congestion.
A proposed Stafford bypass was initially included in plans for the West Coast Route Modernisation undertaken between 1998 and 2009, but was removed from the programme as costs escalated.
The route between Birmingham and Manchester is also congested, with the 130 km journey taking around 90 min.
The Financial Times has reported that internal government documents confirm that capacity on the WCML will be reduced following the opening of HS2, whilst Executive Chair of HS2 Ltd Sir John Thompson told the House of Commons Transport Select Committee that as well as the lack of capacity there will be fewer seats on the London to Manchester service as HS2 trains will be 60 m shorter than the Pendolino trains they will replace.
Mayors Burnham and Street were joined at the meeting by Sir David Higgins, who is chairing the group they have convened, along with representatives from Arup which is leading on the work, which also involves Mace, EY and Arcadis.
After the meeting the mayors said ‚ we will be reconvening as a wider group in Birmingham next week to flesh out our plans. After this we expect to be in a position to talk more about our work, and the options we are exploring’.
They said ‘we would like to make it clear that this work is not an attempt to revive HS2, it is about finding a different way of solving what is a national priority of better rail connectivity between our city-regions’.
No decisions yet
Although understood to have opposed the cancellation of the northern section of HS2, Rail Minister Huw Merriman is maintaining a public stance that experts are wrong about capacity and journey times north of Handsacre. On January 16 he told Rail Business UK that people forecasting future capacity ‘are not speaking with the detail of facts’ because ‘we’re planning what the service looks like right now’ and no decisions have been taken.
Merriman suggested that the plan for 200 m and 400 m long trainsets could be amended in light of the change of plans for the northern section, noting ‘the conversation we have to have right now is; what are the trains going to look like, how many are we going to order, are we going to need to exercise our options to increase capacity, do we have 200 m trains, do we have 400 m trains? Those are the decisions that have got to be made.’
He said ‘I will end up making those decisions with the HS2 team, and at the moment I have rough submissions. I want to see all the scenarios in terms of entry into service, in terms of platform alterations so we can double up trains; you could even actually change your train size. I’m not saying we’ll do that, but all these things we can do.’
