How the North hopes to replace HS2

When Rishi Sunak took the scissors to the long-planned HS2 rail project last year – halting it in Birmingham – he not only dashed the North’s hopes of being served by faster trains, but more importantly, he neutralised the chances of easing chronic congestion on Victoria’s existing West Coast Main Line (WCML).

It was a bleak prospect at the time. But after years of plans for a new trunk line between the West Midlands and Greater Manchester disappeared, the mayors of those two huge cities took it upon themselves to draw up their own plans to replace it.

On Friday, almost a year after Sunak’s cuts, the proposals from the Mayors’ Initiative (current Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham and former West Midlands mayor Andy Street) will be made public. It will be time for the new Labour government to decide whether it can greenlight a major new rail line at a time when money is tight and capital spending demands are high.

Mr Burnham’s message could not be clearer: “Doing nothing is not an option.”

Why the North needs a new railway line

The government has long considered that the current WCML line is close to capacity, and that a new rail line linking the country’s biggest cities is a pressing concern and a key reason for the initial plans for HS2. And the problem has only worsened in the years since. A 2020 Department for Transport report warned that the current line was at “breaking point” and “unable to cope with demand”.

Although the pandemic and changing passenger behaviour since then have reduced that demand, passenger numbers are now rising again and the existing 143-year-old line is creaking under the strain.

To top it all off, the £67bn solution to the capacity problem – HS2 – is set to make matters even worse. Sunak’s decision to scrap HS2 north means that HS2 trains will merge onto the existing WCML track after leaving Birmingham, adding further congestion to an already overstretched rail line.

William Barter, a rail expert who acted as an adviser on HS2, said: I:“When the mayors said that doing nothing was not an option, they were right.

“If you look at the railway line north of Handsacre Junction and all the way to Manchester you can see why there is a need for another railway line because every time you are on that train you have to ask yourself is this really the best way to serve the most revenue-generating railway in the country?”

A report published last week by Transport for the North – which represents the voices of the public and private sectors – stressed that a replacement for HS2 remains essential.

“The West Coast Main Line is Europe’s busiest mixed-use rail line, carrying a myriad of intercity, regional, local, freight and heritage services every day,” he said.

“HS2 was designed to free up capacity on the route by splitting intercity services, addressing several key bottlenecks on the route.

“With the cancellation of HS2, alternative interventions will be necessary.”

What was planned for the North

As is well known, successive governments have agreed since 2009 on the need for a new rail line linking the northern cities to London, the economic heart of the country. It was originally planned that HS1 trains – the high-speed line linking London to Paris across the English Channel – would run directly from St Pancras station in London to Manchester, thus linking the north to the rest of Europe.

Although this idea was abandoned on cost grounds, HS2 and the High Speed ​​Rail to the North were deemed essential and a Y-shaped line from London to Manchester and Leeds via Birmingham was approved in 2012. However, budgetary concerns and internal Conservative aversion to the project meant that several members were cut from the original HS2 plan – first the Birmingham-Leeds section in 2021, and last year the Birmingham-Manchester route.

The case for a new north-south rail line has been further weakened by growing calls for better rail connections across the Pennines, the so-called Northern Powerhouse Rail, linking cities such as Liverpool in the west and Hull in the east.

Sunak has sought to address the problem by scaling back the Birmingham-Manchester section of HS2, spending some of the money saved – around £12bn – on strengthening rail links between Liverpool and Manchester, while incorporating Bradford and Hull into the Northern Powerhouse Rail plans.

But the prime minister’s decision ignored the underlying problem: rail links between the UK’s second and third largest cities were on the brink.

How a new line could provide the missing link

A consortium, led by engineering firm Arup and commissioned by the West Midlands and Greater Manchester councils, has drawn up a new proposal to replace HS2 North with a cheaper, slower rail link that they hope will ease the congestion problems facing both cities.

The most recent plans, published in March, propose building a new link from Handsacre, outside Birmingham, where HS2 ends, to Manchester Airport via Crewe – what was formerly known as HS2 phase 2a.

The new line will follow exactly the same route but, crucially, it will be designed for much slower speeds and to a lower specification in an attempt to reduce costs and therefore be more palatable to the public and private purse.

But even if trains do not reach HS2’s top speed of 225mph, it is envisaged that journey times will be improved compared with the current WCML timetable due to reduced congestion.

Andy Street, the former Conservative mayor of the West Midlands who was the driving force behind the rail replacement project, said the proposal would give the government a major decision to make.

“When Andy Burnham and I were faced with the guts of HS2, we commissioned this work and I’m proud that we chose not to just accept the decision and say something has to be done,” he said. I.

“The big challenge (for mayors) is to persuade the new government – ​​which, to be fair to them, has not raised the immediate issue of cancelling HS2 – that the option of doing nothing is not acceptable.”

He added: “The original HS2 proposal was right that there was a real economic need to improve connectivity between the West Midlands and Greater Manchester. The challenge will be to convince the government with everything they have at their disposal, but this project cannot be left to the wayside and forgotten.”

Will this happen?

The big unanswered question is whether the new government will be prepared to give the project the green light. The consortium has insisted that the new line could be built by relying heavily on private finance in an attempt to reduce the impact on the Treasury.

How the private finance model works

Using private finance to deliver major infrastructure projects is a proven method in the UK and abroad.

The practice was criticised after it was used by the new Labour government to implement hospital and school rebuilding programmes under the infamous Private Finance Initiative programme.

The PFI program was eventually abandoned by the Coalition after several stories emerged of schools and hospitals locked into contracts with private developers that required them to pay exorbitant costs of thousands of dollars for small things like changing light bulbs or repairing electrical outlets.

But examples from abroad show that governments can successfully use private finance to deliver major national infrastructure projects without burdening public finances with high upfront costs, as was the case with HS2. The model has been used successfully by the Japanese, French and Spanish to build their own high-speed rail lines, and it was used to build the UK’s first high-speed rail line – the Channel Tunnel – which connects London to Paris and beyond. More recent examples include the £5bn Thames Tideway Tunnel, also known as “London’s super sewer”, which was built with private sector money, which will be recouped by adding an extra £25 to customers’ bills. The tunnel will significantly improve London’s ability to deal with raw sewage entering waterways.

London’s Crossrail project, now called the Elizabeth Line, is another public-private partnership. It cost around £18.8 billion and took four years to complete, but has already boosted passenger numbers significantly.

The group believes that a new rail line could be built using both private and public funding, using a financing model similar to that used to build the new Bordeaux-Tours high-speed link on the TGV network.

Around €3.8bn of the total €7.8bn cost of the 302km TGV line has been provided by private finance, which will be recouped through a 50-year concession contract, which would see a private company run the rail service in exchange for a fixed price.

“That’s how HS1 was set up, which makes it a proven model,” Mr Street said. “Our argument has always been that the government will have to look to the private sector for funding.”

Labour is widely expected to look to private finance as part of its efforts to raise capital, but it remains to be seen whether it will be able to convince the private sector to invest in the remains of HS2 North.

Industry sources said I that the replacement rail line was “very important” on Transport Secretary Louise Haigh’s agenda.

“It is clear that they understand, and particularly (rail minister Lord Peter) Hendy, that there is no way they can get an HS2 train to Manchester on the West Coast Main Line without very costly and disruptive upgrades. So they have to find a solution, and some form of new line is not being ruled out,” the source said.