MANCHESTER City Council is to welcome new evidence set out by the Government supporting the case for the new HS2 high speed North-South rail link.
(Read Graham Stringer MPs article ‘HS2: It Must Be Built’ for Confidential).
HS2 brings massive benefits to the north, is great for commuters and the alternatives just don’t stack up
The proposed project, costing around £42.6bn and connecting London via Birmingham with Manchester and Leeds (top speed of 225mph), has been estimated by the Department for Transport to potentially cut journey times from London to Manchester to only one hour and eight minutes. However, the project would not be complete until well into the 2030s.
Critics of the HS2 project doubt that heavy costs will bring sufficient benefit, discounting a report in September by KPMG suggesting that the UK economy would see an overall growth of 0.8 per cent following the new rail line.
According to the Government, Britain cannot meet its future transport needs without HS2. Even with over £50 billion of planned transport investment over the next six years the country’s railways will be overwhelmed.
The Government’s new Strategic Case for HS2, the fifth such business case for the project, sets out in detail the need for a new railway line to provide vital extra capacity and the impacts the alternatives to building HS2 would have.
The alternatives, the Government claims, being fourteen years of disruption to services nationwide with 2770 weekend closures and 144,000 hours work while only providing between a third and a half of the extra seats of the HS2 – and would still cost £20bn.
Secretary of State for Transport Patrick McLoughlin said: “We need a radical solution and HS2 is it. A patch and mend job will not do – the only option is a new north south railway. HS2 brings massive benefits to the north, is great for commuters and the alternatives just don’t stack up.”
How Piccadilly may look - in artist imagination land
In recent years, only £12bn investment has been committed to the North compared with £40 billion in London and this figure includes the Northern Hub project, an ambitious project to increase train services, cut journey times and electrify lines between northern cities, on which work is only just starting.
The new railway is estimated to deliver an annual boost to the economy of up to £15bn with Manchester, which would have HS2 stations at both Piccadilly and the airport, well placed to benefit from regeneration and improved business efficiency and competitiveness.
Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, said: "The case for HS2 is a compelling one and today’s evidence demonstrates more clearly than ever that the alternatives simply do not stack up.
"With overcrowding already upon us and worse to come, no one is seriously suggesting that doing nothing is an option. But nor has anyone proposed an alternative which would deliver anything like the benefits HS2 would secure. This is a once in a century opportunity and it’s essential that we seize it."
