The cancelling by the last Government of the HS2 link between Birmingham and Manchester will result in trains with less space between Manchester and Birmingham than current west Coast services, and might require demand management to dissuade passengers
That is one of the conclusions of a National Audit Office report out today adding that Between Manchester and Birmingham there could be a 17% reduction in capacity.
The damning report said the cancellation back in Oct last year created uncertainties in a range of complex areas and will take three years to complete at a cost of up to £100 million while disposing of land and property will take several years
Greater Manchester’s Mayor Andy Burnham said that the issue if not fixed was result in a break in growth for the region
In a statement he said:
Today’s report from the National Audit Office (NAO) shines a spotlight on the consequences of cancelling the northern leg of HS2 and backs up what we have been saying.
By the Department for Transport’s assessment, the West Coast Main Line will be at capacity by the mid-2030s. Not doing anything to address this would be a brake on growth.
As Mayor of Greater Manchester, I will never accept a message to the public of “don’t travel to Greater Manchester by rail”.
Anyone who currently travels on the West Coast Main Line on a regular basis knows how chaotic it can be. It cannot take all those additional HS2 trains in its current state. As the NAO points out, they would have to be shorter trains, so there would be fewer seats, and they would go slower.
The idea that we are going to make rail services worse by the middle of the century is a complete non-starter – a different plan is needed. This is an urgent problem that needs a coherent solution.
No-one is talking about going back to HS2, but there has to be additional capacity between the West Midlands and Greater Manchester. This could be done through expanding and upgrading the West Coast Main Line, although the NAO warns that this would be very disruptive. I see a new, lower-cost, dedicated line as the only real solution.
It would therefore be a mistake for the government to have a fire sale of the land it has bought to build HS2. Around £600m has already been spent, there is no way the government would recover that value. The best thing is to use that land to pave the way for the new line.
The report concludes that While HS2 is now a smaller programme, it remains by any measure an extremely large and complex endeavour
DfT and HS2 Ltd need to reset the programme successfully to avoid repeating past failures and maximise its value
Labour’s transport secretary Louise Haigh said the NAO report laid bare how the Conservatives had “allowed the costs to spiral entirely out of control”.
She added: “We are reviewing this report’s findings, alongside the position we have inherited on HS2 and wider transport infrastructure and will set out next steps in due course.
Meanwhile the report suggests that HS2 will continue building a new seven platform station at Curzon Street in Birmingham when just three platforms will be used because it is cheaper to build than cancel
