Publication of Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands

[Neen Sollars]

If you look carefully there is an upgrade south of Brum. I think that refers to the Bordesley curve, enabling trains from the SW to use Moor st. This will mean a very short walk to Curzon St to connect into the high speed services

Bordesley Curve mentioned not curves? Original plan for north and south curves. There is one spare platform in Moor Street and room for a second, and plans already drawn for the bridge/walkway into Curzon Street. Probably no need for the north curve now HS2 trains going directly to Derby and Nottingham.

 

[Ianno87]

57 minutes Nottingham to London sounds ambitious, is it possible?

The quoted journey time on HS2's website from Euston to Toton is 52 minutes, so from that 57 minutes to divert off just to the south and head to Nottingham is certainly reasonable.

 

[WesternLancer]

Does anyone think the local Toton station will be built? I don't as the report says only if it gets 50% funding from developers and I assume the developers that were intrested in building at Toton were intrested because there was going to be a HS2 Station there. I also think the government thinks the same and doesn't expect to have to find its half of the money.

I think that point is a good one.

 

[tomuk]

On the subject of the (s) I recall that only one (allowing trains from the south to access Moor Street) chord was on the diagram. Does this mean that the other curve has been cancelled?

I would say yes, the East chord which would have improved services to Derby/Nottingham (and Leicester) is superseded by the revised HS2 East leg to Nottingham/Derby.

It would appear from the IRP and reading Bristol-Birmingham Corridor Study and the Midlands Rail Hub update reports that rather than a local scheme the Midlands Rail Hub/Bordesley chord is now seen as a more 'Intercity' setup. 2tph fast to Bristol, Cardiff and Worcester\Hereford

 

[Neen Sollars]

Does anyone think the local Toton station will be built? I don't as the report says only if it gets 50% funding from developers and I assume the developers that were intrested in building at Toton were intrested because there was going to be a HS2 Station there. I also think the government thinks the same and doesn't expect to have to find its half of the money.

This chap thinks it will.

only a couple of minutes

 

[muddythefish]

Joe Biden's Build Back Better programme is being voted on in the House of Representatives tonight, a $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill which largely allocates federal funds to repairing roads, bridges, tunnels and other transport systems (the US desperately needs it, as anyone who has visited America would testify).

In the UK, a transformational new rail scheme gets cuts back to save a few tens of £billions.

The White House says the package will be “fully paid for”, namely through closing tax loopholes for corporations and a new tax for people earning more than $10m a year.

Is it not possible that the UK government could do the same?

 

[WatcherZero]

It's money that was previously budgeted for UK-wide spending on the basis that HS2 benefitted the whole country, and as such didn't attract Barnett residuals. Now that HS2 isn't going to serve Scotland and the money is to be spent on a spot of northern electrification and some kind of improbably cheap transit thing in Leeds, there should be Barnett residuals.

Whether you agree with the formula or not, once the SNP realise what's going on two or three weeks they will certainly start banging the drum on the topic

Its paid for from the normal Dft budget for England/Wales spending. As transport spending in Scotland is devolved and adjusted at the departmental level Barnett consequential apply to all Dft spending on HS2, classic rail or anything else and are already made within the Scottish allocation in the budget.

So no HS2 doesnt generate any extra Barnett consequentials, if anything a reduction in HS2 spending that is then clawed back by the Treasury from the Dft budget means the Scottish Barnett allocation will actually be reduced.

 

[clc]

It's money that was previously budgeted for UK-wide spending on the basis that HS2 benefitted the whole country, and as such didn't attract Barnett residuals. Now that HS2 isn't going to serve Scotland and the money is to be spent on a spot of northern electrification and some kind of improbably cheap transit thing in Leeds, there should be Barnett residuals.

Whether you agree with the formula or not, once the SNP realise what's going on two or three weeks they will certainly start banging the drum on the topic

The Scottish Government already receives Barnett consequentials on HS2 spending so it will be more interested in overall spending.

 

[Neen Sollars]

I would say yes, the East chord which would have improved services to Derby/Nottingham (and Leicester) is superseded by the revised HS2 East leg to Nottingham/Derby.

It would appear from the IRP and reading Bristol-Birmingham Corridor Study and the Midlands Rail Hub update reports that rather than a local scheme the Midlands Rail Hub/Bordesley chord is now seen as a more 'Intercity' setup. 2tph fast to Bristol, Cardiff and Worcester\Hereford

So it is good news for South Wales and the South West of England?

 

[WesternLancer]

This chap thinks it will.

only a couple of minutes

As a Tory Councillor (and MP for mansfield) he's not going to have the money to pay for it - so when the developers walk away he needs a plan B...
Said developers might just start to get more interested in the vast area of undeveloped land just east of Nottingham station some of it ex railway land) if that is going to be 57 mins from London

 

[47550]

Is it just me that thinks much of this will not happen

Leeds - Manchester electrification was originally announced 10 years ago with no wires up yet.

MML electrification was originally announced 9 years ago and has been on / off and now back on since then.

And of course HS2 to Leeds now cancelled.

Give it a couple of years and some of these schemes will be cancelled. To coin a phrase, it’s all just blah, blah, blah.

At least the Scots seem to have a long term plan that they are actually carrying out with a rolling programme of electrification.

 

[MidlandMainlie]

Does anyone think the local Toton station will be built? I don't as the report says only if it gets 50% funding from developers and I assume the developers that were intrested in building at Toton were intrested because there was going to be a HS2 Station there. I also think the government thinks the same and doesn't expect to have to find its half of the money.

I said the same earlier in the thread, not a chance of attracting private funding without the HS2 hub.

 

[WatcherZero]

On Newsnight the Crewe MP was trying to defend the Governments plan, he kept saying £96bn to deliver upgrades in 15 years is better than £150bn to deliver more upgrades over 25 years.
I wish I was there to point out that the rate of spend is actually higher on the 15 year plan (£6.4bn vs £6bn), your just axing commitments to longer term investment and doing stuff on the cheap so will have to do it again later anyway.

 

[ohgoditsjames]

To my mind, that line made almost no financial sense in the context of the other proposals: Once everything is built, Leeds-Birmingham will be faster via Manchester and Leeds-London faster via the ECML So the only purpose of the line would be to provide fast trains Leeds-Sheffeld-Derby/Nottingham. That's nice but just not enough traffic to justify the expense of building it. For that reason, I'd say it's a good thing on balance that it has been pulled.

Sheffield to Leeds is the third highest for commuters out of the commutes between the Northern cities, of which will be experiencing suppressed demand for numerous reasons, the obvious being how easy it is to just use the M1.

How on earth does that not justify some serious investment?

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm no Tory supporter, very very far from it, but I saw an interview with Andy Burnham on BBC news earlier which was shocking.
He implied the north deserves to benefit from the same spending being spent on the south on HS2! Does he not realise that the south does not benefit one iota from HS2?!

Yes it does. It removes long distance trains from the south WCML and in doing so relieves the capacity constraint and allows a better local and regional service. Indeed, without that need the business case would be very, very weak.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 18 Nov 2021 ==

The wildcard is the Union Connectivity Review. For Scotland, Golborne or something better, though this will surely happen as removing HS2 East puts pressure on the ECML so removing Edinburgh is more important? Chester, electrification extending to North Wales perhaps, as I assume there will be no Diesel services into London on HS2? And, will that Birmingham spur extend towards Cardiff?

Chester is planned to be served using 80x on the classic line.

 

[Greybeard33]

Point of Order, didn't the line from Manchester to Leeds via Huddersfield used to be four track pretty well the whole way?

Between Stalybridge and Diggle the goods lines were on a separate alignment (the Micklehurst Loop) on the opposite side of the valley. That was closed in the 1960s.

 

[Class 170101]

Cleethorpes to London service being investigated, perhaps as part of ECML upgrades?

Will just be a change to 1B81 and 1B90 starting and terminating at Cleethorpes respectively.

Also on ECML remove bottlenecks..can’t see how they do that at Welwyn, and does say in there remove flat crossings so that means change at Newark

More comments but no detail in the IRP, I'd be surprised to see this happen to be honest.

No, the TP route will be fully electrified (as will the MML to Leeds).

MML only as far as Sheffield and not Nottingham to Chesterfield but I agree it should reach Leeds (Wakefield Westgate actually) and Doncaster

That junction between Warrington and Manchester Airport looks interesting ... Presumably it would allow E-W, N-S, E-S and E-N? If all grade-separated then I can't think of any other similar junction on the UK network.

I was expecting on a South to West curve, West to North Curve and the direct route North to South for the Manchester Airport to the east towards to Manchester Piccadilly and Crewe

You can see it in this very plan. You have to start with the strategy before you know what you're delivering in a coherent, integrated manner.

coherent and integrated manner? . The IRP isn't that I'm afraid, in my view.


In terms of the route to Marsden as suggested by the IRP surely thats going to cause congestion to its east, funnelling trains from two routes from the west, Standedge and NPR?

I am pleased that Toton has been replaced by East Midlands Parkway to allow direct London to Nottingham and Derby HS services. However losing the line north of there to Leeds and Colton Jn I think will prove to be folly as will the loss of NPR via Bradford. Huddersfield seems to me to be smaller and the current North Transpennine Route will be needed to serve local communities and stations so moving the faster services (today run by Transpennine Express) onto a proper NPR from Liverpool to York (and Hull) via Manchester, Bradford and Leeds. It will be interesting to see how fast the Fiddlers Ferry route between Warrington and Liverpool could be but I'd be surprised if it made 70mph in places (and maybe less) I believe.

 

[NoRoute]

Is it just me but do other people find this so depressing? As a country we never seem to do anything properly, projects delayed or cut back, cancelled, half finished, stop-go investment, no long term thinking, expediency rules.

HS2 built in full would have been a huge sign of confidence in the country that we were building a new rail system for the next century, hopefully to be followed by HS 3, 4 & 5 to other parts of the UK. Instead it's just another compromise, another indication that we can't get it right. It's all so.... just depressing.

Disappointing but I think it started with a very flawed design for HS2, we needed an upgrade which provided high speed trunk route(s) but integrated with the existing rail network to maximise the use of the existing city centre stations and ensure that more towns and cities along the route were clear beneficiaries. The design and spec needed to be more pragmatic, re-opening routes where they provided an economical solution to provide extra capacity, adding capacity to existing routes, building entirely new routes only where necessary.

 

[JonathanH]

What is the difference in virtue between

re-opening routes where they provided an economical solution to provide extra capacity

and

building entirely new routes only where necessary.

An entirely new route which is an economical solution to provide extra capacity is no different to one on a prior alignment.

All of the 'entirely new routes' being discussed use old alignments where it is sensible to do so.

 

[D869]

Biggest winner today is Leeds. Assuming it is rail-based, a metro system for the Leeds area will be far more beneficial than HS2 could ever be and it won't take 25+ years to build. (Plan says ~23 years for HS2 to East Midlands!)

 

[muddythefish]

Disappointing but I think it started with a very flawed design for HS2, we needed an upgrade which provided high speed trunk route(s) but integrated with the existing rail network to maximise the use of the existing city centre stations and ensure that more towns and cities along the route were clear beneficiaries. The design and spec needed to be more pragmatic, re-opening routes where they provided an economical solution to provide extra capacity, adding capacity to existing routes, building entirely new routes only where necessary.

Yes, agree with that. New lines between the big cities and then run into/ alongside / below the existing city centre stations, all connected up, all through stations no Curzon Street type terminus stations. That would have been the ideal.

 

[snowball]

Biggest winner today is Leeds. Assuming it is rail-based, a metro system for the Leeds area will be far more beneficial than HS2 could ever be and it won't take 25+ years to build. (Plan says ~23 years for HS2 to East Midlands!)

It's already taken more than 25 years to not build. Given that it has to go through all the stages of conceptual development, route selction, design, finding funding, being cut back to save money, public inquiries etc it will probably take another 40. There are few convenient off-road or former-rail alignments available.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

There's a lot of use of the word 'could' in the IRP report....

Yes I noticed that too.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

It is not surprising that this thread has very quickly surpassed the 500-postings mark in an extremely short period of time, considering the original thread that this new one replaced had a veritable myriad of aspirational postings and postings of the "speculative" type, which now have had to be considered against the reality of what was formerly announced this week in the House of Commons.

 

[GoneSouth]

I’m

Biggest winner today is Leeds. Assuming it is rail-based, a metro system for the Leeds area will be far more beneficial than HS2 could ever be and it won't take 25+ years to build. (Plan says ~23 years for HS2 to East Midlands!)

Today yes, tomorrow, next month or next decade probably not. The £200M will be spent investigating trams and tram trains, followed by metro buses and busways, and then ultimately NOTHING will be delivered. The promises this government make are worth nothing.

similarly, they will promise a shiny new upgrade to the Leeds ~Sheffield route as an election vote winner… A year down the line after they’ve won the next election that promises magically disappears. This government does not care for the north of England or the people living there, they only care for holding onto power

 

[class26]

I’m

Today yes, tomorrow, next month or next decade probably not. The £200M will be spent investigating trams and tram trains, followed by metro buses and busways, and then ultimately NOTHING will be delivered. The promises this government make are worth nothing.

similarly, they will promise a shiny new upgrade to the Leeds ~Sheffield route as an election vote winner… A year down the line after they’ve won the next election that promises magically disappears. This government does not care for the north of England or the people living there, they only care for holding onto power

Yes, but THIS government with THIS PM may not be in power when the report comes out.

 

[AM9]

It is not surprising that this thread has very quickly surpassed the 500-postings mark in an extremely short period of time, considering the original thread that this new one replaced had a veritable myriad of aspirational postings and postings of the "speculative" type, which now have had to be considered against the reality of what was formerly announced this week in the House of Commons.

Nor is it surprising that this thread has in part descended into yet another north vs south squabble.

 

[daodao]

The proposals are a curate's egg. It's not a north/south split, but rather like the result of the Battle of Bosworth, when the House of York was defeated. In summary, Manchester gets (nearly) all that it wanted, whereas Leeds/West Yorkshire get (essentially) nowt.

It's particularly good for Altrincham, the (marginal) parliamentary constituency of the chairman of the 1922 committee, as the new station at Hale Barns will have a lot of fast trains to many different places.

 

[The Planner]

Negatives today.


No connection from HS2 to existing line to Birmingham at Water Orton or nearer Birmingham, which means no through services to the sotthwest beyond Birmingham.

Good point. Bristol and west also gets shafted (to a much lesser extent obviously). Who the hell wants to trudge across Birmingham city centre for your connection to Totnes, Tiverton, Taunton or Torquay (or any other time come to think of it)

You’d think after the last 18 months of much reduced travel abroad and Everyman and his dog heading for the south west that we should be encouraging rail travel vs road, not discouraging it.

Anyway, it’s 30 years away so who knows where the traveller of 2050 will want to go…

These were never going to happen, the link was only ever passive provision and no work was ever done on it. As discussed plenty of times previously, Moor St deals with this issue.

 

[21C101]

These were never going to happen, the link was only ever passive provision and no work was ever done on it. As discussed plenty of times previously, Moor St deals with this issue.

No it dosent, while better than having to hoof it to New Street, it replaces a through intercity journey with having to get off at one station, walk to another and get on another train.

That is a huge deterrent to travel for many people, especially those with heavy luggage, those who already have a change on their journey, elderly or unaccompanied youngsters and all for want of a chord where the lines run parallel north of Birmingham.

A secondary consideration is that anyone who currently uses such a service and changes at New Street onto the crosscity line or to Wolverhampton etc. has to now hoof it across town.