Partly. He's kicking up a stink about his fears that NPR will go through east Manchester on stilts.So is Andy Burnham kicking up a stink about not getting his enormously expensive underground through station for Manchester?
The one with the tiny 200m platforms that would be a massive bottleneck for decades to come?
Government planning ‘to put HS2 on stilts through Manchester’
Andy Burnham demands underground station for new route rather than cheaper series of viaducts
www.theguardian.com
Swathes of central Manchester could be blighted by viaducts looming over the homes of thousands of people because the government has refused to fund an underground station in the city centre, Andy Burnham has warned.
This week the government said it would build a new surface station in Manchester for HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail, a partly new line to Leeds via Huddersfield. It will be situated next door to the existing Piccadilly station, which does not have platforms long enough to accommodate HS2’s 400-metre trains.
Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, had asked the government for a multistorey interchange with underground platforms, which would allow trains to travel through the station.
This was refused, with the government saying it would cost £4-£5bn more than a surface station and take seven years longer to build. Instead, the new station will operate as a “turnback”, meaning an HS2 train may arrive from London and the driver would change ends to leave the station for the onward journey.
“Several of the busiest through stations on Europe’s high speed networks, including the main stations in Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Zurich, Milan and Rome, operate on the same principle, with hundreds of high speed through-trains each week reversing in their platforms during their journeys,” the government’s Integrated Rail Plan said.
Andy Burnham said viaducts could blight much of central Manchester. Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA
Burnham said he would fight the decision. “The government said [building an underground station] would delay HS2 by seven years. I don’t know if that’s true, but assuming it is, we would rather wait seven years and get something which is right for the next 100 years and more.”
He demanded the government clarify how it planned to build the new section of NPR track, which is to run from Warrington to Marsden in West Yorkshire, stopping at the new Manchester station.
HS2 comes into Greater Manchester through a tunnel from the airport, which runs under south Manchester and surfaces on a viaduct in the Ardwick district. Burnham fears further viaducts will need to be built to carry the new NPR track out of the city towards Yorkshire, causing massive disruption to thousands of people and taking up acres of prime real estate.