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It was only announced, as part of the Integrated Rail Plan (not Integrated and not a Plan), so that Grant Shapps could go on regional TV and say that high speed rail was still - just about - coming to Yorkshire. It was never a serious proposal.
Things don't neatly fit into hard boundaries between different city regions and travel-to-work areas. It's simply not the case that where the streams flow west off the Pennines, everyone commutes into Manchester and where they flow east everyone commutes into Leeds. From Marsden there is...
In my experience (most recently the Stalybridge blockade this time last year), rail replacement buses only work if most of the passengers make alternative arrangements. The capacity of the rail replacement bus provision was typically less than 10% of the train capacity it replaced.
Add to this...
I suspect that, once they had moved beyond the initial farce of having to disown their candidate for his comments, Labour may not be too unhappy that George Galloway has won and their own candidate hasn't.
It would have been awkward to have had Azhar Ali as a suspended Labour MP standing...
I seem to recall the two Andys Burnham and Street, at a joint press conference, stressing the importance of a high speed rail link between England's second and third cities, but agreeing not to make claims as to which was second and which was third.
Ashton is peat bogs and shallow mine workings. I don't know whether ground conditions would be better with a more northerly route under Oldham or Royton.
It's all a bit academic, as the announcement of a high speed line emerging at Marsden was made so that Grant Shapps could claim, on the day he...