Publication of Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands

[DynamicSpirit]

This is absolutely the case, the route inside the M25 is almost entirely tunnelled, there is a 10 mile tunnel through the Chilterns, but if Liverpool wants a captive HS2 station, which would require 2-3 miles of tunnel, or Manchester wants a through station and NPR tunnel out to the east that costs too much. In London and the South East no cost was spared, in the North people are expected to get by with reused existing lines and an urban viaduct.

Without wanting to get too far off-topic, I don't believe that is entirely correct. In London, the idea of a direct HS1-HS2 connection was never progressed, in part because of cost. And more recently, IIRC the HS2 Euston station plan has lost a platform precisely in order to cut costs. So cost-cutting has been done in London.

The tunnelling in London is largely because there is no alternative. In Manchester there is an alternative to the underground station. I'm pretty sure that, if there happened to be a suitable disused station next to Euston that could reasonably have been repurposed for HS2, thereby saving £many billions, then that would have been done - but there isn't. In Manchester, there is, so it's hardly unreasonable of the Government to seek to use it!

 

[Starmill]

Pretty sure there wouldn't be two XC services in every hour beyond Exeter regardless of where they terminate further north.

Some crystal ball you've got there for the timetable into the 2040s.

I can see no reason why not.

 

[JKF]

This is absolutely the case, the route inside the M25 is almost entirely tunnelled, there is a 10 mile tunnel through the Chilterns, but if Liverpool wants a captive HS2 station, which would require 2-3 miles of tunnel, or Manchester wants a through station and NPR tunnel out to the east that costs too much. In London and the South East no cost was spared, in the North people are expected to get by with reused existing lines and an urban viaduct.

Didn’t the chiltern tunnel only get added in at great cost after locals kicked up a fuss about visual intrusion on the countryside? Maybe they should have just stuck them all on a train up to the dales or Lake District to show them what proper scenic countryside looks like.

 

[irish_rail]

...and what about the previous generation of trains? HSTs on the Western in the late 1970s, versus AC Locos on the WCML from the mid-1960s.... So the GWML to be replaced was newer by about 15 years or so....

Pretty sure the class 87 locos on the WCML where built 1973 so hardly much different to the 1976 HSTs

 

[D869]

This is absolutely the case, the route inside the M25 is almost entirely tunnelled, there is a 10 mile tunnel through the Chilterns, but if Liverpool wants a captive HS2 station, which would require 2-3 miles of tunnel, or Manchester wants a through station and NPR tunnel out to the east that costs too much. In London and the South East no cost was spared, in the North people are expected to get by with reused existing lines and an urban viaduct.

Manchester will get a very expensive new tunnel from the airport to near Piccadilly.

 

[quantinghome]

I've just popped some brief analysis of the proposed East Midlands service in this discussion:

Future MML services post HS2 and capacity through Trent junctions | RailUK Forums (railforums.co.uk)

Basically, despite the big journey time reductions, capacity improvements are pretty limited and reliant on including retained conventional intercity services.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Didn’t the chiltern tunnel only get added in at great cost after locals kicked up a fuss about visual intrusion on the countryside? Maybe they should have just stuck them all on a train up to the dales or Lake District to show them what proper scenic countryside looks like.

Interesting that the straight-line route from Piccadilly to Marsden runs practically through Oldham.
Engineers must have already defined a route for Grant Shapps to state that it would emerge at Marsden, at the start of the former 4-track route to Huddersfield.
Once the actual route is published (unless it is in tunnel) there will be howls from the locals and they know if they create a big enough stink they will get improvements.
The NPR route is bound to involve extensive tunnelling anyway, the topography simply doesn't support fast straight railway lines on the surface.

 

[Wolfie]

Greater Manchester.
That's a whole lot bigger, including Wigan, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Stockport, Rochdale, Altrincham, Man Airport, Stalybridge, Salford etc.
Total population 3.3 million.

West Yorkshire is 2.3 million, South Yorkshire 1.2 million, Merseyside 1.4 million.
So "NPR" covers a population of broadly 7 million, skewed more to the west side of the Pennines than the east.

Which, for the record, is still less than London - let alone Greater London - l say that because of the constant digs at spending in that area.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

One thing that strikes me going through the report is the number of typos in it. Looks to me like bits of it were revised in a hurry. This one, on page 14, is a real gem:

This first phase
will allow electric services between Liverpool and Newcastle,
result in significant improvements to local services all along the
line, and reduce journey times from Manchester to Leeds from 55
now to 33 minutes. Once the newbuild high speed line between
the Standedge area and Manchester Piccadilly opens, under later
NPR phases, it will further reduce the journey to 33 minutes and
increase seat capacity by over 300%.

 

[Ianno87]

Well it's easy to meet commitments to a project no one knows what it's truly about, becuase there's no real way to fail bar doing nothing....

Lots of people assumed NPR would be new-build infrastructure all the way. I agree with @Bald Rick that the Government never explicitly said this. They said "Build NPR in full". They did not say, and I believe have never said, "Build a new high speed railway line all the way from Liverpool City centre to Leeds City centre". Subtle but important, difference.

But "NPR" is basically a service output of reduced journey times and increase in frequency between Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, York etc. That doesn't need new-build infrastructure all the way - it just needs enough infrastructure to deliver those outputs where the scope/benefit ratio is optimised. Which the IRP is setting out exactly what is needed to do that.

 

[Purple Orange]

Greater Manchester.
That's a whole lot bigger, including Wigan, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Stockport, Rochdale, Altrincham, Man Airport, Stalybridge, Salford etc.
Total population 3.3 million.

West Yorkshire is 2.3 million, South Yorkshire 1.2 million, Merseyside 1.4 million.
So "NPR" covers a population of broadly 7 million, skewed more to the west side of the Pennines than the east.

I think the terms ‘Manchester’ and ‘Greater Manchester’ are fairly interchangeable, just as it is with ‘London’ and ‘Greater London’. However to be pedantic, the population of Greater Manchester is 2.8 million.

 

[stephen rp]

IRP is not the totality of UK rail investment. Network Rail has been working in 5 year Control Periods for some time with fairly substantial levels of funding (e.g. CP5 for 2014-2019 was £38bn). I’m not sure you can compare two projects like that and extrapolate whether one country is spending more or less overall on rail.

A more important question is why our railways seem to cost so much more to run than comparable European networks so we’re getting much less bang for our buck.

And where was that £38bn spent? (or not?) 4 projects in Greater London...

• London Bridge station redevelopment
• Completion of Borders Railway
• East West Rail from Oxford to Bedford or Milton Keynes Central via Bletchley
• Electrification from London Paddington to Bristol, Cardiff, Oxford and Newbury
• Electrification from Bedford to Kettering and Corby
• Electrification of Transpennine line from Manchester to Leeds
• Electrification of the Gospel Oak to Barking Line
• Electrification of Leeds - York and Selby lines
• Electrification and station redevelopment Bromsgrove railway station
• Reading, Ascot to Waterloo 10-car platform lengthening.
• The Streatham Resignalling Project (As a part of the Victoria Phase II Project)
• The Sutton-Wimbledon Project (As a part of the Victoria Phase II Project)

 

[Ianno87]

Manchester will get a very expensive new tunnel from the airport to near Piccadilly.

Always makes me laugh when people say "they tunnelled under the Chilterns to please a few Nimbys, what does Manchester get?".... uh, a long tunnel from Manchester Airport to Piccadilly! (being no other practical alternatives).

 

[21C101]

If you ask people whether they want more money spent on the NHS, education, social services, railways, roads, armed forces etc, of course they'll say yes

Ask them to pay more taxes to pay for it, and the answer will be less positive.

And for those suggesting more borrowing to "invest", our national debt levels at the moment are horrendous. In June this year the government spent £8.7bn in interest payments. That's one month, imagine what you could do with £8.7bn...

And that is with interest rates at just above zero %. Once they return to normal, which with inflation building is going to be sooner rather than later, the squealing will be deafening and they will be dusting down the Serpell plan in a panic to try and avoid closing down or charging for treatment in hospitals.

It is already up from £2 billion a month in March to £8.7 billion in June because a lot of it is set at repayment levels tied to inflation, that is even before interest rates go up and with the Bank of England buying 40% of it through Quantative Easing and not charging the government interest.

 

[takno]

And where was that £38bn spent? (or not?) 4 projects in Greater London...

• London Bridge station redevelopment
• Completion of Borders Railway
• East West Rail from Oxford to Bedford or Milton Keynes Central via Bletchley
• Electrification from London Paddington to Bristol, Cardiff, Oxford and Newbury
• Electrification from Bedford to Kettering and Corby
• Electrification of Transpennine line from Manchester to Leeds
• Electrification of the Gospel Oak to Barking Line
• Electrification of Leeds - York and Selby lines
• Electrification and station redevelopment Bromsgrove railway station
• Reading, Ascot to Waterloo 10-car platform lengthening.
• The Streatham Resignalling Project (As a part of the Victoria Phase II Project)
• The Sutton-Wimbledon Project (As a part of the Victoria Phase II Project)

Five of them are in London, and all got completed. Fairly arguable that only one of them is entirely *for* London, but the others certainly lean pretty strongly towards being *for* London and the south-east. The two in the north of course just casually haven't happened.

 

[stephen rp]

But NPR was never defined as a new-build railway all the way. One of TfN proposals certainly involved that, but the part-new, part-upgrade approach that the IRP is backing is compatible with the promises the government made.

Leeds still has every reason to be p*****d off, as the journey time to London and particularly Birmingham will be much longer than was promised. But not in respect of NPR.

Well, of course, but you don't win elections by promising to build a line from Manchester to Marsden.

 

[matacaster]

Like the gold plating of HS2 between London and Birmingham perhaps? Funny how cost cutting only became a thing north of Birmingham......

Yes, I agree with that.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Manchester will get a very expensive new tunnel from the airport to near Piccadilly.

Where it can just turn half-right at Ardwick and carry on to Marsden...
24km, not much longer than the Chiltern tunnel (17km).
Hale Barns-Ardwick is about 14km.

 

[matacaster]

Interesting that the straight-line route from Piccadilly to Marsden runs practically through Oldham.
Engineers must have already defined a route for Grant Shapps to state that it would emerge at Marsden, at the start of the former 4-track route to Huddersfield.
Once the actual route is published (unless it is in tunnel) there will be howls from the locals and they know if they create a big enough stink they will get improvements.
The NPR route is bound to involve extensive tunnelling anyway, the topography simply doesn't support fast straight railway lines on the surface.

In fairness a railway cutting through the middle of Oldham might be seen as a significant improvement to the aesthetics of the area.

 

[21C101]

This is absolutely the case, the route inside the M25 is almost entirely tunnelled, there is a 10 mile tunnel through the Chilterns, but if Liverpool wants a captive HS2 station, which would require 2-3 miles of tunnel, or Manchester wants a through station and NPR tunnel out to the east that costs too much. In London and the South East no cost was spared, in the North people are expected to get by with reused existing lines and an urban viaduct.

Have a look at the geology of North London and the Chilterns and the geology of Manchester and Liverpool.

There is a good reason why North London is littered with Tube Tunnels and South London isn't

 

[MattRat]

Where it can just turn half-right at Ardwick and carry on to Marsden...
24km, not much longer than the Chiltern tunnel (17km).
Hale Barns-Ardwick is about 14km.

Well first it's got to pop up for the station on stilts before going on to Marsden.....

 

[iansergeant]

I've read through the thread (it took considerably longer than reading the document, as has already been stated by someone). I note the intention of improvements at the Newark flat junction and a doubling of capacity to London at Nottingham. In order to achieve this doubling of capacity at Nottingham, would the St Pancras to Nottingham trains need to be extended to Lincoln? If so, how much work is needed to allow the fasts to run at the line speed and the slows not to be negatively impacted?

 

[BrianW]

There has certainly been gold plating, mostly due to lack of recent experience in electrification, but this was largely resolved after learning from the failures of GWEP. The solution is a rolling programme which allows skills to be built up, knowledge gained, lessons learned and applied. Unfortunately the government isn't doing this, instead authorising piecemeal electrification projects, thus perpetuating the problem of engineering skills being expensively built up, only for the teams to be stood down and dispersed.

In response to the member for Bexhill & Battle, Huw Merriman (Con) regarding electrification, the Secretary of State said:

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the improvements in journey times. For example, on Bradford, which has been talked about a great deal, it will be 12 minutes from Bradford to Leeds. What we called for, and what everyone was calling for, is London or south-east-style connectivity, and 12 minutes between two of the north’s great cities as a result of this plan is one of those potential upgrades—not potential; it is one of the upgrades in the plan.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the cost of electrification. A lot of these things seem to cost a lot more in this country. The rail Minister—the Minister of State, Department for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris)—is carrying out an electrification challenge to bring the sector in and challenging it to build on electrification much faster than currently happens. Of course, in addition to electrification, we also have zero-carbon trains, electric trains and hydrogen trains such as the HydroFLEX, which will help to resolve some of the more difficult-to-electrify areas, although, as I say, we have full fat electrification on nearly 400 miles of line as a result of today’s plan.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commo...CAF77DB44B/IntegratedRailPlanNorthAndMidlands

 

[stephen rp]

Well first it's got to pop up for the station on stilts before going on to Marsden.....

That sounds like you think you know something few do.

 

[Howardh]

Manchester will get a very expensive new tunnel from the airport to near Piccadilly.

How many miles, how long will it take and...how much will it cost (eventually)??

 

[MattRat]

That sounds like you think you know something few do.

There was a Guardian article about it, also reposted on some other minor news sites. Apparently the plan is to build a new station built next to Piccadilly above ground to accommodate the longer HS2 trains, with viaducts coming in and out of it to save money instead of building everything underground. It's doesn't say how they'll deal with Manchester Airport and the surrounding area though.

 

[LOL The Irony]

Apparently the plan is to build a new station built next to Piccadilly above ground to accommodate the longer HS2 trains, with viaducts coming in and out of it to save money instead of building everything underground.

That has been the most recent plan for a while now. It includes more shopping areas, a new entrance at the bottom of Piccadilly Approach and the relocation of the Metrolink station from the undercroft to 4 new dedicated platforms.

 

[MattRat]

That has been the most recent plan for a while now. It includes more shopping areas, a new entrance at the bottom of Piccadilly Approach and the relocation of the Metrolink station from the undercroft to 4 new dedicated platforms.

So will it all be built above ground, or will it wiggle up and down in the same way the route to Sheffield will wiggle side to side?

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

There was a Guardian article about it, also reposted on some other minor news sites. Apparently the plan is to build a new station built next to Piccadilly above ground to accommodate the longer HS2 trains, with viaducts coming in and out of it to save money instead of building everything underground. It's doesn't say how they'll deal with Manchester Airport and the surrounding area though.

I'm not sure there is much science in this.
The comment ("NPR on stilts") came from Graham Stringer, a long-term northern stirrer on the Transport Select Committee, not from Andy Burnham.
(HS1 was built "on stilts" across the Essex marshes, and it is a favoured method where ground conditions are adverse).
He has no real idea what the route to Marsden will be.
Without any clues from DfT, one can only speculate as to route and construction methods.
I don't believe they have found a surface route all the way to Marsden.

 

[LOL The Irony]

So will it all be built above ground, or will it wiggle up and down in the same way the route to Sheffield will wiggle side to side?

Off the top of my head, it'll come up around where the Olympic Freight Terminal is, pass over the line to Hadfield and Stalybridge, threading it's way between Ardwick station and depot, before landing at a similar height to the Trainshed.

I don't get this obsession/problem over it being on stilts. Doesn't seem to be an issue with the already existing infrastructure, so why now?