New rail line needed between Midlands and northern England, study says

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A new railway line must be built to prevent transport capacity between England’s biggest cities running out within a decade, a new study has warned. 

The review by private-sector specialists including Arup and Mace concluded that an 80km-stretch of line could be delivered faster than the HS2 leg axed by then prime minister Rishi Sunak last year — and at a lower cost. 

Without a new line, “travel demand on the London-Manchester corridor will exceed the maximum capacity of the line within the next decade”, the report said.

The study, launched in Manchester on Friday, added that the M6 motorway which runs from the Midlands to the Scottish border faced “similar projections”. 

“Doing nothing on this corridor is not a viable option, from either economic or operational perspectives,” the report warned, adding the move was needed to boost growth in the country’s chronically underperforming regional cities. 

The report was commissioned following Sunak’s decision to axe the northern leg of the flagship HS2 high-speed rail project, between Manchester and Birmingham last October, citing rising costs and mismanagement.

Since then business and political leaders in the Midlands and the North have warned that dwindling capacity on the west coast remains an unresolved problem. 

In May, the National Infrastructure Commission projected rocketing rail demand to Manchester and Birmingham over the coming years, with its chair Sir John Armitt warning that without an alternative to HS2 the growth of regional cities would be stunted. 

Armitt said “doing nothing” between Birmingham and Manchester was not a long-term solution, adding: “Without better rail links between these two regions, economic opportunities will be lost and the full benefits of the first phase of HS2 will not be realised”.

A consortium chaired by former HS2 chair Sir David Higgins and led by Arup, commissioned by the mayors of Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, has since been looking at routes and funding models for an alternative line.

The research concluded that a lower-specification line, built in two stages — from Lichfield in the West Midlands to Crewe, then on to High Legh in Cheshire — could use land already previously bought up for HS2, recouping £2bn in sunk costs. 

The line could be built for between 60 and 75 per cent of the HS2 leg’s original costs, the study found, though it did not give a figure. The previous Conservative government said scrapping HS2’s northern leg represented a £36bn saving. 

The new line would also free space on the existing west coast route for freight, avoiding the need for trains to use the notorious Castlefield corridor in central Manchester, a bottleneck for the region.

As the government looks for savings in the run-up to its first Budget next month, the report suggests a form of public-private partnership as a way of reducing public risk and investment. 

The project could be integrated with others over the coming 20 or 30 years, it said, providing the construction industry with certainty, reducing costs and attracting private sector investment. 

Some investors had already declared the prospect an attractive one, it added.

The proposal comes as the government aims to deliver its electoral promise of driving growth while seeking in-year savings to close what it has said is an inherited “£22bn black hole” in public finances. 

The report called for a new vehicle to be set up in partnership with mayors to oversee further feasibility studies, for all land originally safeguarded as part of HS2’s northern leg to again be protected rather than sold, and suggested calling in international investors. 

Andy Burnham, Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, said that if the UK failed “to put in place a plan soon” for rail capacity and connectivity between the North and the Midlands, the west-coast rail corridor and M6 would become “major barriers to economic growth in the UK”. 

HS2 did not need to be revived in order to do that, he said, “but we do need early decisions to end the uncertainty”.