As we reported last night, the Government has today released full details of the new Integrated Rail Plan.
£96 billion is being spent to improve journeys across the North and the Midlands, and in some cases, more quickly than under earlier plans.
Under the new plans, rail links will be transformed, including:
- Northern Powerhouse Rail will see train travel taking just 33 minutes from Leeds to Manchester, down from the 55 minutes.
- HS2 East will run from Nottingham to Birmingham in 26 minutes down from 1 hour 14 minutes. HS2 East will run from Nottingham to London in just 57 minutes, and from Sheffield to London in just 1 hour 27 minutes.
- HS2 West will run from London to Manchester in 1 hour 11 minutes, and from Birmingham to Manchester in 41 – 51 minutes.
Journey times for passengers are set to be the same as, similar, or faster than previous plans, with improvements coming up to a decade earlier than planned.
Earlier plans meant that Doncaster, Grantham, Huddersfield and Wakefield would have been left out, or even seeing their services cut back. The IRP will improve these links to deliver improvements with less disruption to communities.
Local lines and inter-city lines, passengers will see tangible changes, including more seats, shorter journeys and more reliable services.
As well as the new HS2 lines, the IRP will fully electrify the Midland Main Line and the TransPennine Main Line, as well as providing power improvements, higher speeds and digital signalling to the East Coast Main Line.
For Northern Powerhouse Rail, the Government has chosen the first options put forward in 2019 by Transport for the North.
The package of investment confirms several new lines, including:
- The completion of HS2 from Crewe to Manchester, including new stations at Manchester Airport and Manchester Piccadilly.
- New high-speed line between Birmingham and East Midlands Parkway, with trains continuing to Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield on an electrified Midland Main Line.
- A new high-speed line between Warrington, Manchester and Marsden
- A study into the best way to take HS2 trains to Leeds, including capacity at the station.
The package also sees the upgrading of three lines:
- Completing the electrification of the Midland Main Line from London to Sheffield
- Rapid upgrades to the East Coast Main Line to the East Midlands, Yorkshire and North East.
- Full electrification of the TransPennine Main Line from Manchester to Leeds and York, with digital signalling and more sections of three and four tracked sections to allow fast trains to overtake stopping services.
An additional £625m worth of funding has been confirmed to progress the TransPennine Route Upgrade (TPU) - 180 miles of railway will be electrified and will mean that 75% of the main lines in the UK will be electric.
The government will also free up money to improve local services to integrate them with NPR and HS2:
- A new mass transit system of Leeds and West Yorkshire. £200m of immediate funding is available to plan the project.
- Halve the journey times between Bradford and Leeds to be as low as 12 minutes.
- Better connectivity between West and East Midlands
- Roll out of contactless ticketing
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “My mission is to level up opportunity across our country, which is why we're making train journeys faster and more reliable through the biggest ever public investment in our rail network.
“This is because better rail connections are essential for growing local economies and businesses, and our Integrated Rail Plan will deliver better services to more people, more quickly.
“Levelling up has to be for everyone, not just the biggest cities. That's why we will transform transport links between our biggest cities and smaller towns, ensuring we improve both long-distance and vital local services and enabling people to move more freely across the country wherever they are.”
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: “Our plan is ambitious, deliverable and backed by the largest single government investment ever made in our rail network. It will deliver punctual, frequent and reliable journeys for everyone, wherever they live.
“Just as the Victorians gave this country our railways nearly 200 years ago, this Integrated Rail Plan will create a modern, expanded railway fit for today and future generations. Significant improvements will be delivered rapidly, bringing communities closer together, creating jobs and making places more attractive to business, and in doing so, rebalancing opportunity across the country.
“Our plans go above and beyond the initial ambitions of HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail by delivering benefits for communities no matter their size, right across the North and Midlands, up to 10 to 15 years earlier.”
Andy Bagnall, Director General of the Rail Delivery Group, representing independent train operators, said: “Rail has a vital role to play in driving the new economy and the fair, clean recovery the country wants to see. While millions of people will benefit from this major investment in boosting connectivity between major cities in the North of England and the Midlands, leaving out key pieces of the jigsaw will inevitably hold back the ability for the railways to power the levelling up agenda and the drive to net zero.”
Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region said: “The Integrated Rail Plan was a once in a generation opportunity to revolutionise our country's rail network. Properly delivered, it had the potential to be as transformative for rail travel as Stephenson's Rocket. Instead, they have proposed a service that could have been promoted by Gladstone in the Victorian era.
“What we have seen is a government pretending to deliver that transformation but doing it on the cheap. Communities across the North have been held back for decades, forced to accept sticking plaster solutions and grossly underfunded by government. Today's announcement is a continuation of that.
“Earlier this year, I warned that the government were heading towards this path; that they would try to force us to accept a cheap and nasty option that would be detrimental, not only to our region, but to the wider North and UK as a whole.
“It won't deliver the £16bn of economic benefit we were promised; it won't free up freight capacity or take heavily-polluting HGVs off the road, and it won't help connect our region with opportunities across the country. Instead, it looks set to cause us all of the pain of years long disruption with none of the benefits on the other side – and won't be delivered any faster than existing plans.
“The Prime Minister and Chancellor are both on record talking about the vital importance of NPR to the North's prospects. What does it say to 15m people across the North when they have chosen not to deliver it?
“It's not too late to fix this. My door is open if the government are serious about levelling up the North and want to engage with us.”
On the publication of the Integrated Rail Plan, Darren Caplan, Chief Executive of the Railway Industry Association (RIA), said: “The railway industry will welcome the end of the uncertainty surrounding the Integrated Rail Plan, now it's been published. Many of them have been preparing over the last few years to deliver the projects contained within it, and whether individual schemes have been scrapped, amended or given the green light, at least we all now know the Government's thinking.
“It is positive to see confirmation of some local and regional rail projects within the Plan – throughout the North and Midlands – and the speed at which the Government aims to deliver them. Many rail businesses will look forward to working on these. However, it is difficult to see this IRP as anything other than a piecemeal approach to national strategic railway infrastructure development, given the abandonment of HS2 Eastern Leg and the scaling back of Northern Powerhouse Rail.
“We must of course all recognise the short to medium term impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on the UK and its economy, and welcome the fact that the Government will invest significant sums in rail around the country. Yet it was only last year that Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Cabinet publicly supported delivering the HS2 scheme in full, given the capacity, connectivity and economic benefits it brings. Even if the Government claims in the IRP it can deliver benefits more quickly with upgrades to the current network, how certain can the railway industry be that the IRP will actually be delivered, given what's happened to the previous plan? Whatever schemes do proceed, RIA and our members will work with the Government to take forward whichever projects do go ahead.”
On Northern Powerhouse Rail, Darren Caplan, Chief Executive of the Railway Industry Association (RIA), said: “It is worrying that this scheme has been scaled back. Northern Powerhouse Rail will be essential in connecting up towns and cities in the North of England, alongside delivery of the Transpennine Route Upgrade. This project has been promised time and time again since 2014, with millions of pounds spent on its design and shovels ready to go. These plans being torn up will only add yet more costs and delay work.”
On Midland Mainline and TransPennine Route electrification, Darren Caplan, Chief Executive of the Railway Industry Association (RIA), said: “It is positive to see new electrification going ahead after a number of projects were halted in 2017. Electrifying the rail network is not only good for passengers and freight, providing more reliable and faster services to diesel trains, but it also essential to decarbonising the network by 2050. With only 38% of our rail network electrified – far below other developed countries – we clearly need to get on with electrifying more track and ending the hiatus in work that has negatively impacted the industry
“It's positive to hear the Transport Secretary today suggest that work will begin on the Midland Mainline electrification soon. Let's hope this is the beginning of the sustainable pipeline of electrification Government has promised.”
Commenting on the Integrated Rail Plan, Michelle Craven-Faulkner, partner and rail lead at Shoosmiths, said: “The eastern leg of HS2 was set to create new gateways to parts of the UK that are currently underserved by fast rail links, while also improving connectivity cross country between some of our major cities. The proposed infrastructure had one of the best economic cases of any part of the new high-speed rail network, supporting 74,000 new jobs and £4bn in gross value added in the East Midlands alone.
“Improving the rail system isn't just about the economic and social benefits, though. Rail travel has key environmental advantages. While the new plans will go some way to upgrading local transport links, scaling back high-speed rail will limit much needed connectivity and hinder the UK's journey to net zero.
“Promoting a culture of rail travel is a noble aim. However, until its benefits are fully realised, and greater consideration is given to increasing capacity, reliability and speed, this will remain a dream, not a reality.”
Cllr Martin Gannon, Chair of the North East Joint Transport Committee, said: “This is a hammer-blow for the North East and is the very opposite of levelling up. I'm not quite sure what our area has done to deserve such contempt. The Government appears to be arbitrarily ruling out major investment in the East Coast Main Line in our region, as well as confirming it won't build HS2 to Yorkshire or the North East, and the Northern Powerhouse Rail plan seems to have been scaled back to a minor upgrade that is pretty much what was already promised – and not delivered – a decade ago. The Government has failed our region when it comes to ECML connectivity and I'm sure that everyone, including the business community and politicians from every party will feel as exasperated as I do on this.
“Long over-due investment is needed urgently in the capacity of the East Coast Main Line in the North East, including using the Leamside Line as an effective way to take freight trains off the fast passenger route to increase capacity on the existing line. The recent disastrous plans to decimate services in a new timetable – thankfully now withdrawn – proved that the route isn't fit for purpose for today's needs, let alone for the future. Without this investment or commitment to invest the Government is holding back the North East.
“People and businesses in the North East deserve better than to be frozen out of national investment plans like this. In the meantime we watch as taxpayers cover the costs of a new tube line and Crossrail in London, and HS2 as far as Birmingham, the East Midlands and the North West.
“We will continue to fight for better rail links for the North East, to improve our connections to the rest of the country and to help our economy to grow.”
Andy Bell, VP Ground Transportation Systems, Thales, commented: “Pleased to see the long awaited Integrated Rail Plan today; disappointed that the top of the Eastern Leg of HS2 is not happening, but positive to see the investment that is planned in upgrading the Transpennine Route, West Yorkshire tram and the other much needed initiatives.
“This is a great opportunity to bring world leading technologies to the region and create a passenger experience we can all be proud of.
“Let's now work together as an industry to ensure the investment delivers the desperately needed improved connectivity in the North and Midlands – supporting a greener and fairer society; and build confidence by delivering these enhancements within the budget available.”
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The day that a passenger train travels from Leeds to Manchester in 33 minutes will be the day that I fly to the moon