The Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands and the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester have jointly convened a private-sector group to discuss improving connections between the two regions.
Burnham had previously signed a letter calling on Prime Minster Rishi Sunak not to scrap HS2 between Birmingham and Manchester.
The group, convened by Andy Street and Andy Burnham, is to be chaired by infrastructure expert Sir David Higgins, and will investigate options to tackle the congestion and unreliability on the route.
It hopes to hold Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to his promise to work with Andy Street to improve connectivity between Birmingham and Manchester after he announced his decision to scrap HS2 north of Handsacre.
Global engineering firm Arup will lead the Mayors' private sector work, with other leading private firms having an input. It will focus on the route between Handsacre and Manchester Airport, and will re-examine the cost, capacity, and economic benefits of changing the rail route. The group hopes to identify potential interventions and funding models.
The first stage of the work is scheduled to be completed by March 2024, and the final report will be presented to the government in the summer.
The group held its first meeting on Friday (December 1) and will meet with Ministers later this month to set out its plans.
If the British Government was smart it would be investing in regional railways around the Country instead of high speed rail, Birmingham, and Manchester have already got a good rail network, the issue is the density of of the population around the big cities in particular London! People need to be encouraged to spread out more across the country.
Without good rail connections between smaller towns and cities all your going to do is condence the population which causes lots of stress, and creates long term health issues in the population.
Since 2001 SELRAP has been campaigning to reopen the Skipton to Colne rail line which now stacks up on the economic case and yet has still not received any major funding to get this project off the ground even though it’s a relatively small project which aims to connect over 1.2 million people between East Lancashire and Yorkshire.
East Lancashire is one of the most economical deprived communities in the UK and it’s getting worse without this new rail link your not going to see any economic development benefit, and East Lancashire will become the slums of the North.
It’s about time the City of Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds backed up this vital rail project and stop pinching invest from East Lancashire, and other parts of the deprived communities in Northern England.
Network Rail had three options to bypass Stafford to improve speed and capacity on the WCML, then HS2 came so they were shelved. Time to bring them out.
Track is already in place from the Crewe junction to Manchester and Ringway airport. The biggest issue is the Stafford bypass. All else is in place. Keeping some of the land purchased for HS2 makes sense to accommodate a new Stafford bypass.