Sir Keir Starmer will doom the North to “Armageddon” except he completes an extension of HS2 from Birmingham to Manchester, Andy Burnham has stated.
Mr Burnham, the Mayor of Larger Manchester, stated {that a} choice by the earlier authorities to terminate the brand new high-speed rail hyperlink in Birmingham would power many northern trains to run much more slowly than they do at current.
He urged the Prime Minister to reverse the Tories’ choice to scrap the plan completely and as a substitute decide to a less expensive model of the unique proposal.
Talking on the fringes of the Labour Celebration Convention, Mr Burnham stated: “The hazard is doing nothing. As a result of if HS2 trains begin rolling north by way of Birmingham and on to the West Coast Foremost Line we’re taking a look at Armageddon.
“The system is solely not set as much as take care of these trains. It’s arduous to imagine, however we’d find yourself with a worse practice service than we’ve at the moment bought. We’d have fewer seats and they might go at decrease speeds than the Pendolinos.
“This isn’t acceptable.”
HS2 was initially meant to hyperlink London to Manchester however was scaled back by Rishi Sunak in 2023 to save £36bn. The choice triggered outrage within the North after a years-long marketing campaign to enhance regional transport hyperlinks.
HS2 trains will run in formations of two units of carriages on the brand new scaled-back line. Nevertheless, they are going to be decreased to a single set when operating on the West Coast Foremost Line from Birmingham onwards, the place stations are unable to accommodate the double-length trains.
Not like the tilting Pendolinos, the HS2 trains may even be unable to barter the principle line’s curves at excessive pace, slowing them down as soon as they depart their devoted tracks.
Mr Burnham stated: “This isn’t about being unrealistic and it’s not about reviving HS2. But when we depart issues as they’re then that is an anti-growth technique.
“The West Coast Foremost Line is just about full and the M6 motorway is certainly full. We’ve to have a Twenty first-century rail community.”
In any other case, Mr Burnham stated, Britain can be “sleepwalking towards a transport nightmare”.
Mr Burnham is pushing for Sir Keir and Chancellor Rachel Reeves to approve a blueprint for what he says can be a lower-cost various to the northern leg of HS2 ensuing from work he commissioned with former West Midlands mayor Andy Road.
The proposal for a 50-mile Midlands-Northwest Rail Hyperlink, operating from the northern finish of HS2 close to Lichfield, north of Birmingham, to Excessive Legh, close to Warrington, was unveiled this month.
The plan would depend on funding from the non-public sector and would join the areas “at a fraction of the prices” of HS2, its backers say.
Mr Burnham stated: “We’ve to hitch these dots. We’ve bought a brand new line that the final authorities was dedicated to throughout the North, and we’ve bought HS2 to Birmingham. That lacking piece of the jigsaw must be put in.
“You possibly can’t have the UK’s second and third cities divided like this.”
He stated he’s inspired by feedback from Sir Keir final week, when the Prime Minister stated that the Authorities would “have a look at” the brand new plan and hinted that it might be taken ahead to a “feasibility research”.
Mr Burnham stated that the Division for Transport additionally appeared to have concluded that the WCML can be full by the mid-2030s.
Mr Burnham’s warning comes after the Nationwide Audit Workplace stated in July that scrapping of the northern leg of HS2 raised capability points that the Authorities wanted to deal with.
In any other case, it stated, passengers must be delay from travelling by practice as soon as HS2 opens, most definitely by elevating ticket costs at peak occasions.
A report from former Siemens UK boss Juergen Maier commissioned by Labour has additionally known as for a lot of the HS2 community that was controversially deserted by Mr Sunak final October to be revived.
The report stated that and not using a new rail route from Birmingham to Manchester the present infrastructure would face “collapse.”
Mr Burnham stated that upgrading the WCML was not an possibility as it might be “extremely disruptive” and, not like a brand new line, fail to create capability for extra freight trains and take vans off the roads.
He added that he additionally favoured extending HS2 from an preliminary London terminus at Previous Oak Widespread into Euston Station, and that “individuals within the North of England ought to be capable of get into the center of our capital metropolis”.
