Comment
The arguments in favour of northern leg still stack up
rail@bauermedia.co.uk @RAIL
LISTENING to Transport Secretary Mark Harper answer questions from the Transport Select Committee on November 15, I was struck by a phrase he repeated several times:
“Not everybody will agree.”
He said this most frequently in relation to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s shameful decision to axe HS2’s western leg to Manchester and stump to the East Midlands, but also in relation to recent minimum service legislation during strikes and the Government’s decision to shunt Great British Railways into the sidings for legislation around autonomous road vehicles, which he argued was more significant.
Let’s swerve around driverless cars for now and concentrate on High Speed 2. Harper’s phrase all but invites disagreement. He appears to want people to push back against his boss.
Indeed, at one point, when talking about the ‘will they, won’t they’ decision to run HS2 into Euston, he said: “Sometimes you only realise how much people want to do something when it is suggested that it will not happen, and then all the people who want it to happen make it very clear that it needs to happen.”
If he’s leaving the door ajar, let’s hoof it open and say… Build Phase 2a!
That means building the high-speed line northwards from the West Midlands to Crewe. Parliament has already granted powers. All that stands in the way is Sunak’s refusal to find the money. That’s money for the cheapest section of HS2 on a pound-per-mile basis.
With Phase 1 already being built, Phase 2a is a hugely cost-effective add-on. It delivers a relief line all the way from London to Crewe, which is the busiest section of the West Coast Main Line. Cancelling it is madness!
A week before Harper sat before the committee, it heard from former Strategic Rail Authority Chairman and Chief Executive Richard Bowker. Since leaving the SRA, Bowker has generally kept clear of railway matters. HS2’s northern cancellation has changed that.
He told MPs: “My appeal to the Government is to reconsider Phase 2a. That means instead of HS2 trains coming back onto the West Coast Main Line at Handsacre Junction through that corridor, which is pretty much full, all those HS2 trains will come back on to the West Coast Main Line at Crewe. That immediately releases capacity on the most congested section.”
Bowker still bears the scars of delivering the West Coast Route Modernisation project back in the 2000s, so he knows London-Crewe well.
Note also his description of the WCML as “pretty much full”. With the right incentives, train operators such as Avanti West Coast will have little hesitation in growing passenger numbers, filling trains, and then exerting pressure to run more.
Even as Mark Harper argues that
