'HS3' to be called Northern Powerhouse Rail

[Haydn1971]

Had a good flick through the recent report, looks as though the original 30 minute aspiration for Sheffield - Manchester has just been kicked into the long grass, with vague comments about no demand... Then talk of moving 20+ year old Pendos (reformed) onto the Hope Valley route - have I missed something here of was not the basis of the HS3 concept to improve connectivity to all northern cities ?

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Had a good flick through the recent report, looks as though the original 30 minute aspiration for Sheffield - Manchester has just been kicked into the long grass, with vague comments about no demand...

Perhaps they might be taking a leaf out of the same department's book of reasons for not continuing with the building the M67 onwards from Mottram to Sheffield, but since people have eyes to see, they dare not claim "no demand" on that particular road projection...

 

[ivanhoe]

On nearly every mention of Northern Powerhouse, it is Manchester and Leeds. Crikey, for all of you who happen to live in the Cities of Liverpool, Bradford, Sheffield and Hull, you need not exist.Not to mention the fine towns of Warrington, Huddersfield , Halifax and Barnsley. The idea that all the investment that flows into Manchester and Leeds and then magically floats down the M62 to all the aspiring members of the Northern Powerhouse, is nonsense. Whilst I fully support an upgrade of the M62( should have been a smart motorway 10 years ago) and anything to improve the pathetic journey time between Leeds and Manchester and beyond, there is nothing but dreams for Sheffield and crumbs at best for the rest.

 

[northwichcat]

Had a good flick through the recent report, looks as though the original 30 minute aspiration for Sheffield - Manchester has just been kicked into the long grass, with vague comments about no demand... Then talk of moving 20+ year old Pendos (reformed) onto the Hope Valley route - have I missed something here of was not the basis of the HS3 concept to improve connectivity to all northern cities ?

I thought it was only ever East-West links with a focus on a Liverpool-Hull route.

 

[lejog]

Had a good flick through the recent report, looks as though the original 30 minute aspiration for Sheffield - Manchester has just been kicked into the long grass, with vague comments about no demand... Then talk of moving 20+ year old Pendos (reformed) onto the Hope Valley route - have I missed something here of was not the basis of the HS3 concept to improve connectivity to all northern cities ?

There are not just "vague comments about lack of demand" - there's an 180 page report on the relative economic benefits to each of the major cities
and the whole of Chapter 2 (pp 20 through to 31) summarises the economic reasons why Manchester to Leeds should be the first to be built.

If left to their own devices TfN when it comes up with list of costed options for each of the cities this autumn would have a big squabble on timetables based on self-interest of each of the councils. All the National Infrastructure Commission has done is work enabling sensible prioritisation of the schemes. It will undoubtedly take decades to deliver the whole network, there will undoubtably be many phases.

 

[Philip Phlopp]

Had a good flick through the recent report, looks as though the original 30 minute aspiration for Sheffield - Manchester has just been kicked into the long grass, with vague comments about no demand... Then talk of moving 20+ year old Pendos (reformed) onto the Hope Valley route - have I missed something here of was not the basis of the HS3 concept to improve connectivity to all northern cities ?

I did giggle about the reformed Pendolinos. They'll be running in 9 car variants on the Hope Valley when they're introduced, such will be the demand and we'll be complaining about DfT not extending all the units to 11 cars when they had the chance.

 

[lejog]

On nearly every mention of Northern Powerhouse, it is Manchester and Leeds. Crikey, for all of you who happen to live in the Cities of Liverpool, Bradford, Sheffield and Hull, you need not exist.Not to mention the fine towns of Warrington, Huddersfield , Halifax and Barnsley. The idea that all the investment that flows into Manchester and Leeds and then magically floats down the M62 to all the aspiring members of the Northern Powerhouse, is nonsense. Whilst I fully support an upgrade of the M62( should have been a smart motorway 10 years ago) and anything to improve the pathetic journey time between Leeds and Manchester and beyond, there is nothing but dreams for Sheffield and crumbs at best for the rest.

That appears to be an overreaction, the report makes it clear that the first lines to be delivered should be Liverpool to Manchester and Sheffield to Leeds (as extensions of HS2) and Manchester - Leeds (new line).

TfN are currently doing a lot of work on connecting other major town/cities in the North, I'm aware of a number of options for Bradford for example. The report makes it clear that economics makes this highly desirable.

The potential for agglomeration between the core cities and other large settlements in their vicinities should also be acknowledged. Bradford, Huddersfield, Rochdale, Rotherham, Warrington and York all have relatively large populations and are each located closer to a core city than the core cities are to each other. Better integration of these places into the transport network should be considered alongside improvements on the corridors between the core cities

 

[TheKnightWho]

On nearly every mention of Northern Powerhouse, it is Manchester and Leeds. Crikey, for all of you who happen to live in the Cities of Liverpool, Bradford, Sheffield and Hull, you need not exist.Not to mention the fine towns of Warrington, Huddersfield , Halifax and Barnsley. The idea that all the investment that flows into Manchester and Leeds and then magically floats down the M62 to all the aspiring members of the Northern Powerhouse, is nonsense. Whilst I fully support an upgrade of the M62( should have been a smart motorway 10 years ago) and anything to improve the pathetic journey time between Leeds and Manchester and beyond, there is nothing but dreams for Sheffield and crumbs at best for the rest.

It's a symptom of decades of London-centric thinking. Throw some pennies towards Manchester and suddenly the whole north will apparently be revived!

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The Shaw report recommends the creation of a North route for NR, to align with the TfN remit and therefore to own HS3.
I wonder where its HQ will be? There could be a big shoot-out for power between east and west.
TfN has set up in Leeds, but I guess the railway would want Manchester or York (where the ROCs are).
At least it would put Manchester-Leeds back under one management as was the case under the LNWR/LMS.

 

[lejog]

I wouldn't bet on Network Rail having anything to do with HS3.

 

[Haydn1971]

There are not just "vague comments about lack of demand" - there's an 180 page report on the relative economic benefits to each of the major cities and the whole of Chapter 2 (pp 20 through to 31) summarises the economic reasons why Manchester to Leeds should be the first to be built.

To be fair, I've not had time to view the 180 page economics report yet - I'd disagree that Chapter 2 does go far enough to consider perhaps most important infrastructure topic for Sheffield over the next century

If left to their own devices TfN when it comes up with list of costed options for each of the cities this autumn would have a big squabble on timetables based on self-interest of each of the councils. All the National Infrastructure Commission has done is work enabling sensible prioritisation of the schemes. It will undoubtedly take decades to deliver the whole network, there will undoubtably be many phases.

Oh goodness yes, I've been part of WY and SY investment fund talks at various stages - it's a real bun fight

 

[absolutelymilk]

On nearly every mention of Northern Powerhouse, it is Manchester and Leeds. Crikey, for all of you who happen to live in the Cities of Liverpool, Bradford, Sheffield and Hull, you need not exist.Not to mention the fine towns of Warrington, Huddersfield , Halifax and Barnsley. The idea that all the investment that flows into Manchester and Leeds and then magically floats down the M62 to all the aspiring members of the Northern Powerhouse, is nonsense. Whilst I fully support an upgrade of the M62( should have been a smart motorway 10 years ago) and anything to improve the pathetic journey time between Leeds and Manchester and beyond, there is nothing but dreams for Sheffield and crumbs at best for the rest.

This is one of the problems that the UK has in trying to stop being so London-centric, that we try and spread all the investment across the country so no one loses out. As a country we are not big enough to support more than four major cities, but we should be big enough to have a large second and third city, as Germany does effectively with Frankfurt and Munich.

Whenever Manchester and Leeds get transport improvements, the other smaller cities want something else as well so the money gets diluted so much that Manchester and Leeds are not able to gain the critical mass needed to become places where businesses want to be. As a result, no city can effectively compete with London and it sucks all of the growth in.

 

[HSTEd]

It is worth noting that excluding the historical outlier of Germany (where its historical economic capital in recent times was Bonn and not Berlin), no country supports major cities with a few hundred kilometres of its economic capital.


The problem is the sort of distacnes that we see in other countries ranged from London gets you to somewhere in the vicinity of Newcastle.
The country is just too small for more than one World City.

 

[najaB]

The country is just too small for more than one World City.

England is, the UK is not.

 

[HSTEd]

England is, the UK is not.

Really?

Maybe if we forcibly transplant enough people to double the population of Scotland or Northern Ireland we could have a second.

But that is almost certainly not going to happen.
Who is to be forced to move north of the border?

Even moving the entire london based government and civil service to some newbuild city in Scotland (Mull of Kintyre?) would not be enough, although it would scotch the idea of scottish independence by flooding Scotland with a couple of million voters who's livelihoods directly depend on the union.

 

[najaB]

Really?.

Yes, geographically. Population-wise, not at the moment, but Edinburgh-Glasgow could be developed into a world city over the course of a generation of there desire was there.

 

[backontrack]

https://www.change.org/p/the-government-give-the-north-a-proper-high-speed-link