Rail electrification scrapped / 'suspended'?

[Senex]

TfN actually deciding on a scheme would be helpful. No point whinging about Crossrail 2 when you have had plenty of time and money to design a Crossrail for the north but haven't yet.

Far be it from me to defend TfN, but aren't we all waiting to know what NR's long-awaited upgrade plans for the current route(s) are and how extensive the interventions that will be (would have been?) proposed are? There seems little point in coming up with alternatives before that—unless someone really does want to argue the case for a straight-line route almost entirely in tunnel from Manchester to Leeds (a sort of parallel to the 1930s Bologna-Florence direttissima).

 

[Chester1]

Far be it from me to defend TfN, but aren't we all waiting to know what NR's long-awaited upgrade plans for the current route(s) are and how extensive the interventions that will be (would have been?) proposed are? There seems little point in coming up with alternatives before that—unless someone really does want to argue the case for a straight-line route almost entirely in tunnel from Manchester to Leeds (a sort of parallel to the 1930s Bologna-Florence direttissima).

Burnham and Osborne want a multi billion pound tunnel. NR is deciding what to do with Manchester to Leeds but other routes are not going to be ugraded so they could decide much of the route now.