The UK government’s announcement that the HS2 high-speed rail line from the West Midlands to Manchester is to be scrapped has been widely criticised.
As the UK prime minister Rishi Sunak announced the scrapping of the HS2 high-speed rail line from the West Midlands to Manchester today, the decision was roundly criticised by rail experts, politicians and regional representatives in the north.
Their criticism is unlikely to be allayed by Sunak’s announcement to the Conservative Party conference of a range of alternative transport projects in the north of England and Wales. These included building the Midlands rail hub connecting 50 stations, Upgrading the A1, A2, A5 and the M6 roads, Building a new Leeds tram system, funding the Shipley bypass, Blyth relief road and 70 other road schemes, electrifying train lines in north Wales and resurfacing roads across the country.
The UK prime minister argues that these projects will be better value for money and can be delivered more quickly, providing benefits sooner that the planned HS2 line to Manchester, which was already subject to significant delay and cost overruns.
Today’s decision comes after weeks of speculation about the future of the HS2 line and means that the UK’s largest infrastructure project will now be severely cut back with the new high-speed line ending at Birmingham and not Manchester as planned.
Speaking to the BBC this morning, the Labour mayor for Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, accused the government of “disrespecting people across the whole of the north”. Speaking ahead of the government’s expected announcement, he said: “HS2 won’t go to Manchester and people in the north will be treated as second-class citizens – again? What a disgrace!”
Meanwhile, the Conservative West Midlands mayor Andy Street, who held a special press conference on Monday this week warning Rishi Sunak that getting rid of HS2 would be like “cancelling the future”, is said to be totally distraught by the expected decision and according to some reports Street is now considering resigning over the decision to cancel the high-speed train line between Birmingham and Manchester.
Commenting on the announcement, Henri Murison, chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, said: “I would describe this as a national tragedy here in the north of England, economically at least. In 100 years, the economy of the north will be smaller because of this decision.” Murison also reflected that the arguments around the wider benefits of HS2 going to Manchester and the additional benefits this would bring to communities and towns and villages locally had been lost.
Former chairman and chief executive of the UK Strategic Rail Authority, Richard Bowker, also criticised the decision to scrap the HS2 line to Manchester, calling it a “stake through the heart” of transport in the northern region.
“All the benefits of HS2 which were going to unlock vast amounts of capacity from the existing railway are lost. There are three trains an hour from Manchester to London currently. There are two from Manchester to Birmingham. Those would have gone onto HS2 and freed up a huge amount of capacity in the Manchester area. That’s now gone, existing congestion remains and as a result of this decision there will be no more additional capacity on the existing railway north of Litchfield in the Midlands,” said Bowker.
The UK government’s position is that in a post-pandemic world it is necessary to recalibrate major infrastructure projects and focus instead on joining up towns and cities with locally targeted transport investments. Such arguments are unlikely to hold sway with local and national politicians or the many industry organisations and companies working on HS2, who will now need to do their own recalibrations and amend their plans and expectations from their involvement in what will now become a much-scaled back megaproject.
