Advisor calls for Elizabeth Line-style fix for the north’s railways

Rumours suggest the NPR scheme could be revived within weeks

 
Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), the high-speed project designed to link Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, has come under fierce criticism from former Downing Street transport adviser Andrew Gilligan.

Rumours suggest the scheme could be revived within weeks following its curtailment in 2021 as part of Boris Johnson’s Integrated Rail Plan.

In a new report for the right-leaning think tank Policy Exchange, Gilligan brands NPR “a project which achieves the difficult feat of making HS2 look sensible”.

A long-standing critic of HS2, Gilligan instead argues for a cheaper and quicker-to-deliver alternative: a regional express rail system centred on Manchester, built around an Elizabeth Line-style tunnel beneath the city.

“The high-speed schemes on the table would do relatively little to fix this problem, at enormous expense,” he said. “The full newbuild HS2 scheme to Manchester would remove only six of the almost 60 trains each hour using the conventional tracks at Manchester Piccadilly station, around 10% of the total. The full Northern Powerhouse Rail would remove perhaps 7-14% more. It would be more effective, and cheaper, to address the problem directly.”

Gilligan’s core proposal is “a high-capacity east-west route across central Manchester to tackle the North’s worst rail bottleneck. As in London, the new element would be a tunnel under the city centre, with an underground station at Manchester Piccadilly, to join up the existing conventional lines either side.”

It would be more effective, and cheaper, to address the problem directly

He claims a two-track tunnel could double or treble cross-Manchester capacity: “A two-track tunnel would, like its London sister, have the capacity for 30 trains an hour each way – almost four times more than the service proposed for Northern Powerhouse Rail. It would increase rail capacity across Manchester by around 100%, far more than NPR. A two-track tunnel with a four-platform underground station at Piccadilly would increase capacity by around 130%; a four-track tunnel would increase it by 200%.”

Gilligan contrasts his vision with NPR’s limited inter-city scope, saying his plan would serve more than 80 stations including Bolton, Preston, Blackpool, Wigan, Warrington, Liverpool, Sheffield, Rochdale, Halifax, Huddersfield, Bradford and Leeds. He estimates costs at £9–13bn, compared with “well over £20bn” for NPR’s Liverpool-Manchester leg alone.

The report also calls for wider electrification, capacity upgrades, and longer trains. At Leeds, Gilligan notes that “around half” of evening peak departures run with only two or three carriages, compared with London Waterloo where almost all peak trains run with eight or more. He argues that “significant improvements… could be made within months by running longer trains using modern rolling stock currently sitting in storage.”

The former BBC journalist also called for Swiss-style timetable integration between modes and multi-modal ticketing, suggesting GPS-based smartphone apps could deliver contactless travel quickly and cheaply than “the current, outdated DfT approach, now moving slowly through the South East” of physical readers installed at stations.

The report includes a foreword from Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice, who warned firms not to bid for NPR contracts. “Do not bother,” he wrote. “A Reform government will spend the money instead on things the country needs more.”

He described further high-speed rail investment as “insanity” given the “billions in overspending” on HS2.

 
This article appears in the latest issue of Passenger Transport.

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