Maria Machancoses Speaking Lord Midlands Ignored HS2

The midlands were “largely ignored” by a recent damning House of Lords committee report into High Speed 2, the Leader of the region’s transport body told the Midlands Development Conference

Maria Machancoses, Director of Midlands Connect, used her keynote presentation to kick off the conference’s HS2 session by criticising the Lords economic affairs committee report on the controversial project to create a high-speed rail line from London to the north of England.

The heavyweight Lords committee’s report, published in mid-May, called for work on the HS2 to be paused and the northern rail network prioritised instead.

“The whole region was almost completely forgotten, effectively wiped off the map,” said Machancoses, noting that the repot had not contained a ‘single mention’ of the region’s showpiece projects like Birmingham’s Curzon Street station or the proposed east midlands hub at Toton.

“The midlands risks losing out on HS2, the most important economic investment of our lifetimes. UK leaders must remember the midlands and those who work and live there,” she said, adding that the region should shout “loudly as we can” about the project. [emaillocker id=”71749″]

Donovan Bailey, Head of Programme Interface at HS2 Ltd, defended the decision to start the line in the capital on the grounds that capacity constraints on the London network must be remedied.

He said: “There are significant capacity issues on the network coming out of London. There is a significant concern at that end of the route which is why we are doing it first.”

Phase 1 of the line, which is planned to run between Birmingham and London, will significantly increase the capacity on the network with 18 trains per hour, each of which will be able to carry 1100 passengers, releasing existing track for other services.

Bailey said that HS2 is on track despite the negative headlines prompted by the House of Lords report. “Rest assured that HS2 is not only coming but it’s happening now,” he said, pointing to the total of 9,000 people already employed on the project and the £4bn plus spent on acquiring land.

Bailey said that work is under way on preparing the way for the main civils contracts on phase 1, including the demolition of buildings around key locations like Curzon St.

And Parliament should pass legislation paving the way for phase 2A of the line, which will run from Birmingham to Manchester by the end of this year and the bill for the Birmingham to Leeds phase 2B in 2022/23.

The project is the “most complex and largest” infrastructure project being delivered in Europe and the biggest rail project in the UK since the Victorian era, he added.

Midlands Connect’s Machancoses said the new Curzon St station will open in 2026, helping to deliver 600,000 sq m of new offices and shops together with 4,000 new homes.

And HS2 would deliver the first upgrade of Stoke-on-Trent’s connections since its main rail station opened in 1848, she said: “Nothing has happened to Stoke in terms of new connectivity since then. The arrival of HS2 brings opportunities for Stoke’s biggest overhaul in more than 150 years with two new platforms and regeneration of a huge area of land around the station.”

Machancoses also said HS2 would help efforts to improve the west midlands commuter rail network, which she described as the “fastest growing” outside London.

The Midlands Hub programme of improvements to the rail network around Birmingham will improve east-west connections across by the region by doubling the number of services between the city and both Hereford and Leicester. It will also also enable the reintroduction of direct services with Coventry.

She said that the Midlands Hub project could increase rail passenger levels in the west midlands by 6m per annum and bring 1.6m more people across the region within an hour of cities and towns by public transport.

Machancoses said Midlands Connect is also submitting to ministers a five-year programme of 11 road projects, which are worth almost £600m, in a bid to ensure that the region gets a fair share of the £3.5bn set aside by the government for national road improvements.

James Betjeman, Head of Enterprise Zone & Curzon delivery at Birmingham City Council, said the authority has secured the incorporation of a tram stop into the HS2 station’s design. The council is also consulting on a supplementary planning document that will provide a framework for development around the Curzon Street station.

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