Idea to link HS2 to OxCam Corridor slammed

Pete Waterman has slammed the idea of creating a new station to link up HS2 with the planned Oxford to Cambridge line because it would slow down services.

Speaking during the HS2 Economic Growth Conference, he dismissed the suggestion that a stop should be added at the junction with the new line proposed between the two university cities: “HS2 is called HS2 for a purpose: it means you can get places fast. The more stations you put on it the slower it becomes.”

HS2 would be ‘one giant step for the north’ because it would slash journey times between the region and the rest of the country, he said: “From Manchester to Birmingham suddenly comes down to minutes. That’s what HS2 does that no other project does. It puts Manchester next to Birmingham. Let’s stop the debate where people don’t talk about speed, it is about speed.”

Waterman, who was speaking at the conference in his capacity as chair of the Cheshire & Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership, warned Government against the political backlash that would be triggered by cancelling HS2’s north of England leg: The point is that it opens up the north and the midlands to opportunities that the south has had for 60 years. To get to Crewe and stop there would be a waste of money, that would be absolutely bloody crazy.”
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He also criticised the absence of a national infrastructure plan, pointing as an example to how a deep-water port is being developed in Liverpool without a direct link to the strategic road or rail network: “We don’t have a national infrastructure programme. We have no view and we never have had, we live from one project to the next whether it’s a road or a railway and it’s never linked up.”

Simon Warburton, Transport Strategy Director at Transport for Greater Manchester, defended the recently published National Infrastructure Commission: “We are certainly heartened by the work of the National Infrastructure Commission in the summer because they are making links between housing growth and infrastructure.”

Warburton did however agree with Waterman that the time to debate whether HS2 should be extended to the north of England is over. “The case is made, let’s move on the debate to how to maximise the opportunity.”

Warburton also stressed the importance of integrating NPR into the hybrid Parliamentary bill that is designed to pave the way for HS2: “Let’s solve the HS2 NPR integration issues, let’s not find ourselves where we are trying to amend a hybrid bill heading through Parliament, let’s get the work done now so we have the right bill heading through Parliament.”

He added: “The real game changer when looking at the (Manchester) airport station is folding NPR into the mix,” Warburton said, adding that Manchester airport would effectively be on the door steps of west Yorkshire businesses. That is transformational in terms of the economic catchment area around Manchester airport,” he said.

He also called for concentrating Manchester Piccadilly’s HS2 station’s different public funding streams into a single pot in order to prevent delays to the project that could otherwise blight a big chunk of Manchester city centre.

And he told delegates that the Greater Manchester combined authority is preparing to publish its revised 20-year spatial framework for the conurbation.

Expressing concern that momentum had gone a ‘bit quiet’ on phase 2B of the project, he said: “HS2 is not just a railway but it probably lives too much within the Department for Transport at the moment. We need to see BEIS (business, energy and industrial strategy) and MHCLG (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government) engage more. We need to see a whole range of government departments engage with this massive opportunity.”

Failing to do so risked underplaying the opportunities created by HS2, he said.

Lorna Pimlott, Phase 2 Sponsorship Director at HS2, said while there is a ‘definite danger’ that transport would drive out the other justifications for the project: “The economic and regeneration case is a lot stronger in many cases than the transport case.”

She also admitted that lessons had been learnt during the public consultation into the first stretch of the line to Birmingham: “We recognise there were many things we might have done better in phase one” she said, adding that HS2 is conducting 30 public consultation events where members of the public have the opportunity to discuss property and disruption concerns at one to one meetings.

He continued: “We now have opportunities to take on board as much of consultation before we deposit into Parliament so we have the most robust hybrid bill: we can save significant time in Parliamentary process and reduce petitions.”

Cllr Rachel Bailey, Leader of Cheshire East Council, said that consultation with communities and local authorities mean that plans for route 2A currently being legislated on in Parliament bore ‘nearly no resemblance’ to HS2’s original proposals

Bailey, who is also Acting Chair of the Constellation Partnership, said HS2 is providing her area with some of the opportunities that devolution deals have delivered in those parts of the country where combined authorities had been set up.

 

PBA, now part of Stantec; Our perspective on the Crewe-Manchester Hubs:

It seems to us that the need to complete the HS2 story to properly connect it to the North of England is no longer open to debate.  If, as a nation, we are going to commit to delivering a high speed rail infrastructure, then there seems little justification for doing it in part or half-heartedly.  The true benefits of economic connectedness can only be realised if enough places are connected – and the benefits are likely to become exponential as the network expands.

This is the position that Crewe and Manchester find themselves in – there is remaining uncertainty over whether the funding will be available to deliver HS2 all the way.  We think that this needs to be resolved, and with a commitment to complete as much of the network as possible.  The lines into and around the important north-western conurbations are congested, with historic unreliability which have been well documented. 

Hence, although we agree with Pete Waterman that high speed rail is patently about speed and reduced journey times, it is also about better connectedness and a simple addition of capacity to the public transport network.  This provides an alternative to the car, as well as helping to create and support economic growth in the regions.
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