News, Liverpool
The mayors of Liverpool and Manchester have called on the government to commit to building a new railway line between the two cities which they say could cut travel time down to 20 minutes.
Plans for the link were first revealed in May 2024 after the cancellation of HS2’s northern leg.
Steve Rotheram and Andy Burnham, the mayors of the Liverpool City Region and Greater Manchester, visited Westminster earlier to urge ministers to back the “Northern Arc” project with the aim of starting construction in the early 2030s.
Rotherham said: “It’s something that the people in the North quite rightly deserve because there’s huge latent potential here.”
The government said it was “reviewing the position it has inherited” following the collapse of plans for high speed rail links in the North.
‘Huge potential’
The leaders presented a report by their combined authorities that said the new railway line could provide a £15bn boost to the economy and generate 22,000 jobs during construction alone.
It argues the link would also strengthen international trade and supply chains and take more freight off the road.
Another benefit highlighted in the report would be alleviating the “immense pressure” on the existing rail network, the mayors said.
The report’s authors said Manchester’s four city centre stations were cumulatively the second busiest in the country outside London and the South East.
Liverpool’s stations ranked fourth busiest, with Liverpool Central the busiest underground station outside London, the report said.
Rotheram said big changes would need to be made to Liverpool’s existing stations, both of which were “bottlenecks” with limited platform and track capacity.
Talking about the city’s main Lime Street station, he said “this is not Harry Potter, there is not a secret hidden platform where we can keep adding new services”.
He said previous plans to increase Lime Street’s capacity had not worked because there was simply not enough land to expand on.
The mayors pointed out that the previous government had committed £17bn to a new Liverpool-Manchester line following the cancellation of high speed rail’s northern links.
Now they are asking the Labour administration to make good on that agreement and start work.
Rotheram said journey times between the Liverpool and Manchester Airport could be reduced to just 20 minutes.
Currently, the average train journey between Liverpool and Manchester takes 53 minutes for a distance of less than 40 miles, with services sometimes taking comfortably above one hour.
“There’s huge potential. It could realise a greater potential growth benefit for the UK economy than other projects in other parts of the country,” the Labour mayor said.
“The Northern Arc will cost considerably less than some of that infrastructure that’s being built [elsewhere in the UK] so this is something that the government should do to balance up the economy of the country, but it’s something that the people in the North quite rightly deserve because there’s huge latent potential here.”
The Department for Transport said: “Transport is an essential part of our mission to rebuild Britain and drive economic growth.
“That’s why we’re investing in the North and midlands, and delivering transformational projects, such as the multibillion-pound Transpennine Route Upgrade.
“We are currently reviewing the position we have inherited on HS2, and will set out next steps in due course.”
