Best Of

It would be a fair criticism of me that I get a lot of my opinions from The Spectator, because it's really the one bit of the media I read the most. And I think the first thing I read about a topic, if it reads convincingly, usually becomes my opinion till something else comes along.

So I am now officially against Northern Powerhouse Rail. I was all for it, till I read this fairly damning account of it, which is basically that it's not going to do anything for the North, because it's basically more of the HS2 project, just gussied up by Obsborne to look like his own genius levelling up scheme.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/its-time-to-admit-that-high-speed-rail-is-a-dead-end/

Osborne did that a lot. The OBR for example was meant to be a great way to ensure Tory style fiscal rectitude, but it wasn't - it was actually a quango designed to ready us for monetary union. Northern Powerhouse Rail sounds brilliant, but it turns out:

Called Northern Powerhouse Rail, this section alone will cost a claimed £17 billion (in reality, perhaps £30 billion). It will be a high-speed railway on which trains can never reach high speeds, because the stations are too close together. It will leave Manchester via a vastly expensive new eight-mile tunnel in the wrong direction – roughly south, only then turning west towards Liverpool, hence the longer journey time. The official reason for doing it like this is to serve Manchester Airport. But the ‘airport’ station would be almost a mile away from the airport. You’d have to transfer by bus.

So until another, better take comes along, I'm adopting Gilligan's view that NPR is shite and we should do a Queen Elizabeth line for Northern England instead. We're out of the EU now, we can do what the populace actually needs, not continue with their ludicrous grand projets and have to pretend they're working for people.

Unusually, this is a subject I'm actually reasonably well-informed on (and I've read the Gilligan report). I think the below is a fair view - obviously I want the best outcome for GM and the North, so it is biased by that, but not, I hope, by anything else.

1) The Gilligan reiterates the old chestnut about journey times. NPR isn't primarily about journey times: it's about frequency and reliability. And a holistic network. Yes, you can get in 31 minutes from Lime Street to Victoria - but not desperately reliably, and at the expense of suburban services on the line.
2) The report says there are already two lines from Liverpool to Manchester (three if you include Headbolt Lane - which you can, but seems a stretch, because you'd need to reinstate a short bit of track for that to count). But that's normal between adjacent big cities - I think there are five routes between Glasgow and Edinburgh.
3) Prioritise local services, says Gilligan. But then suggests filling up the existing network with city to city links, which can only be done at the expense of local services.
4) But actually, better local services are what we all want. And that's the point of new high speed alignments: we provide new capacity, run the high speed services on that, and you can therefore run far more local services on the old network. A moment's thought will demonstrate this: with a mix of fast and slow trains, you need to leave a massive gap after the slow train leaves before you set the fast train off. If all your trains are of the same speed, you can run 15tph along a route, assuming sufficient capacity at stations. If it's a mix of fast and slow, it might be half that or less. NPR allows much better suburban services to run. This is the outcome Gilligan claims to want.
...(cont)...

4) Dig a shorter east-west tunnel, with branches off, says Gilligan. But actually tunnelling itself is not THAT expensive. What is expensive is undgerground grade separated junctions. And Gilligan appears to be proposing at least five.
5) You CAN'T get 30tph on a two-track underground railway. You just can't. The Castlefield corridor is creaking at 13-14. Thameslink gets no more than 18.
6) Yes, the Airport station is a short distance from the Airport - this is normal, Airports are large - but you don't need a bus link, there are already powers for extending the tram. (cf the Piccadilly line at Heathrow). This is a better outcome for those travelling from further afield eg Liverpool, Leeds, N. Wales than changing at Piccadilly.
6) All that said, actually, the SE-W tunnel Gilligan proposes, along with the regular radial routes out of Manchester, would be welcome. Indeed, rumour has it Network Rail are considering a similar (albeit smaller scale) thing as a potential solution to the Central Manchester rail bottleneck. But the thing to note is that this wouldn't be a cheap solution: all the good stuff which Gilligan lists as 'do instead' is likely to add up to far more than NPR. Less tunnelling, sure - but underground junctions, electrification, grade separated junctions, four-tracking and work on operational railways will be far more complex and expensive than a new alignment. That's why the 'use the Chat Moss' option kept getting filtered out when NPR has considered it in the past.

Gilligan clearly knows a bit. But it is amazing what he either doesn't know or pretends not to know.

It would be a fair criticism of me that I get a lot of my opinions from The Spectator, because it's really the one bit of the media I read the most. And I think the first thing I read about a topic, if it reads convincingly, usually becomes my opinion till something else comes along.

So I am now officially against Northern Powerhouse Rail. I was all for it, till I read this fairly damning account of it, which is basically that it's not going to do anything for the North, because it's basically more of the HS2 project, just gussied up by Obsborne to look like his own genius levelling up scheme.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/its-time-to-admit-that-high-speed-rail-is-a-dead-end/

Osborne did that a lot. The OBR for example was meant to be a great way to ensure Tory style fiscal rectitude, but it wasn't - it was actually a quango designed to ready us for monetary union. Northern Powerhouse Rail sounds brilliant, but it turns out:

Called Northern Powerhouse Rail, this section alone will cost a claimed £17 billion (in reality, perhaps £30 billion). It will be a high-speed railway on which trains can never reach high speeds, because the stations are too close together. It will leave Manchester via a vastly expensive new eight-mile tunnel in the wrong direction – roughly south, only then turning west towards Liverpool, hence the longer journey time. The official reason for doing it like this is to serve Manchester Airport. But the ‘airport’ station would be almost a mile away from the airport. You’d have to transfer by bus.

So until another, better take comes along, I'm adopting Gilligan's view that NPR is shite and we should do a Queen Elizabeth line for Northern England instead. We're out of the EU now, we can do what the populace actually needs, not continue with their ludicrous grand projets and have to pretend they're working for people.

Unusually, this is a subject I'm actually reasonably well-informed on (and I've read the Gilligan report). I think the below is a fair view - obviously I want the best outcome for GM and the North, so it is biased by that, but not, I hope, by anything else.

1) The Gilligan reiterates the old chestnut about journey times. NPR isn't primarily about journey times: it's about frequency and reliability. And a holistic network. Yes, you can get in 31 minutes from Lime Street to Victoria - but not desperately reliably, and at the expense of suburban services on the line.
2) The report says there are already two lines from Liverpool to Manchester (three if you include Headbolt Lane - which you can, but seems a stretch, because you'd need to reinstate a short bit of track for that to count). But that's normal between adjacent big cities - I think there are five routes between Glasgow and Edinburgh.
3) Prioritise local services, says Gilligan. But then suggests filling up the existing network with city to city links, which can only be done at the expense of local services.
4) But actually, better local services are what we all want. And that's the point of new high speed alignments: we provide new capacity, run the high speed services on that, and you can therefore run far more local services on the old network. A moment's thought will demonstrate this: with a mix of fast and slow trains, you need to leave a massive gap after the slow train leaves before you set the fast train off. If all your trains are of the same speed, you can run 15tph along a route, assuming sufficient capacity at stations. If it's a mix of fast and slow, it might be half that or less. NPR allows much better suburban services to run. This is the outcome Gilligan claims to want.
...(cont)...

Good morning

I see no path for Burnham to PM, but what this is doing is creating division and angst within labour and no 10

Their conference is going to be all about Burnham and Farage, and the media will be entirely focused on their perceived 'gotchas'

In fairness to Burnham he has been an excellent mayor for Manchester, and he is a Northern MP challenging the London centric labour

I'm reminded of another guy who became an MP, crashed and burned, and then used a big city Mayoralty to redeem himself. (As currently configured, it is politics on easy mode- all the fame but few of the painful tradeoffs.)

However, the ambition still burned with the fire of a thousand suns. And the press loved him for providing a story on a quiet day. And the party in the country loved him for telling them what they wanted to hear.

So he half-wrecked his party in order to get the leadership. And then (because he wasn't really up to the job, which is why he crashed and burned in the foothills) he fully wrecked his party while he had the leadership.

History, tragedy, farce and all that.