What is this HS3 thing?
This is the name the government is giving to its ambition to speed up connections between the big cities of the north from east to west. At the moment, the £50bn HS2 network is planned to run from London to Birmingham and then in two forks north, to Leeds and Manchester. HS3 would provide faster direct links across the Pennines between the last two cities, reducing journey times across the north.
So are they proposing an extra leg of the new high-speed network?
No. Services can run much faster than they do now but not with the same trains or track as HS2 – think 125mph maximum rather than 225mph. The proximity and landscape doesn’t lend itself to that kind of high-speed network. There will be a few options under consideration, ranging from a new track to upgrading parts of the existing route and building lots of new tunnels or reopening some existing, unused tunnels.
Has the fighting over HS2 finished then?
Not quite – perhaps one reason why the government likes the name HS3, to make it look like Britain is moving on to the next thing. But parliament has given its assent for phase one to Birmingham, the part of the route which sees a relatively higher number of losers than winners from the scheme than further north, so it would be politically perverse to stop there. The hybrid bill, giving full planning permission for the detailed phase one route, still has to pass through parliament.
Why is the chairman of HS2 talking about this given that it’s a different thing?
When Sir David Higgins, the former boss of Network Rail, took up his new post he was asked to review the plans for HS2; his report out on Monday looks at the chosen route for the second phase. His view is the route is sound, although the location and construction of some stations (Leeds, and Toton in the East Midlands) could be tweaked, but all of HS2 needs to be integrated properly with the rest of the rail network to provide maximum benefits: building HS2 piecemeal, without proper consideration of broader transport networks, could further unbalance the country’s economy. And he says the north has been pretty underserved till now.
How bad is it?
Higgins says connectivity is poor, trains crowded and unreliable, and says the marked lack of commuters between two nearby urban centres demonstrates how links are impeding economic growth. Journeys of 40 miles between Manchester and Leeds take almost an hour. Higgins thinks 26 minutes would be quite feasible. As the spine of connections across the north, that would also cut journey times throughout the region. Other projects already announced and under way, including the northern hub schemes, will see wider electrification of track and other upgrades bringing towns and cities much closer together.
Is there any money or action promised?
Not yet, but there is cross-party recognition of the need to give the north some upgraded transport links. One figure cited by the BBC from an unnamed industry expert – though not from Higgins – is around £7bn, which comes in at less than half the price of Crossrail, the mass-transit line that will be running across London from 2018. The creation of a new body comprised of leaders across five major cities, Transport for the North, should help keep up the political impetus for concerted action, when more detailed options for faster links are presented by Higgins in March.
