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NEWS


The South and Midlands have had their fair share of rail development over recent years, but the North has lagged behind. Not any more, as Northern Hub programme sponsorGraham Botham tells RTM…


Network Rail’s next major focus is becoming clear – linking the coun- try’s northern cities with a series of small construction works that collectively will make a big differ- ence. It calls the plan the ‘Northern Hub’.


RTM sat down with Graham Botham to discuss the latest thinking on the scheme.


He said: “We started from the premise that this is not about new lines and the cost that goes with those. This is about making bet- ter use of the existing network, so many of our interventions seek to do just that.


“We’re providing the space for faster trains to overtake slower ones and freight trains, and there- fore getting the best use of what’s there today, rather than seeking to address it by large amounts of new railway, which has its place, but it’s not needed in this case.”


He gave the example of using a redeveloped Manchester Victoria as a through-station, thanks to a relatively simple piece of link- ing track; the Ordsall Chord. He says it is “strange” that tracks leading to Manchester’s Victoria and Piccadilly stations have never been linked before.


He said: “Utilising Victoria in that way is what it was designed for, so it makes better use of that ca- pacity, providing a new link. The Ordsall Chord is the ‘missing link’ that lets you run from north-east Manchester and the Calder Valley through to Manchester Oxford Road and Piccadilly and Stockport and Manchester Airport. It’s a short link of new railway but it un- locks so much more from that new connection.


“We’ve got a process to go through, consulting informally and formally, to obtain the relevant consents and clearly don’t want to prejudice any of that, but if you


look at a map, you can see the rail- way coming out of Victoria head- ing towards Liverpool, and the railway coming down from Salford Crescent heading to Oxford Road, and somewhere we draw a small curve and connect those places up.


“People coming into Manchester Victoria from Bradford, Halifax, Hebden Bridge, Ashton-under- Lyme; all of them will now have the chance to access locations beyond Victoria to the south.


“Another of the biggest benefits is what it can do for inter-re- gional trans-Pennine services. It is a more direct route between Manchester and Leeds to go via Victoria, similarly it is more di- rect to go to Liverpool that way. The Ordsall Chord allows you to retain the journey time benefits from going the most direct route, while keeping the ability to access Manchester Airport, which all the economic research tells us is re- ally important.


10 | rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 11


“It lets you get the faster journey time, but also lets you maintain the access to all the connec- tions you’ve got at Piccadilly, to Manchester Airport and to all those hospitals and educational institutions accessible from Oxford Road. It’s the best of both worlds.


“The other benefit is that peo- ple coming from the airport have got the option of using Piccadilly, Oxford Road or Victoria as the place from where they access the city centre.”


Botham explained: “For the first time, you’ll be able to get a train through Manchester’s three cen- tral train stations. At the moment there’s a limit on where people can get on and off the train and there- fore a limit on economic activity and growth.”


Under the plans, two new plat- forms would be built at Piccadilly and a fourth at Manchester Airport, alongside the additional track around Manchester, on the


route to Leeds, in the Pennines region and near Sheffield to al- low fast trains to overtake stop- ping services. The Manchester- Liverpool electrification also helps support the aims of the Northern Hub project.


The Government has kept up in- frastructure investment in rail, with support for expensive projects like Crossrail, HS2, and Great Western Main Line electrification. But is Network Rail confident of clawing hundreds of millions of pounds more from ministers for the Northern Hub?


Yes, according to Botham: “The Coalition has said they’re pre- pared to invest in schemes that generate economic growth.


“In February last year we said we believed the capital cost was in the region of £530m, and there was some further work on journey time improvement we needed to do – and that doesn’t include the cost of land. We’ve been working the costs up in a lot more detail and that’s one of the outputs that will come through from the indus- try plan.


“Everyone knows the impor- tance the Coalition Government is putting on the concept of gen- erating private sector growth and enterprise, so we’re very much developing the Northern Hub on that basis.


“This proposal is focused on what transport, and rail in particular, needs to do to facilitate that pri- vate sector economic growth across the North. We’ve been working in a lot of detail over recent months with our design consultants, our customers and stakeholders across the whole of the North, developing the project for the industry’s ‘initial plan’, due to be published in September this year, which will contain details of the proposals from the industry as a whole for how rail needs to meet


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