In video - The mayors of the West Midlands and Greater Manchester have outlined an ambitious plan to tackle the gap resulting from the cancellation of the northern segment of the High-Speed 2 (HS2) rail project in Birmingham.
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00:00 Good afternoon and welcome to the Arab offices in central Birmingham. I hope you're all impressed with it here.
00:06 It's just the second week it's been open.
00:08 I thought we were your offices?
00:09 No, no, no, only we don't have anything this swanky.
00:12 Anyway, so what we're going to do is we're going to explain the work that is undergoing.
00:18 Mainline constraints and they would be both at the southern end and then going into Stockport.
00:25 So from Croome to Stockport at the northern end. So a substantial mix of upgrade and bypassing the existing West Coast Mainline and some new track.
00:36 And then the third option that is under review is a completely new line, a segregated line, which obviously has the most advantage for freight for example.
00:47 But it would not necessarily be built to the specification of the existing high speed line in the south.
00:54 We've agreed with the Secretary of State as it's nearing completion that we will seek a further meeting with him to talk with him and some of the experts supporting us about what is coming through and what is coming through the work.
01:10 At this point there's no further commitment than that, but there is a commitment to have that further meeting.
01:17 I think what I could say finally is that the top purple line as Anthony described it in relation to Liverpool Lime Street and Warrington as NPR goes through Warrington which is the first stop on NPR through Manchester Airport and then on to Piccadilly.
01:38 The two city regions in the north west, the Liverpool city region and Greater Manchester have agreed on that alignment which was the original alignment using the bill in Parliament.
01:52 And it's also been agreed by the other north west authorities, Cheshire East, Cheshire West, Warrington and colleagues in Lancashire, less effective but still they've been in the discussion.
02:03 So the north west has agreed on that alignment. Obviously work proceeds at pace here.
02:10 So I think that helps as well the consideration of this missing piece in the jigsaw which as Andy said is the focus of the review.
02:20 And as this work concludes in March we will then be seeking to meet the Secretary of State again to look at then the headline options that are coming out of the work in Manchester and Birmingham.
02:32 We've just discussed that with the team. It's not entirely clear but it looks as though there would be a big risk of slower journey speeds.
02:40 What is absolutely clear is there would be reduced capacity on the line. So 200 metre trains with fewer seats for the travelling public.
02:51 For us, having been promised a northern powerhouse a decade ago with HS2 at its heart, to end up with a situation where rail services out of Piccadilly are worse than what we have already, well that's just not an acceptable option.
03:06 You only have to look at the map and you conclude there really is a question to be answered here.
03:12 The country is investing massively in the two bits at the top and the bottom of that map and you come to what Andy says is actually the least difficult bit in the middle.
03:21 And that's what drives me to think that putting any short term politics aside this question has to be answered.
03:26 Because of the economic growth of the West Midlands and Greater Manchester as two of the big economic dynamos of the country.
03:33 The business between the two of them and the freight between the two of them is going to grow and the M6 is full so we have to find a way of getting the freight off the road onto rail.
03:44 And that's where the capacity question comes in.
03:47 Have you got your calculators out yet? What are we talking about in terms of a big figure?
03:51 I knew you were going to come to this and this is the question we are not going to answer today. Not because we are being evasive but genuinely because the balance of cost and benefit for none of the pieces has yet been worked out.
04:04 That's the next stage but where all of the experts are is there is a sweet spot here where it can be done for considerably less than the cost of HS2.
04:14 We can consider the blend of public finance and private finance and we will get let's call it a proportion of the benefit of the original HS2 case.
04:23 And it's finding that sweet spot is really the next piece of work.
04:27 Thank you.
04:28 Hi, so Jennifer Scott from Sky News.
04:31 Obviously you said the Transport Secretary has been open minded and he said the same to me but in private some Conservatives I've spoken to have been quite negative about it and do think that you can't possibly do this without any government investment.
04:47 Has he really been open minded do you think? Do you think you will need that element of public investment?
04:53 Well I say something Andy if you want to speak as well but as part of the work on this the private sector consortium have been looking at schemes around the world that have been largely privately funded.
05:07 There are a lot and actually quite comparable schemes in terms of distance and the quality of the rail infrastructure.
05:16 One such being the expansion of TGV between Bordeaux and Tours which I think has been successfully completed and is operational I believe.
05:30 So those sceptical MPs really should look up some of what's been done in other parts of the world where infrastructure has been delivered successfully in a less costly way than the original HS2.
05:50 Where the private sector has played a considerable role in terms of taking that risk off the public sector.
05:57 So this is not unrealistic or pie in the sky there are plenty of examples, 20 plus examples so far that are being brought together as part of this work.
06:09 But perhaps the more important question is I'm very very much more optimistic than I was when this decision was taken in Manchester.
06:18 I genuinely think in a few short months we've come a very long way.