All ahead for Liverpool-Manchester rail plan – The Irish News

Plans for a new rail line between Liverpool and Manchester and refurbished stations have been announced by a new rail board.

Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham and Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram said the plans would boost the North West’s economy and increase opportunities for businesses and residents.

The plans were announced after the mayors, along with other local politicians, recently launched the Liverpool-Manchester Rail Council, to improve connectivity between the two regions of the city.

A new line will link Liverpool Lime Street with Manchester Piccadilly, via refurbished stations at Warrington Bank Quay and Manchester Airport.

A tube station is also planned at Manchester Piccadilly, along with improvements to Liverpool Central, the busiest tube station outside London.

Announcing the plans at the UK Infrastructure and Investment Forum in Leeds, Mr Rotheram said it was 200 years ago this week that the first board meeting of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company took place.

Six years later, the world’s first intercity railway line between the two cities was completed.

But Mr Rotheram said the journey time between the two cities today was comparable to the time taken in the early days of steam.

If the new plans go ahead, the journey time between Liverpool city center and Manchester Airport, now well over an hour, will be cut to 25 minutes.

Mr Rotheram said: “It won’t be like HS2 and promise after promise and nothing delivered.

“This will happen. We have the budget, we want to increase it, but we really have the best interests of the cities of Liverpool and Manchester and the Liverpool city region and the Manchester city region at heart.”

Last year, the government finally confirmed that the northern part of the high-speed rail link to Birmingham and London would be scrapped, saving around £36bn.

The government has promised that some of the money will instead be spent on other transport projects in the north of England.

Mr Burnham added: “The economy becomes bigger if you build the railway the right way.

“Steve and I have received confirmation from the government that £17 billion is still in the plan, the integrated rail plan, to deliver this new railway.”

Mr Burnham said the £17bn of public money was just a “starting point” and the council would be a public-private partnership.

He added: “This was the first railway in the world. Why can’t we now have an ambition around it to be the most innovative, greenest railway in the world, as we bring it, 200 years later?

“It’s going to be a really exciting project to work on, and that was always supposed to be a step up, wasn’t it?

“This is us doing it for ourselves, setting our own ambition where we hope the UK government will allow us, so finally all the pain of the rail debate, we’ve sort of got to the right station. “