News: Northern rail and road routes as vital as Crossrail 2, TfN says

Financial Times 15th November 2015  “New rail and road routes across the Pennines are as much a national priority as Crossrail 2 in London, the chief of a government-backed transport agency for northern England has said. David Brown said Transport for the North would argue forthrightly that new routes were vital to the UK’s economic growth.

London businesses are lobbying hard for the north-south £27bn Crossrail 2 line, even before the east-west Crossrail 1 link, which is set to cost £14.8bn, is completed. But Mr Brown said the plans of TfN, which started work on November 9, were “nationally significant”. “You have a big-ticket item for London so we need a big-ticket item for the north,” he added. TfN is working on a plan for £15bn-£50bn of infrastructure spending over the next 10 to 15 years.

TfN, which has been given a £10m annual budget, wants to unite northern politicians and business leaders around three big schemes. They are a new tunnelled road between Manchester and Sheffield, a four-track trans-Pennine railway line that would link with the HS2 line to London, and a new Liverpool-Manchester airport-Manchester railway line also linked to HS2.”

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