The transport secretary is seriously considering a recommendation to spend almost £3bn on a “flawed” and “detrimental” rail upgrade in the north of England that will do nothing to improve reliability or air pollution on a slow and delay-plagued line, sources have told the Guardian.
In recent briefings, Department for Transport officials have told stakeholders that its Board Investment and Commercial Committee (BICC) has recommended to Chris Grayling that the 76-mile TransPennine route between Leeds and Manchester should not be fully electrified.
If the plan is put in place, tunnels will not be made big enough to carry modern freight trains and not enough additional track will be laid to allow fast trains to overtake slow services. “It will be a downgrade of another downgrade,” according to the shadow rail minister, Rachael Maskell, who said shewas passed information from “well-placed” sources.
“Reliability and capacity has been taken off the table,” she said, accusing Grayling of “ruining all of the TransPennine ambition.”
If Grayling follows the advice, critics warn it would undermine the government’s oft-stated claim that the £2.9bn upgrade would “deliver faster, longer, more frequent and more reliable services across the north of England, from Newcastle, Hull and York towards Manchester and Liverpool via Leeds”.
Millions of passengers use the key northern route across the Pennines and passenger numbers are expected to double over the next 20 years. Demand for northern freight transport is also expected to increase, particularly if Brexit pushes ships away from the Dover crossing and up to ports on the Humber and in north-east England.
Maskell said: “[Grayling’s option] is seriously flawed. It is seriously detrimental, to the northern economy and to the ports, not having the option to transport freight across the country by rail. It is also detrimental to passengers at a time when reliability has hardly been on people’s lips.” New, longer trains would be introduced but without the infrastructure to ensure they ran on time, she added.
The core of the route between Stalybridge in Greater Manchester and Huddersfield in West Yorkshire will now not be electrified, along with 12 miles east of Leeds, according to the Rail Freight Group, which said the Department of Transport’s committee had made the recommendation to Grayling.
Trains using the route will have to be “bi-modal”, switching to environmentally unfriendly diesel engines during key, hilly sections .
The advice contradicts recommendations from Transport for the North (TfN), a statutory body set up to advise the government. In September, it asked the DfT for assurance that “any upgrades are environmentally sustainable and do not have a negative impact on air quality”. It also demanded provision for freight, with the option to transport containers by rail, which is currently not possible because the tunnels are too low.
The Guardian understands the DfT did not respond to the letter and that the TfN board met on Thursday and repeatedly asked a senior DfT official if it was true that Grayling preferred the one upgrade option TfN specifically asked him not to choose, without receiving a satisfactory answer.
Barry White, TfN’s chief executive, suggested he was not ready to give in without a fight. “We continue to seek the journey time improvements, capacity, reliability and freight access that were first set out. We must push for the best solution for the north and will continue to do so,” he said. “This major investment must secure sustained improvement in our railway that delivers on ambitions.”
Mike Hogg of the Rail Freight Group said that if Grayling’s plans went ahead, freight would continue to be transported by road, adding to the already congested motorways and increasing air pollution. “It means that the members of our trade body won’t have the opportunity to put containers on railway wagons and take them over the Pennines. They can’t now, because of capacity and height clearance, and they aren’t going to be able to in the future either. It will go by road, on the M62 instead,” he said.
He said he had known since 18 November that the line was not going to be electrified fully and waas not going to be able to take freight, ignoring the business case made by shippers, port groups and rail hauliers for better freight lines across the Pennines. “We are disappointed and frustrated at the recommendation made by the Department of Transport’s BIC committee and apparently accepted by Chris Grayling,” he said.
Just six freight trains a day run along the TransPennine mainline, but the freight industry submitted plans to increase that to 48 trains a day, six days a week, according to Hogg. He said that very significant investments had been made by major ports at Liverpool, in the Humber and in the north-east for the handling and transfer to rail of containers brought in by sea and that demand for rail freight was likely to continue to rise at 6% per year.
The fastest passenger trains between Manchester Piccadilly and Leeds take 58 minutes. The proposed upgrade would shave between seven and eight minutes off the journey time, according to Hogg. Commuters from Ashford in Kent can get to Stratford International in east London in half an hour, despite the journey being 10 miles longer.
In response to questions from the Guardian about which sections of the TransPennine route would be electrified and whether it would be able to carry freight, a DfT spokeswoman said claims from Maskell and the Rail Freight Group were “completely unfounded”.
She declined to set out the specific plan for TransPennine, saying instead: “The first phase of the upgrade, starting in the spring, will be the biggest investment in our existing railway in the next five years. The department will continue to work with stakeholders to determine how best to deliver all phases of the upgrade.”
