Insight from Richard Lungmuss
In this week’s article I should declare an interest. For the past 8 years or so I have been part of a group seeking, without success, to persuade Transport for the North that there are better, faster and more cost efficient ways of delivering NPR. This article is born of a sense of frustration that 12 years after NPR was first introduced, £410m has been spent delivering a lot of paper options but not much else of tangible value. [Add to that the £190m of superfluous design on the Trans Pennine Route Upgrade (TRU) and the sums wasted start to add up]
Whilst George Osborne was announcing his vision of NPR in 2014, I was signing the contract to build the first phase of the Sydney Metro as the lead of a consortium including MTR. This 4.3Bn Australian dollar PPP project for 36 km of driverless, twin track metro, converted existing lines and merged them with new build, including tunnels and viaducts and 8 new stations. The project commenced in 2015 and was delivered on schedule and under budget in 2019, when it was opened and operated under concession by MTR. [Subsequent phases of the Metro have been built under Sydney harbour, through the City centre and out to Bankstown via Sydney Central. There have however been cost and schedule overruns associated with later phases of the project, caused by technical and some governance issues.]
NPR meanwhile has had a difficult gestation. From its initial design for a new line between Liverpool and Leeds, including Bradford, it has suffered through association with HS2 phase 2b and successive Conservative leaders’ interference (er…. initiatives!), notably the Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) which curtailed it in the early 2020s. In May2024 a plan was announced to form a Liverpool Manchester Railway Board to develop plans for a high speed link between Manchester and Liverpool.
Subsequent deferrals of HS2 connections impacted NPR sequencing and eventually in Jan 2026 the Government announced a 3 phase plan for NPR, with phase 1 work around electrification in the Leeds area (including TRU planned works), phase 2 being a predominantly new line between Manchester and Liverpool via Manchester Airport and Warrington Quay and the third phase improving connectivity between Manchester and Leeds, building on the work of TRU but NOT including a new line across the Pennines. The timescale for completion of NPR has now extended well into the 2040s, or early 2050s, and is capped at £45Bn.
Notwithstanding the timescales of this NPR solution, inevitably providing opportunities for yet more political interference, the single biggest issue in my mind is the lack of an agreed design for the entire NPR project. NPR feels as if it is being delivered in a piecemeal fashion. Furthermore, NPR has become conflated with the increasingly expensive TRU, meaning that all NPR rail works will have to be delivered to TRU specifications, including electrification and ETCS. Finally, is Transport for the North (TfN) to be given the devolved power to deliver this project?, or it will continue to act as a satellite of the DfT.
I stated at the outset that I had an interest in NPR and a team including myself have worked on a single design for a Northern Rail network over the past 10 years or so. This was specifically designed to meet TfN’s journey time and capacity specifications, which included 6 trains per hour between Leeds and Sheffield, Leeds and Manchester and Manchester and Sheffield with respective journey times of 19, 26 and 22 minutes. Our design calls for a NEW, high speed, central spine between Liverpool and Manchester (not calling at Manchester Airport) and then splitting to Leeds and Sheffield once across the Pennines.
The design calls for a through west to east below grade station at Manchester Picadilly, the use of the disused Woodhead tunnels and a high speed triangular junction in the Pennistone area. The design also includes a “through” North – South station in Bradford and has a worked up timetabling model to significant detail. The design has been offered to TfN on a number of occasions as the basis for a comparator for other designs but to date has not been treated seriously. Our design team is called Network North and it was something of a shock to find Rishi Sunak and his team using the same name to describe his motley collection of rail projects. We remain very willing to work with TfN / DfT to discuss our design should they wish to do so.
Whilst HS2 phase 2 was still planned it was always proposed that NPR would use HS2 as part of its cross Pennine strategy. We at Network North always felt that linking the delivery of one project (NPR), to another (HS2) was a mistake, not least because it guaranteed that overall delivery of NPR could not occur until HS2 had been delivered, i.e. the late 2040s. In hindsight, given the current timescales for NPR, perhaps this was by design but it did feel as if NPR was dangerously contingent on the success of HS2, plus of course that HS2 was planning for terminal platforms at Manchester Picadilly. Perhaps one of the positives of cancellation of HS2 phase 2b has been to focus minds on the need for a through station at Manchester Picadilly.
Which brings us to 2026 and the current plans for NPR. There has certainly been no lack of discussion of options for NPR but it is still difficult to imagine what the overall NPR design will look like. The current plan appears to draw on combining some sub-optimal solutions, e.g. current Manchester to Sheffield Hope Valley line (which although upgraded is still constrained) and freight appears to be something of an afterthought. Governance too feels awkward and one wonders why TfN have not been given the devolved powers that Transport for Scotland have to such beneficial effect in the delivery of Scotland’s railway.
One does wonder whether if TfN was given enhanced powers, including budget, that a PPP contract for significant parts of NPR could be let. TfN, as “shadow operator” could let such a contract having first produced a consolidated overall design for NPR that achieves all of the original specifications for the railway. I would contend that failing to complete NPR until at least the late 2040s (over 20 years time) is far far too long, will make it continue to be a political football and the fact that there are 3 phases mean that the project can be postponed or cancelled at a political whim. Surely time for a such a strategic initiative to be given priority and put beyond politics?
