An Elizabeth Line for the North West

Andy Burnham answers questions from press in Leeds as Rachel Reeves announces new Northern Powerhouse Rail plans. For 15 years or longer, Manchester has been promised a rail revolution. Plans have been launched, rewritten, delayed and abandoned, while successive governments pledged to transform connections across the North before quietly scaling them back or ditching them altogether. Now, after years of false starts city leaders believe something has finally shifted. A new Liverpool-Manchester line will go ahead, along with a major step forward towards an underground Piccadilly station and the possible revival of a new Manchester-Birmingham route. It is a victory years in the making. The announcement is part of a wider £1.1bn commitment to funding transport infrastructure across the north. The plan for the Liverpool-Manchester route promises to cut journey times between the North West’s two biggest cities to as little as 35 minutes and increase the number and frequency of trains – something Andy Burnham says could turn Piccadilly Station into the ‘King’s Cross of the North’. Every bit as significant is the agreement of the government to consider running the lines into the station underground rather than overground.

Source: Manchester Evening News