RIA Policy Note: Integrated Rail Plan for the North & Midlands
Contents I. Introduction – page 1 II. The Integrated Rail Plan Briefing – pages 2-5 III. Appendices – pages 6-11
I. Introduction On 18 November 2021, the Government published the long-awaited Integrated Rail Plan for the North & Midlands, outlining the Government’s investment in the railway network in the Midlands and the North. This briefing is for RIA Members only and we ask that you do not share it beyond your organisation. It reflects RIA’s analysis and views on the IRP for RIA Members. If you have any questions about the briefing, please contact RIA Senior Policy Executive Francesca Lentini at francesca.lentini@riagb.org.uk and 020 7201 0777 / 07904 991067. It is worth noting that the IRP is not the only rail investment plan for the UK and that there will be further opportunities for the Government to confirm additional rail investments, for example as part of the PR23 process and on a ‘business case by business case’ basis. For instance, the Union Connectivity Review already identifies additional schemes.
II. The Integrated Rail Plan Briefing 1) Core Projects a) Opportunities The Integrated Rail Plan for the North & Midlands (IRP) commits to building three new high speed lines for a total of 110 miles of route: i) HS2 from Crewe to Manchester, on the route and line speed as previously planned, with new stations at Manchester Airport and Manchester Piccadilly. ii) HS2 from the West Midlands to East Midlands Parkway (HS2 East), on the route and line speed as previously planned. (1) From here, HS2 trains will continue directly to Nottingham, Derby, Chesterfield, and Sheffield on the upgraded and electrified Midland Main Line. (2) Unlike the original plans, HS2 will serve Nottingham and Derby city centres. iii) On Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), a new build high speed line between Warrington, Manchester and Yorkshire (Marsden), east of which the line will be upgraded. Please refer to Annex A for more details.
1 / 11
RIA Policy Note: Integrated Rail Plan for the North & Midlands b) Risks i)
The Eastern Leg of HS2 between Birmingham and Leeds will not be built in full – only between Birmingham and East Midlands Parkway. HS2 trains between Birmingham and Yorkshire will run mostly on an electrified and upgraded Midland Mainline. ii) The NPR line between Leeds and Manchester will be part new build/part upgrade of the existing route. Safeguarding of the route to Leeds will remain in place, although there is no commitment to complete this route. £100m has been allocated to explore how HS2 services can reach Leeds. Whilst electrification of the Midland Mainline is positive (and reverses the earlier cancellation), this will not provide the new capacity that a HS2 route would have entailed. Nor is it clear whether any evaluation has been made of the ability of the upgraded Midland Mainline to accommodate the additional traffic from HS2, whilst at least maintaining existing passenger and freight services. There is a higher risk of disruption to passengers whilst work is completed. On NPR, the selected scheme is the least ambitious of TfN’s proposed three options, with no commitment to complete a high-speed route as far as Leeds. The new plan has a value of £23 billion compared to an original budget of £39 billion. Whilst both schemes could be seen as ‘stepping stones’ on the way to full completion of the Eastern Leg and NPR, there is no commitment to this. Many in the railway industry feel there is a lack of longer-term strategic thinking, with potential impact on skills and on climate goals, as will be discussed in more detail in Section 3. 2) Funding, phasing and delivery a) Opportunities In terms of funding, the IRP commits the Government to a programme of investment of £96bn for rail construction and upgrades in the Midlands and the North over the next 30 years. This includes £54bn of investments on rail and local transport, in addition to the £42bn already included for HS2 Phases 1 and 2a between London, the West Midlands and Crewe – see Annex B for more details. In addition to this £96bn, further funding was announced in the autumn Spending Review, including: more than £5 billion to transform buses and cycling outside London; more than £8bn on local roads; £450m in new transport projects as part of the first round of the Levelling Up Fund; and £5.7bn for eight English city regions, to transform local transport networks. In the IRP, the Government commits to end the typical “boom and bust” in investment in the railway industry, by ensuring schemes are properly developed to provide a sustainable pipeline for the rail supply chain which can be delivered efficiently. They note that the approach to projects will reflect the Construction Playbook, and other lessons learned from major projects, by using cost ranges to reflect uncertainty and a portfolio approach to project development. All projects will be managed via the Rail Network Enhancements Pipeline (RNEP) process. The Government plans to apply the principles of Project SPEED to the IRP schemes. It also commits to using an adaptive approach, as recommended by the National Infrastructure 2 / 11
RIA Policy Note: Integrated Rail Plan for the North & Midlands Commission. To this end, a core pipeline of schemes has been identified (see Annex C), and any further schemes will be subject to affordability, delivering commitments on time and to budget, and complimentary investments. Commitments will be made only to progress individual schemes up to the next stage of development. b) Risks Whilst on the face of it the Government is investing significant sums in rail around the country, in the IRP there is still no mention of when we can expect to see progress on these rail projects via an update on the Rail Network Enhancements Pipeline (RNEP), which was last updated and announced in October 2019. Also, it is also not currently clear how much of the £35bn referred to in the Spending Review is new. £54bn of spending on rail and local transport is labelled as “further” investment, but in practice only £30bn of the £54bn is new money, and it should be regarded as an investment to substitute NPR and HS2 Eastern Leg. 3) Electrification and Digital a) Opportunities The IRP sets out the electrification and/or upgrade of three existing main lines, totalling 180 miles of electrified lines and 400 miles of upgraded lines in total: i) Transpennine Main Line between Manchester, Leeds and York will be fully electrified and upgraded with digital signalling – this goes further than original plans, which involved only partial electrification of the route and partial digital signalling. ii) The Midland Main Line between London St Pancras, the East Midlands and Sheffield, will be fully electrified and upgraded. iii) The IRP commits to the East Coast Main Line (ECML) digital signalling and notes that this project will also be sped up. b) Risks i)
On electrification, it is welcome to see the Government’s commitment to electrify 180 miles through the IRP as a positive step forward. It is assumed this is 180 route miles, whereas electrification is normally measured in single track kilometres (stk). Based on the Network Rail Traction Decarbonisation Network Study, 450stkm a year would be required to meet the legal target of net zero carbon by 2050. RIA estimates that the 180 route miles committed is equivalent to around 750stk and less than two years of the required rate of progress. So, whilst positive, the rate of electrification will continue to fall behind that necessary to achieve the Government’s legally binding net zero goal. RIA also continues to call for a rolling programme of electrification to stop the “feast and famine” approach. ii) On digital signalling, it is again positive to see the commitment to further digital signalling on Transpennine and ECML. Greater clarity on the extent of the proposals on ECML would be welcomed and confirmation that the necessary rolling stock fitment has also been considered. To support efficient delivery and lower unit costs, RIA has called for this work to be integrated in a ‘rolling programme’ of digital signalling to address the renewals backlog identified in the Long Term Deployment Plan. RIA have undertaken work with members as part of the Rail Sector Deal, which shows that with sufficient volume competition can be increased and costs reduced. Whilst the commitment to additional digital signalling in the IRP is welcome, it will be insufficient alone to allow these efficiencies to be delivered – so it must be considered alongside the renewal programme.
3 / 11
RIA Policy Note: Integrated Rail Plan for the North & Midlands 4) Benefits: journey times, capacity, environment, etc a) Opportunities The Government claims the new IRP will deliver faster or similar journeys to the original HS2 and Leeds-Manchester proposals. In the Plan, it is stated that “to most destinations, journey times under the IRP to London and across the NPR core network will be similar to or faster than the original HS2 and NPR plans, with significant improvements also for Birmingham”. The Plan also states that the IRP “is designed to deliver increased capacity”. b) Risks It is not clear whether detailed network and timetable modelling has been undertaken to validate the journey time and capacity claims, without which many knowledgeable observers are expressing doubts that the necessary paths can be made available on a mixed traffic (ie passenger and freight services) railway. To increase industry confidence, it is recommended that such modelling is released. Taking the journey times stated in the IRP on face value, future journey times will be dramatically improved compared to current, but this is not the case when compared to speeds that would have been achieved under original plans for full HS2 and NPR. Out of the 28 journeys listed in the Plan, journey times would only be improved for five of these routes, they would remain similar four, and would be worsened for 19 routes, albeit only marginally for journeys from Manchester and Leeds. The “significant improvements for Birmingham” are difficult to identify, as journey times would increase and sometimes almost double on four Birmingham routes under the IRP. If we analyse London only, out of the nine routes listed on the plan, three journey times would improve, two would remain the same, and four would worsen. Moreover, going back and forth between plans and lack of certainty undermines efficient delivery. For a visual analysis, please refer to Annex D. On increased capacity, this would have actually been increased significantly more under previous HS2 plans – please refer to Annex E for more details. It also appears that at least some of the capacity increases relate to increased numbers of seats per train rather than an increased number of trains being able to run on improved infrastructure. It is also not clear that the IRP investments will be enough to achieve zero carbon. For instance, on biodiversity, generally messaging on the IRP is mixed: recent messaging on HS2 focussed on capacity and both NR and HS2 are committed to biodiversity net gain, but the IRP focusses on speed and implies original HS2 plans would have been worse for biodiversity. Another example is electrification - please refer to Section 3 of this note. 5) Local transport a) Opportunities The IRP commits to: i) Building a Mass Transit System for Leeds and West Yorkshire, with £200m of immediate funding made available; ii) Beginning work on the Midlands Hub Rail project; and iii) Installing contactless tap-in and tap-out ticketing across the commuter networks of the Midlands and North. 4 / 11
RIA Policy Note: Integrated Rail Plan for the North & Midlands b) Risks There is no funding for the Midlands Rail Hub and only £100m of the £200m for Leeds seems to be for the tram – with the other £100m for Network Rail to plan the running of highspeed trains over the traditional network as far as Leeds. It is anticipated that a Mass Transit System for Leeds will cost far more than £100m.
III. Impact to RIA’s Public Affairs & Policy Work RIA members can find our statement on the IRP here. In terms of how it impacts our political engagement, RIA proposes: 1) To continue to ask for an update to the RNEP, with its publication all the more important now new projects have been added to the list. 2) RIA welcomes the Midland Mainline and Trans Pennine Route electrification, but will continue to ask for rolling programmes of electrification. 3) RIA welcomes further digital signalling on the East Coast Mainline, but will continue to ask for the full delivery of Network Rail’s Long Term Deployment Plan. 4) RIA will continue to make the case for the benefits of rail and HS2 in particular. We will continue to promote the value of the Eastern Leg of HS2 and NPR, whilst also appreciating the change in Government’s priorities to other schemes. 5) RIA will work with members and stakeholders to support the industry successfully delivering the investments identified in the IRP. RIA welcomes comment on these priorities – please contact RIA Senior Policy Executive Francesca Lentini at francesca.lentini@riagb.org.uk and 020 7201 0777 / 07904 991067 if you would like to share your views.
5 / 11
RIA Policy Note: Integrated Rail Plan for the North & Midlands Annex A: Full list of the IRP core portfolio and announced projects 1) HS2 Phase 2b Western Leg a) HS2 Western Leg (Phase 2b) i) The high speed line to Manchester will be completed. ii) The Crewe to Manchester section of the Western Leg of HS2 Phase 2b should proceed as planned. b) Manchester Piccadilly surface station expansion to support future NPR services and HS2 c) Crewe Northern Connection construction, part of a Crewe Hub 2) HS2 Phase 2b Eastern Leg a) Original plan: Eastern Leg to run from the West Midlands to an East Midlands Hub station at Toton. Trains would then continue north, serving Chesterfield and Sheffield via a spur to the Midland Main Line (MML), or continue on new high speed line to a new station at Leeds, with a spur to the East Coast Main Line (ECML) to serve York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle. b) New plan: i) New high speed line from the West Midlands to East Midlands Parkway (HS2 East), based on the existing safeguarded route, but designed to allow trains to reach the existing stations in Nottingham and Derby. ii) Electrification of the Midland Main Line to Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield via Derby. iii) Package of further investment on the East Coast Main Line (ECML) from London to Leeds and the North East. iv) Significant package of upgrades to the East Coast Main Line 3) Improvements to local services and integration with HS2 and NPR: a) West Yorkshire Mass Transit System i) Committing more than £200m from central government to further develop and start work on delivering these plans, alongside the assessment of how best to get HS2 services to Leeds. b) Midlands Rail Hub i) A high speed line between the West and East Midlands, which would give better connectivity benefits than previous plans. 4) Northern Powerhouse Rail a) Between Liverpool and York, NPR will be built in line with the 2019 Option 1 developed by TfN, instead of Option 3, which was TfN’s preference. This would include: i) 40 miles of newbuild high speed line between Warrington, Manchester and Yorkshire and upgraded and electrified conventional line for the rest of the route. ii) Improvements to the previous Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) plans between Manchester and Leeds, including full electrification, digital signalling, longer sections of three and four-tracking, and gauge upgrades. iii) Electrification of Leeds–York.
6 / 11
RIA Policy Note: Integrated Rail Plan for the North & Midlands Annex B: Scheme costs
7 / 11
RIA Policy Note: Integrated Rail Plan for the North & Midlands Annex C: IRP map
8 / 11
RIA Policy Note: Integrated Rail Plan for the North & Midlands Annex D: Journey times analysis
9 / 11
RIA Policy Note: Integrated Rail Plan for the North & Midlands Annex E: Capacity analysis
10 / 11
RIA Policy Note: Integrated Rail Plan for the North & Midlands Annex F: Timeline
11 / 11
