Chairman's Blog

I went to the fringe meeting on “The future of rail in the north – our vision for travel and the economy” last Monday evening. Chaired by TV Presenter, Andy Crane, the speakers were Cllr Ian Macdonald, GMITA (GMPTA, as was) Vice Chair, Paul Plummer, Director – Planning & Regulation, Network Rail, Edward Timpson, MP for Crewe and Nantwich, and Steven Hammond MP (who arrived 38 minutes late and missed all the other speeches – shame!), Shadow Transport Minister.

Andy Crane set the scene explaining the subject of the meeting was actually “The Manchester Hub”, acknowledged by just about everyone as being the major bottleneck for the whole of northern England preventing better rail travel between many towns and cities in the North and thereby restraining economic growth.

The speeches were good, with general acceptance that the current situation was bad for northern England. HS2 (the proposals for a High Speed line potentially coming to North West England in 20+ years) needed to be taken into account, but action was needed much sooner. In the current Control Period 4 (CP4), Network Rail were spending on Crossrail (London & SE), Thameslink (London & SE), Reading remodelling (London & SE) and Birmingham New Street (in my view, essentially shopping centre improvements in Birmingham with nothing much for rail), so now was the time to ask for projects to be considered for CP5 (from 2015).

Steven, having arrived late, spoke well, though had not realised the subject had changed, but seemed to detect this through questions. He particularly mentioned he thought the North had the poorest rail service in the country in terms of speed, timetables and poor quality rolling stock, though I was left wondering a little if he might have said the same about somewhere else in the country if the Tory Conference had been there.

There were about 25 minutes for questions. Andy allowed me to ask a question along the lines of – “Our local services in south Manchester and mid-Cheshire were reduced in December 2008 in order to provide extra paths for more and faster trains to/from London which has led to much poorer services for local users and much increased traffic congestion into/out of Manchester from the south and around Stockport. Was I correct in understanding nothing was likely to be done about this until 2015 at the earliest, thus ensuring the local economy continued to underperform, surely bad news for the whole of the UK?” The speakers all seemed to accept this was the case and was unacceptable and needed serious consideration. It seems the message was heard and understood, but whether anything will happen to resolve this some time soon is rather more in doubt.

There were others in influence there too, such as Anthony Smith, Chairman of Passenger Focus and Heidi Mottram, MD of Northern Rail with a team of 3. There were other useful points made which seemed to be heard by those close to or in positions of influence. Strangely, when talking about rail and station reopenings, Edward Timpson talked about needs and successes in Lancashire, seeming to completely forget about the Middlewich proposals in his own backyard (shame on him!)

I had been sceptical about whether the meeting would be worth attending, but it definitely was. If you have comments on the above, or attended any of the other transport related fringe meetings, please let us know.