Manchester could be ‘the best place to live in the country’ once HS2 has been completed — so long as it’s done in the right way, the Mayor has said.
Currently, leaders in Manchester — and across the North — are locked in a disagreement with the government over how it is best for the high-speed railway to connect the second city with the rest of the country. The latest row has come about after Ministers said they could not afford to build the promised underground Piccadilly HS2 station, which would instead be replaced by an overground terminus, with trains being brought in on unsightly concrete stilts .
That’s the wrong approach Andy Burnham told reporters, as he called on MPs to debate the issue in the House of Parliament. The Labour man also confirmed that authorities in the North are happy to explore the prospect of land value capture — an ‘innovative finance’ method, he said.
Outlining the issues from the roof of Mayfield Depot, which sits next to Manchester Piccadilly station, Mr Burnham said: “They get bigger the closer to Manchester city centre you get. The government is proposing a cut-price scheme that brings HS2 in on stilts into Manchester city centre into Piccadilly and would take it out towards Yorkshire as Northern Powerhouse Rail in a similar construct of concrete flyover.
“We think it's unfair to the existing communities in East Manchester, but we also think it's wrong from a railway point of view. You know the issue we have here is congestion on the surface of the railway in Manchester city centre and what are we going to do? Add more trains into that mix?
“What we should do, in our view, is bring HS2 up from the Airport, into the city centre down underground, through Manchester Piccadilly on a more east-west alignment, so that HS2 then can carry on to Bradford and Leeds as part of Northern Powerhouse Rail.”
If the Northern Vision for the railway — which is going to cost billions of pounds and take years to complete — is met, then it will lead Manchester to being one of the best places to be in the UK, Mr Burnham added. He explained: “I keep saying it will be like the Canary Wharf of the North, because who wouldn't want to locate here?
“[We would] have HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail coming through. That's modern rail services in the heart of Manchester Piccadilly. It would be the best place to live in the country, if not the world.”
Yesterday's (August 4) media event was called as Mr Burnham has formally submitted his petition to the government over his qualms about the project, alongside calling for the full debate in the Commons. The Mayor says currently, there is a danger that the future of Northern rail transport could be ‘stitched up in a committee’.
“This issue about Piccadilly needs taking the floor of the House of Commons, because it's an issue that affects everyone in the entire North,” he continued. “And I would only accept the final decision of Parliament if every MP has voted on it. We'll be working hard to make these issues of first order.”
Away from the political appeals, the Mayor also confirmed that his team were prepared to look at ‘innovative’ financing for the project. He later confirmed to the Manchester Evening News he meant land value recapture.
In principle, the idea of the scheme would be to capture the increased value of any land near the line — with sites near major infrastructure projects often seeing huge increases in their attraction to investors. The Mayor used London’s recently-opened CrossRail as an example, claiming some areas of land near the Elizabeth line have ‘doubled or trebled’ in some instances.
These extra values would then be captured by the government, to help fund the underground Piccadilly Station and Northern Powerhouse Rail.
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