A Government minister has revealed building a new underground HS2 station at Piccadilly could cost £5bn and described it as a 'crazy amount of money' - despite its potential to transform rail travel in the North.
Despite plans for London's HS2 'super hub' - the new Old Oak Common in West London which will be served by six underground tunnels - and the fact the capital's Crossrail line recently opened this year nearly four years late and £4bn over budget, Rail Minister Wendy Morton rejected calls for a similar proposal and expenditure in Manchester.
She said tunnelling would cause 'major city centre disruption', delay the opening of services into Manchester by 'more than seven years' and potentially lead to an extra 350,000 HGV journeys during construction.
She added: "It would also add around an additional £5 billion to the cost of the Crewe-to-Manchester scheme alone. That is an absolutely crazy amount of money to spend on something that is quite frankly worse."
It was widely expected that a new underground station on the northern flank of Piccadilly train station would be built as part of the HS2 line from London to Manchester, via Birmingham, Crewe and Manchester Airport. But in April, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the underground option had been ruled out because it would 'take a lot of money out of other parts of the network'.
Instead the Government is proposing a cut-price overground station which will see trains emerge from the ground in Ardwick before travelling on a mile-long viaduct of up to 12 metres in height to reach the new surface station. Leaders in Greater Manchester say that's short-sighted, will result in the loss of 500,000sq metres of prime development land, cut off Metrolink lines and blight the city centre by turning swathes of land into a building site
Speaking in a debate on the HS2 Crewe-Manchester Bill in the Commons last night, Denton and Reddish MP Andrew Gwynne described plans for an overground station at Piccadilly as 'suboptimal'. "They will economically damage the growth potential around Piccadilly, and the interrelationship between HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail will be far worse than the Transport for Greater Manchester underground station option," he said.
Withington MP Jeff Smith said: "Would it not be better to do this properly and have an underground station at Manchester Piccadilly that properly links to Northern Powerhouse Rail and future-proofs the network?" Mr Smith later added the 'added economic value' of the 'once-in-a-century project' would recoup the £5bn cost in around 15 years.
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But Heywood and Middleton MP Chris Clarkson said he was 'pretty agnostic' about an underground station. "My concerns, essentially, are that the project calls for a huge tunnel to be built under the station which is larger than anything that has ever been drilled before," he added.
"It cannot be situated under the existing station, so it needs to be either alongside it, as is the case with the overground station anyway, or somewhere else altogether, which is largely pointless."
On Monday the Manchester Evening News launched a campaign calling on the Government not to botch one of the most important transport projects ever to be built in the north of England - by doing it on the cheap.
Crucially the current proposals for a turn-back surface station, rather than an underground through-hub, mean the Government’s Northern Powerhouse Rail - downgraded in Grant Shapps' Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) in November last year - could not be brought back to life in the future as the hub will hit full capacity from day one.
Current plans for a surface station mean passengers will exit the hub into an area currently housing the bins and the back of Greggs. Its design, say experts, also hinders onward journeys via other public transport.
Chancellor Lane - one of the main roads into the city centre from Ardwick - would be closed for good and a huge new road interchange built at Pin Mill Brow. Experts say this will increase car travel, pollution and cut off yet more areas of the city, while jeopardising the proposed tram-train extension.
Meanwhile, the full closure of the Ashton line will force tram passengers on to a replacement bus service for two years. So far pleas for a rethink have been ignored.
As Bev Craig, leader of Manchester City Council, has said: “No other European city would start by building rail infrastructure on concrete stilts. It’s an outdated notion of urban planning, more reminiscent of the 1970s than what we want to see in 2040.
"You would not see a scheme like this proposed in London, or another city in the south east. So why should Manchester have to deal with something that’s substandard from day one and that doesn’t deliver on the rail opportunities that HS2 gives?”
After last night's reading of the Bill, all parties have 25 days to submit their petition to the Government. These objections are then considered by a Select Committee which has not yet been appointed.
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