When London’s new 73-mile Elizabeth line won the prestigious Stirling prize for architecture last week, the judges’ choice proved a popular one. Spacious, fast and pleasing on the eye, the east-west addition to the capital’s underground network is a triumphant example of modern civic infrastructure. As this newspaper’s architecture and design critic put it, here was proof positive that “Britain is still capable of pulling off gargantuan transport infrastructure projects with style and panache”.
Sadly, beyond the south-east – and particularly in the north – such feelgood moments have been notable by their absence. Ten years after George Osborne’s northern powerhouse agenda promised upgraded rail links across the north of England, travellers in Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds are still waiting on the platform for that new era to arrive. During that time, spending per capita on transport in London has been more than double that in the north. A dizzying series of Westminster policy delays, cancellations and U-turns have cumulatively undermined investor confidence and passenger morale from Liverpool to Leeds.
The net result is the dispiriting shambles that has been inherited by the new Labour transport secretary, Louise Haigh. The cancellation of HS2’s northern leg from Birmingham to Manchester threatens to leave an overburdened west coast mainline close to collapse, with knock-on effects for the M6. Plans for Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), originally conceived as a high-speed east-west equivalent of London’s Crossrail, have been downgraded and truncated, and remain shrouded in uncertainty. The same goes for a new transport deal for Bradford, which has the worst connections of any major city in Britain. A decade of high-flown modernising rhetoric has made headlines, but left the north’s Victorian and now dysfunctional transport infrastructure largely unaltered.
Following representations from Labour’s northern metro mayors, Ms Haigh is reportedly exploring the possibility of a cheaper and slower alternative to the abandoned northern leg of HS2. That would be far better than nothing. But if Labour is serious in its ambitions to unlock growth in all parts of the country, it must find the boldness and imagination to do things differently.
In his Labour-commissioned review of rail and urban transport, the head of Great British Energy, Juergen Maier, cited Germany’s Ruhr region as an example of better transport links driving greater productivity in the post-industrial era. The same would apply to England’s northern conurbations, but Treasury short-termism has repeatedly stymied the kind of transformative investment so desperately needed. The latest arm-wrestle over cash concerns a proposed £17bn high-speed link between Liverpool and Manchester. Ominously, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has placed this project alongside other unfunded commitments by Rishi Sunak’s outgoing administration.
The Elizabeth line carried a price tag of £19bn. It has been estimated that it may add £42bn to the UK economy, and it is driving regeneration along the length of its route. The socioeconomic impact of similar investment and ambition in the north, following the decades of neglect, could be even more dramatic. Last week’s award of the Stirling prize shone a light on the multiple and long-term benefits of investing big in public transport. It is time that lesson was finally learned and applied outside the capital.
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• This article was amended on 22 October 2024. An earlier version said the Elizabeth line had, in two years, “already added an estimated £42bn to the UK economy”. This figure is actually the estimated benefit of the project to the UK economy over 60 years, based on 2002 prices.
