The UK government’s recent decision to cancel the high-speed line to Manchester has sparked questions about the alternatives promised by the Prime Minister. While he assured the public that “every penny” of the £36 billion of savings from scrapping the HS2 project would go into other rail, road, and bus schemes, some of the promised projects have been announced before, and some vital information remains unclear.
The cancellation of the high-speed line to Manchester raises questions about whether passengers will only be able to get off from some carriages. HS2 trains require longer platforms, but it remains unclear whether there will be funding for longer platforms at Manchester Piccadilly. The Department for Transport pointed to the £12bn to better connect Manchester and Liverpool, but official documents do not mention platform improvements.
The announcement of a dual carriageway between Morpeth and Ellingham in North East England has also been questioned, as this stretch of road has been promised many times before. Former Prime Minister David Cameron announced £290m for the project in 2014 and it was scheduled to be completed before 2020, but planning permission had to be extended because a decision to go ahead had not been made.
Other promised schemes include work on a mass transit system linking Leeds, Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, and Wakefield, along with £2bn investment to include a “brand new” railway station in Bradford. However, these projects have been cancelled and reinstated before, leaving some people in doubt about their future success.
There is also a question about whether “every penny” of the savings will be reinvested in alternative schemes, as £30bn of the £36bn will come from cancelling future work. While the government has announced £32bn of spending for new schemes, about 15 smaller projects are still to be given cash values. The government claims that the new schemes will be delivered “more quickly than HS2,” but it remains to be seen whether the public will remain confident in these alternative projects
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