Transport secretary Mark Harper has revealed that discussions have started on raising private investment to fund the construction of the central London station for HS2 at Euston. Mr Harper made a statement to the House of Commons yesterday on the first day that it had reassembled after the conference recess. The Prime Minister had told the Conservative Party conference on 4 October that the section of HS2 between Old Oak Common and Euston is still in the plans, although the project has been put on hold in response to sharply rising costs. Mr Harper said talks took place with the Euston Partnership Board last week. The Board is a group of stakeholders which was set up in 2020, and is chaired by Lord Hendy. It involves representatives of the Department for Transport, HS2 Ltd, Network Rail, development partner Lendlease, Transport for London, the Greater London Authority, the London Borough of Camden and the West Coast Partnership. He explained: ‘The facts have changed, so we are changing our approach. With work well under way, we will finish HS2 between London Euston and the west midlands. Just last week, I spoke to the Euston Partnership Board on the huge regeneration opportunity that can be unlocked with private investment.’ Labour’s shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh responded: ‘The consequences of this shambles are no joke; they are profound. There will be owners of small and medium-sized enterprises that have bet the house on HS2. People will lose their jobs this side of the general election as a result of this decision—homes, farms and businesses all sold, the countryside carved up, and Euston a hole in the ground, and for what? He has wasted £45 billion on a line between Old Oak Common and Birmingham that no one asked for and that has no business case. Only in Conservative-run Britain could a high-speed train hit the slow-coach lane the second it hits the north of England.’

The MP for Stoke-on-Trent South is remaining optimistic about the prospects of a new station for Staffordshire. It was included in the government’s list of transport schemes which will use the budget released by the cancellation of HS2 to Manchester, but the list was ridiculed when it became known that some of the schemes had already been completed years ago and that others might not be started until the 2030s. It was revised within 24 hours of publication, and ministers then defended it as ‘indicative’. Even so, Conservative MP Jack Brereton says there has been ‘rapid progress’ with the project to restore the station at Meir, on the Stoke to Derby line, and that construction could start by the end of the year. Catering staff strike Staff employed by Rail Gourmet who work for TransPennine Express are striking today. The walkout by the catering workers is the latest development in a dispute between the RMT and Rail Gourmet over pay. The union says their pay, terms and conditions are not as favourable as those offered by TransPennine Express to its directly-employed staff. Owls on patrol at Morpeth Northern has recruited plastic owls to deter pigeons from roosting at Morpeth station, where the pigeons cause a mess. Meanwhile, Northern is using the cries of hawks to frighten pigeons away from Driffield station, where the sounds of the birds of prey are broadcast over the public address system twice an hour between 10.00 and 16.00. The trials are set to continue until the end of next month. If they are successful, similar methods could be used at other Northern stations.

A Channel Tunnel consortium which includes the British National Express Group is purchasing 12 trains from Alstom, with the intention of competing with Eurostar. The consortium is investing £1 billion, and has an option to ‘scale up’ its fleet to 16. Eurostar has been providing services between London, Paris and Brussels since 1994, and has recently merged with continental operator Thalys. It also now runs beyond Brussels to Rotterdam and Amsterdam but, as an open access operator, it does not have exclusive rights to run international passenger trains through the Channel Tunnel. It has never had a railway competitor, although Deutsche Bahn ran a demonstration ICE train to St Pancras International 13 years ago this month, as an overture to launching services between German cities and London. However, these never appeared. Spanish national operator Renfe has also considered running between London and Paris, again without result. The consortium, known as Evolyn, is backed by the Spanish Cosmen family. The Cosmens have a holding in National Express, which is now Mobico, although it has kept its original brand for its British long-distance coach services. Evolyn chief executive Jorge Cosmen said: ‘The acquisition of 12 high-speed, state-of-the-art trains, to be expanded to a minimum of 16 according to our forecasts, is the definitive step in the materialisation of Evolyn, a high-speed rail operator that has been under development for three years and that today marks a very important milestone. ‘We know that the governments of the United Kingdom and France welcome a project that will allow their citizens to increase the connection options between the UK and several countries in continental Europe with a green alternative that will also contribute to decarbonisation.’

The Rail Accident Investigation Branch has concluded that the serious derailment of a freight train near Carlisle almost a year ago was caused by one pair of wheels which had stopped rotating up to 88km before the derailment, near Petteril Bridge Junction. The line was badly damaged by the accident on 19 October 2022, in which two of the wagons fell off the bridge, and the routes from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Settle were blocked for seven weeks. No one was hurt. The RAIB has made three recommendations to the railway industry, and also identified one learning point for signallers about when trains should be stopped for examination. TSSA names new general secretary Maryam Eslamdoust has been elected as general secretary of the TSSA. She is a former mayor of the London Borough of Camden, and is the first woman to lead a railway union. She won 47 per cent of votes. The union’s executive committee had endorsed her candidacy in July, saying that she had highlighted abuse against women and girls when she was mayor of Camden. FirstGroup rail profits higher than expected FirstGroup has reported that increased leisure travel over the summer has boosted the revenue from its open access services Hull Trains and Lumo, which both run on the East Coast Main LIne. First also said that its fees from operating services under contract to the government have now been agreed with the Department for Transport, and are higher than expected. The adjusted operating profit for the 2024 financial year is now expected to be between £12 million and £15 million more than predicted.

The mayor of Greater Manchester has called for land which has already been bought for HS2’s axed Phases 2A and 2B to Crewe and Manchester to be safeguarded. The government has said the land will be resold, but Andy Burnham, who was speaking at a fringe event during the Labour Party conference, said the short timetable for a sell-off was ‘not acceptable’, and that the Prime Minister’s decision to abandon the route, announced six days ago at the Conservative Party conference, ‘mustn’t be allowed to stand’. He continued: ‘We need to safeguard the land. We've been told that the Birmingham to Manchester land is protected for a matter of weeks but that protection will be lifted. ‘That does not give Andy Street [mayor of the West Midlands] or me or Tracy Brabin [mayor of West Yorkshire] or anyone else the time to look at whether that’s viable. ‘We need to actually work together. There should be a clear message that time should be allowed to look at Birmingham to Manchester to see if we can come up with an alternative solution. ‘When will Birmingham to Manchester ever get a good railway line if we throw away all the work that’s been done in the last 15 years?’ Delegates at the Labour conference backed a motion last night calling on the party to build HS2 in full if it is elected. Although leader Sir Keir Starmer has declined to commit himself to rescuing the high speed project, Labour is promising to create ‘a comprehensive and well-developed plan by the next election’ for railways in the north of England that can be ready ‘from day one’.

More inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the Network North announcements made by the Prime Minister last week have been emerging, following the axing of HS2 to Crewe and Manchester (writes Sim Harris). Rishi Sunak told the Conservative Party conference on 4 October that £36 billion will be released by scrapping Phases 2A and 2B, the sections north of Lichfield. Instead, the funds would be invested in other transport schemes. He said: ‘I am cancelling the rest of the HS2 project. And in its place, we will reinvest every single penny, £36 billion pounds, in hundreds of new transport projects in the North and the Midlands, and across the country. ‘This means £36 billion of investment in the projects that will make a real difference across our nation.’ The budget for HS2 Phases 2A and 2B would have been spent between now and about 2040, and it has been revealed that some of the projects now listed by the government will not be completed until well into the 2030s. Many of the schemes are not ‘new’. They have been listed on previous occasions, and in some cases have been completed, such as Metrolink to Manchester Airport and Nottingham Express Transit to Clifton South. Both these extensions are listed by the government as being funded by money from HS2, but were actually opened as long as nine years ago. The government also withdrew its initial press release issued on 4 October and replaced it with a revised version the following day.  The first release said: ‘The Leamside line, closed in 1964, will … be reopened.’, but the rewritten version says: ‘The North East will receive around £1.2 billion from the City Regional Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS) 2 budget, plus a further £0.7 billion on top – funded from HS2 …This money could part fund the reopening of the Leamside Line.’ In another revision, the first announcement promises ‘£100 million in funding for a Mass Transit system: to revolutionise travel in and around Bristol.’  In the second there is no reference to Bristol as such. Instead, it says: ‘£100 million in funding for the West of England Combined Authority’. The Authority’s area includes Bristol, but it now appears to be able to decide how to spend the £100 million. Labour shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh said: ‘Their back of a fag packet plan is in disarray, and this shambles shows once again the Conservatives simply aren’t serious about delivering for the North. ‘Only after 13 years of failure could the Conservatives pledge to take two decades to deliver projects they’ve already promised. ‘These are promises that have been made to the North and Midlands countless times before – and frankly they’re sick and tired of empty promises from this broken Government. ‘The truth is, catastrophic Conservative mismanagement has blown a hole in HS2 and after this fiasco, why should anyone in the North believe they can deliver anything they say?’

Reports overnight say that construction of the HS2 station at London Euston, with its 7km link from Old Oak Common, will only go ahead if private investment can be found. The Prime Minister said on Wednesday that although he was scrapping Phases 2A and 2B from north of Birmingham to Crewe and Manchester, the connection with Euston was back on the agenda. The proposed station will now have only six platforms rather than the 11 which were originally envisaged when HS2 was to serve the East Midlands, South Yorkshire, Leeds and Manchester as well as Birmingham. Mr Sunak also said he was taking the revived Euston project away from HS2 Ltd, and creating a Euston Development Zone company to manage the work. Construction at Euston was paused earlier this year because the budget of £2.6 billion had increased to £4.8 billion.  The Department for Transport has not commented on the claims of private sector involvement, beyond saying in the Network North Command Paper that funding of Euston should be ‘underpinned by contributions from those people and businesses its development supports’. Concern has also been growing about the the government’s intention to release safeguarded land on the route between Lichfield and Manchester, which would make restarting the scheme very difficult. The DfT has stopped buying land for Phase 2A between Lichfield and Crewe, and will start selling properties which it had already acquired at a cost of £423 million. If another government wanted to restart the high speed scheme north of Birmingham, it would have to apply for a new Transport & Works Act order, authorising a second round of compulsory purchases. These can involve protracted negotiations with property owners and push completion of a line to north west England even further into the future.

HS2 between Birmingham and Manchester has been replaced by numerous transport projects, including some road improvements as well as railway electrification, a new tram system and an extension of the £2 maximum bus fare. The improvements have been dubbed ‘Network North’ but they include many schemes elsewhere in England as well as some in north Wales and south west Scotland. The axeing of Phases 2A and 2B of HS2 to Crewe and Manchester by the Prime Minister was widely expected, and his decision was greeted with applause on the last day of the Conservative Party Conference on Manchester yesterday, but there has been widespread criticism of his decision. Rishi Sunak said: ‘The facts have changed. And the right thing to do when the facts change, is to have the courage to change direction. And so, I am ending this long running saga. I am cancelling the rest of the HS2 project.’ However, the section of Phase 1 between OId Oak Common and London Euston is back on the agenda, although Mr Sunak is making one major reform. He said: ‘The management of HS2 will no longer be responsible for the Euston site. There must be some accountability for the mistakes made, for the mismanagement of this project. We will instead create a new Euston development zone, building thousands of new homes for the next generation of homeowners, new business opportunities and a station that delivers the capacity we need. And in doing so, for the first time in the life cycle of this project – we will have cut costs. The £6.5 billion of savings that Mark [Harper] and I are making will be taken from the Euston site and given to the rest of the country.’ National Infrastructure Commission chair and former Network Rail chief executive Sir John Armitt said: ‘High Speed 2 was part of a long term strategy with clear objectives to link up some of the country’s largest cities. It had been planned for almost 15 years and under construction since 2017. ‘The decision to stop the legs north and east of Birmingham is deeply disappointing, leaving a major gap in the UK’s rail strategy around which a number of city regions have been basing their economic growth plans. ‘A High Speed 2 route between Manchester and London via Birmingham, alongside Northern Powerhouse Rail, would have enabled increased capacity and better connectivity both north-south and east-west. While it is welcome that the money will be redirected into rail and other transport projects for the North and Midlands, it’s not yet clear how the collection of schemes announced today will address the gap left behind.’ Major HS2 contractors including Arup, Siemens and Mace had launched a last-minute bid to convince Mr Sunak not to cancel HS2 to Manchester, saying savings could be made and private investment found. They were supported by West Midlands Mayor Andy Street, who is a Conservative, but Mr Sunak went ahead with an emergency cabinet meeting in Manchester before announcing that the axe would fall. Mr Street, who will not be resigning from the Conservative Party, according to reports, said he was ‘very disappointed’. On Monday, Mr Street had said axing the Manchester leg would amount to ‘cancelling the future’, and he has now said he will continue to work with the private sector to see if Phases 2A and 2B could be restarted. Midlands Connect chairman Sir John Peace said: ‘We are disappointed and disheartened.’ But he added: ‘We must not start from scratch, we must work … to deliver HS2 Phase 1 all the way to Euston. There are also lessons to be learnt from the HS2 story so far. The Midlands Rail Hub and road programmes including the A5 which have been announced today resonate with us. These are our transformational East-West priorities for the region, which we recommended and have been progressing with Government. We are now calling for more detail on timescales and plan of action, and asking for a high-level urgent meeting with ministers.’ The private sector lobby group Rail Partners said the decision ‘will have consequences felt for generations by the rail industry, its supply chain, passengers and freight customers’. Rail Partners chief executive Andy Bagnall continued: ‘While reinvestment in other regional rail schemes is a significant consolation, the decision to reduce investment in rail and divert funds to road schemes feels counterintuitive as we look to attract people to move away from carbon intensive modes of transport.’ Some of the rail projects announced by the Prime Minister include electrification between Selby and Hull and between Crewe and Holyhead. A new station will be built in Bradford, and the Midlands Rail Hub will go ahead, while Cullompton and Wellington stations in Devon and Somerset will be reopened. Also in Devon, the 8km line from Bere Alston to Tavistock will be rebuilt to restore train services between Tavistock and Plymouth. The long-discussed scheme to build a tram system in Leeds is being revived and there will be more extensions to West Midlands Metro, while there will be improvements to Ely junction in East Anglia, which will help rail freight. Great Western Main Line electrification could be revived to Bristol Temple Meads with the help of a £100 million grant to the West of England Combined Authority, which covers Bristol, Bath, south Gloucestershire and north east Somerset. On the roads, the £2 maximum bus fare in England outside London will now be continued until the end of next year, and there will be more than 70 road schemes, including upgrades to the A1, A2, A5 and the M6. The A75 to Stranraer will also be improved, and there will be funding for the Shipley bypass and a relief road at Blyth. Former transport minister Norman Baker of the charity Campaign for Better Transport said: ‘This ragtag and bobtail selection of bits and pieces, some of which no doubt have merit, will not compensate for the hammer blow that has been delivered today. By cancelling the Northern leg of HS2, the Prime Minister has taken much needed rail investment and ploughed it into yet more roads. The roads budget is already bloated, and today’s announcement simply diverts money from a sustainable transport future into unsustainable and unchecked traffic growth.’ RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: ‘The incompetence of successive Tory governments has now cost the taxpayer billions and led to this disastrous decision for Britain's economy, environment and our ailing transport infrastructure. High Speed rail together with a modern expanding public transport network is key to the future of linking every part of our country together, from north to south and East to West. ‘Public transport investment is not an either-or question. The fact is we will not be able to tackle the climate emergency without encouraging people to use modern, cheap and efficient high speed rail and hugely expanded local bus services. The key to thriving economies of the future is to be environmentally sustainable and to interconnect cities, towns and villages to promote economic activity.  ‘The Conservative government is playing political games ahead of an election and instead of investing properly in Britain's public transport and high speed future, Rishi Sunak risks putting the country in the slow lane.’

The Prime Minister has told the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester that HS2 will not be built north of Birmingham. ► Scrapping Manchester leg will save £36 billion ► High Speed line to be replaced by a new Network North ► Phase 1 will be completed, and go to Euston, but … ► HS2 Ltd to be stripped of responsibility for Euston development He said: ‘I am ending this long-running project. We will invest £36 billion in new transport projects in the Midlands and North, that will make a real difference across our nation.’ Mr Sunak said HS2 to Manchester would be replaced by a new Network North ‘With our new Network North, you will be able to get from Manchester to the new station in Bradford in 30 minutes. Sheffield in 42 minutes, and to Hull in 84 minutes on a fully, electrified line.’ The new Midlands Rail Hub will also go ahead, along with extensions to West Midlands Metro. Main roads will also be upgraded. He added: ‘East West links are more important.’ He also reassured his audience that Phase 1 of HS2 will be completed, and that it will include London Euston. A Euston Development Zone will be created, taking responsibility for the Euston development away from HS2 Ltd. 

It is being reported that the Prime Minister will announce the scrapping of HS2 Phases 2A and 2B from Birmingham to Crewe and Manchester today. The BBC claims that Rishi Sunak will reveal a series of alternative projects in England and Wales when he addresses the Conservative Party conference in Manchester on its final day. Ministers have repeatedly avoided answering questions about the future of HS2 over the past few days, ever since it emerged that talks were being held at government level when documents were seen being carried by a Treasury official. The Prime Minister himself would only say that he would not comment on ‘speculation’. Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who is a Labour politician, has described the reports as ’profoundly depressing’, while his opposite number in Birmingham, Conservative Mayor Andy Street, warned that abandoning the northern section of HS2 would damage the reputation of the United Kingdom in other countries.