Sunak kills the Northern Powerhouse.

Agree. HS2 would not have saved anything when going to London from Sheffield as we would have needed to travel outside the city centre away from the train station, before catching the HS2. This would add over 40 minutes to a journey that saves 20.

When I started commuting to Leeds 30 or 40 years ago, a standard diesel train made the journey in 40-45 minutes, with only one stop. Better links between Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Birmingham, and other Northern/Midland cities would be so much more valuable. Upgrade the track and signaling, run more frequent trains - just might be the answer.

Lots of local jobs, no devastation of farmland or housing, no need to compulsory purchase homes at knock down prices, revitalisation of our steel industry (if we still have one).

It’s not that simple to just upgrade tracks and run more trains. The railways need more capacity. In years to come that will become obvious but it will be too late then. Maybe the solution will be to remove all freight, just use the railways for passenger trains and put all freight on the roads. That will be great for the environment, won’t it.

LizzieDrip

Agree with WW2 it’s all unicorns; pie in the sky; flying pigs. Like Johnson’s 40 new hospitals! Sunak knows he can promise billions of £s of new rail infrastructure in the North … because he knows he’ll never deliver it. We’ll have to put up with a year of this gaslighting before the General Election!

This - for sure

For Cabowitch and others -- the HS2 was originally a Labour plan, in the wretched Brown govt. Hopelessly underestimated, as have been so many 'public' projects over many years.

As JacquiOh says, more valuable would be upgrading a mass of transport links in the North -- and SOME northern pundits and politicos have agreed. Sunak seemed to be saying they'd be spending money on THOSE options, but whether that's just a sop or not we'll have to wait to see?

As someone who lived in France for 26 years until 2022, it is difficult to understand the dreadful transport links in the North, such as between Sheffield and Manchester. This is as bad as when I had to do this journey at the age of 18 and that was nearly 50 years ago. Paris to Bordeaux in 2 hours, Paris Lyon in 2 hours and so on.

Haven’t read the whole thread, so apologies if someone has pointed this out already: the entire amount allocated to the north (much of which is for roads) is the same as that allocated for London’s Crossrail 2 alone.

What on earth was Mrs.Rishi thinking of with her saccharine and cringemaking overture with him lurking in the wings. All engineered and not very well.

Andy Burnham and northern politicians have been shouting for years about the need for improved rail, bus, public transport links. Sunak is not coming up with new ideas
One of my favourites is the promise to send the metro to the airport. It’s been there for years

The train journey between Sheffield and Manchester uses the Hope Valley line. It passes directly through a number of small country stations much used by ramblers in the Peak District National Park. It take an hour and five minutes to travel about thirty nine miles. You can get there quicker in a car. It’s very pretty though! We are not included in the plans for the Transpennine Upgrade Route, it seems, and work to upgrade the HV line amounts to ‘tinkering around the edges’ in order to speed up traffic.

Im not sure i remember this. Can you remind us please?
Amazing, as she was a Northerner as is Rishi Sunak, and plenty of others besides all ignoring North of Watford

When HS2 was first proposed l was wondering why there was need for yet another north-south line. What has been needed for many years is a decent east-west link across the central part of the country, thus cutting out the need and extra expense of crossing London. Why on earth could there not be a proper service from Norwich and possibly Ipswich to Birmingham via Cambridge? It would make it much easier to get to other parts of the country too. However, as my friend, who works for the railways said, politicians would not like the idea of cutting out London as they are so London-centric. It is almost as if London were a separate country from the rest of the UK.

@JennyCee, Rishi Sunak is from Southampton, so not a northerner.

The right thing to do was Not to build HS2 in the first place. I live 3 miles from the total destruction of everything in its wake from ecosystems, wildlife and humans we are all suffering and for what, a massive white elephant going nowhere. No one here can even use it unless you go to London or Birmingham, and we have a perfectly good service from our own station to these major cities. Talk about abandon engineering, it is a complete disaster.

For years at the beginning of it's conception we all protested along the line, the destruction, the cost and it was not wanted or needed because here in the south East we have good transport links. We argued that the money should be invested where it is desperately needed in the North and South of Bristol. They did not listen, they had too much money invested and were only interested in their own profits,

The Tories have just got to go as they can not be trusted to put the country's interest first.

I blame William 1.
I bet every Tory has Norman blood in them.

Sunak was educated in Romsey, Stroud School, and Winchester, about as far South as you can get. His parents lived in Southampton.

Joseann

Well I'm "chuffed" 🚆 🚉 🚄 because we're getting a new station in Devon, that's if any of the train companies want to use it!!

But is there a railway line to it?

Magr

As someone who lived in France for 26 years until 2022, it is difficult to understand the dreadful transport links in the North, such as between Sheffield and Manchester. This is as bad as when I had to do this journey at the age of 18 and that was nearly 50 years ago. Paris to Bordeaux in 2 hours, Paris Lyon in 2 hours and so on.

Although watching Celebrity Race Across the World the other evening, transport links in parts of France and Italy seemed quite poor too and trains were often cancelled.

I was surprised.

Joseann

I blame William 1.
I bet every Tory has Norman blood in them.

Sunak was educated in Romsey, Stroud School, and Winchester, about as far South as you can get. His parents lived in Southampton.

William 1, the Conqueror was also known as William the Basrard. A title befitting his illegitimacy, not his actions. One, of course, can make their own minds up about that.

Callistemon21

Magr

As someone who lived in France for 26 years until 2022, it is difficult to understand the dreadful transport links in the North, such as between Sheffield and Manchester. This is as bad as when I had to do this journey at the age of 18 and that was nearly 50 years ago. Paris to Bordeaux in 2 hours, Paris Lyon in 2 hours and so on.

Although watching Celebrity Race Across the World the other evening, transport links in parts of France and Italy seemed quite poor too and trains were often cancelled.

I was surprised.

Yes I wondered that. And strikes.
I guess the mountains get in the way too!

Rishi Sunak sold himself as the model of transparency. He was asked time and time again on Sky news on Tuesday morning if he' was cancelling the scheme and said no decision had been made, yet 24 hrs later he was announcing it. How many more lies are there?

You do realise that it was the Labour transport secretary Geoff Hoones who first set up the group to look into building Hs2 don’t you?

MayBee70

It’s not that simple to just upgrade tracks and run more trains. The railways need more capacity. In years to come that will become obvious but it will be too late then. Maybe the solution will be to remove all freight, just use the railways for passenger trains and put all freight on the roads. That will be great for the environment, won’t it.

Keep pegging away at it, Maybee. Perhaps one day folk will understand the implications of lack of capacity and the fact that you can't just put on extra trains...

Also that it's not about faster journey times between the north and London, it's about making space for more environmentally friendly freight capacity on the other north/south lines.

Problem is that we need an HS2 AND better connectivity between the northern cities and towns.

The other problem is that HS2 was badly planned, badly executed and very badly 'sold' to the public.

Sad, really, that a genuine attempt at long term planning from governments has gone badly awry.

Sueki44

You do realise that it was the Labour transport secretary Geoff Hoones who first set up the group to look into building Hs2 don’t you?

And the tories who carried on with the project and put it into execution.

Blaming Labour for a project that was embraced by the subsequent tory governments is a bit of a futile exercise...

Unfortunately the north doesn’t start in Manchester for us northerners in Newcastle we weren’t even included and we have a train station too so I wasn’t interested in that thing anyway because Id never use it.

Well what did we expect. ? One good thing is even people with very short memories will see this appalling behaviour and it should make sure the tories are chucked out at the next election!! I ,unhappily ,have Sunak as my mp and he is constantly in the local paper photos. Every good thing done by local people - charity auction, or raising money for specific things, he is there getting his photo taken with all the people who have spent months and more doing the actual work and he just wants to take the credit by putting his photo with them and implying that he was something to do with it!! Well if the paper comes to my group to take a photo I shall specifically state that I do not want him in the picture. Only those who have given their time to improving local life. Not the one who is making things worse. Of course it probably wont happen in my life time but with the rising temperatures in a few years those of us living in Yorkshire will be living in a better cooler climate than the south east . Just watch them all want to move up here then!!!