Crewe to be HS2 hub

Following our report on Saturday – taken from the BBC – that Crewe rather than Stoke is likely to be the northern hub of the proposed high speed rail line, it has been confirmed today that a western leg of HS2 will run from Birmingham to Manchester, via Crewe.

Sir David Higgins' report recommends that a north-west England hub for HS2 is built in Crewe, saying it is the "best way to serve not just the local region, but also provide services into the rest of the North West, north Wales and Merseyside."

HS2 chairman Sir David Higgins today said he would be advising the Government that the new station should be built and operational by 2027, five years earlier than first expected.

Sir David said journey times between Crewe and London would be cut to just 55 minutes, 35 minutes quicker than the fastest current journey. Within one hour from London by rail, it would link a vast hinterland to the high-speed network, including Stoke-on-Trent, Warrington, Liverpool and North Wales.

There are also proposals for improved services across the north. Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said: "Our northern cities are on the brink of an economic transformation and today's report underlines how we can secure this by bringing those cities together to maximise the benefits of good transport links."

He said: "You've got the same sort of population that you've got in London but it hasn't got the same interconnections and the same transport system that London's got. And if we're going to enable the North to compete we're going to have to be very bold on our investment for transport."

The announcement from Sir David Higgins is partly a reaction to critics of HS2 who claim that the high-speed line risks sucking economic growth in the North towards London, rather than spreading it evenly across the country

It's likely that the faster trains in the north of England wouldn't run on completely new lines, but a mix of upgraded and new tracks.

Whilst the proposed HS2 route would have a maximum speed of 225mph, the suggested speed for the new trans-Pennine link would be around 125mph. That's the same as trains currently running on the West and East Coast Main Lines.

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.