The mayors of Higher Manchester and the West Midlands have revealed plans for a brand new railway line connecting the 2 areas “at a fraction of the prices” of the scrapped northern leg of HS2.

A personal consortium has proposed the brand new 50-mile (80km) Midlands-Northwest Rail Hyperlink – operating from Lichfield, north of Birmingham, to Excessive Legh, south-east of Warrington – following a evaluate commissioned by the mayors.

The report discovered the brand new railway line was very important to addressing rising pressure on the prevailing West Coast Predominant Line (WCML) and M6 motorway.

The plan depends on funding from the personal sector, and would value considerably lower than HS2 phase 2, which might have seen a brand new high-speed railway constructed between the West Midlands and Manchester.

Work on the London to Birmingham leg of HS2 is already below method, with a minimum of £22.5bn already being spent.

However the consortium, led by infrastructure skilled Sir David Higgins, discovered the undertaking wouldn’t enhance capability north of Birmingham “as a result of infrastructure constraints that stay unresolved with out the later levels of HS2”.

“‘Doing nothing’ on this hall [between Manchester and Birmingham] isn’t a viable choice, from both financial or operational views,” the evaluate mentioned.

“The transport community merely won’t operate successfully, and the nation’s present funding in HS2 shall be poor worth for cash.”

It discovered the WCML was “among the many least dependable railways in Europe”, with a lot of the observe community being constructed within the Victorian period.

“Sections of the WCML north of Lichfield won’t be able to assist any important improve in freight capability within the north, Wales and Scotland,” the report mentioned.

Higher Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham mentioned the failure to exchange the railway would turn into “an enormous barrier to progress within the nation that the federal government says it desires”.

“There isn’t any method on God’s earth that the present West Coast Predominant Line and the M6 could be relied upon for many years,” he added.

“If you happen to put on this additional connecting piece between these two areas, you’ll then have a community that may assist progress in London, the south east, the Midlands, and, in fact, the north west.”

Sir David referred to as on the brand new authorities to assist the proposal, which is predicted to value between 60 and 75% lower than the proposed HS2 northern leg.

The financial savings could be delivered by way of decrease design speeds, ballasted observe, UK somewhat than European normal cross-sections and constructing on the prevailing rail community.

Sir David mentioned: “What we’d like now could be for the brand new authorities to work along with the enterprise neighborhood and Mixed Authorities – take the sensible steps to make a brand new rail hyperlink a actuality.”

Greater than £2bn had been spent on HS2 part 2 earlier than it was scrapped, with the consortium proposing to make use of a lot of this land and infrastructure.