Rail plan is blow to North East

Oct 1 2009 by Peter Jackson, The Journal

OUR hopes of getting a high-speed rail line on the East Coast between London and Edinburgh would appear to have been deal a fatal blow - or two fatal blows.

Both Network Rail and lobbying group Greengauge21 have advised the Government to opt for a West Coast route to Edinburgh with an East Coast line coming sometime in the far distant future.

The argument for the West Coast option is that it would take in the major conurbations of Birmingham and Manchester and serving this huge market would mean a quickest pay-back time on the billions of pounds of investment.

On the face of it that may be true, but it does not take into account the principle of agglomeration benefits. This broadly says that with such big public transport projects, you don’t just balance the pounds, shillings and pence.

Rather you have into take into account the wider social costs and benefits to society, which the Government had to do to justify the investment in Crossrail – a project to which, by the way, North East taxpayers have contributed.

Given that the North East is one of the UK’s worst-performing economic regions, an analysis in terms of agglomeration benefits might have concluded that a high-speed rail link up the East Coast would repay the UK as a whole by transforming the North East economy and by doing much to eradicate the North/South divide.

Running the line up the West Coast, however, would deal our economy another severe blow by putting it at huge competitive disadvantage.

It need not, however, be a zero sum game; compromise is possible. There is the option of the question mark route, which would run from London to Manchester, then cut across the Pennines to Leeds, before heading North again to Edinburgh via Newcastle.

This would mean that Preston misses out, but fond though I am of that city, it hardly compares in importance to the conurbations of South Yorkshire or of Tyne and Wear.

However, what always weakens the North East’s hand in these arguments, particularly as a General Election approaches, is that we have so few marginal seats and governments of either party know they have so little to win or lose by treating us fairly.

Peter Jackson is a writer and former business editor of The Journal – p.jackson77@btinternet.com