TRANSPORT minister Mike Penning has told Newcastle it will benefit from high-speed rail despite missing out on a slice of £32bn worth of direct investment.
The minister said that Newcastle and other northern cities will still gain from the high-speed rail project even though the new track stops at Leeds and Manchester, with trains travelling on existing lines further north.
High-speed trains reaching Newcastle from London in 2033 are expected to have a journey time of two hours and 37 minutes, matching that of the existing non-stop early morning service. This, Mr Penning said, was the exception rather than the rule and showed the extent of the capacity issues facing rail in the North.
He said: “If you had said 18 months ago that in really difficult financial times we would be able to find £32bn for investment no one would have believed it, but we see how important this is.
“We have made that money available to lock in the great cities of the North so that people can see they are not being left out. You will save 58 minutes on a train journey.
“That faster train that is existing now is enormously popular but it is once a day. It cannot be run more than that, but there is demand for it.
“To meet that demand we need high-speed rail to London and to other cities. And what businesses have told me today is that this is about more than just connections to London.
“I’m a Londoner born and bred, I’m London-centric but we can see that the connectivity to Manchester is worse than it is into London. The Y-shape high-speed rail network will solve that.”
At a meeting with business leaders and council transport officer in Newcastle yesterday, Mr Penning was asked to do more for the North East.
The £800m of spending on projects such as the Metro system and a new bridge over the River Wear agreed by the coalition Government are so far mainly projects agreed by the previous Labour administration.
Mr Penning said: “All transport spending was suspended when we formed the Government because once we got our feet under the desk we realised what a mess the country was in and that was the only sensible thing to do.
“Now, each project that has come back out of that spending round are there because we are committed to that part of the country.
“This is not money coming back to the North East, those previous commitments were based on money the Government simply did not have.”
