Interview with Manchester mayor Andy Burnham on HS2
Interview with Manchester mayor Andy Burnham on HS2
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00:00 Hello, we have Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester with us, who's in Birmingham
00:06 to discuss the need for a better rail connectivity between Staffordshire and Manchester after
00:13 the HS2 was cancelled. What's happened today Andy?
00:17 Well we've had a really positive meeting here in City Centre Birmingham today, myself and
00:22 Andy Street, the Mayor of the West Midlands, where we've looked at the emerging findings
00:26 from work that we both commissioned from a private sector consortium on options to improve
00:31 rail connectivity between this part of the world and mine. And it's really encouraging,
00:37 you know, there are clearly things that could be done to improve things and what the work
00:42 is really showing is doing nothing is not an option. You know, the West Coast Main Line
00:45 is full, the M6 is full, we have to do something to increase transport connectivity between
00:52 Staffordshire, the Black Country, the West Midlands and my part of the world. If we don't,
00:58 we're all looking at a century of transport headaches just going on and on and on.
01:03 And you said about the M6 there, how important, where people wouldn't really think it is applicable
01:09 to motorists, but how important is...
01:11 No, it all locks on, it's all interconnected and the reason being that if HS2 had been
01:16 built, lots of the passenger services would then be on HS2. The West Coast Main Line would
01:23 have then been freed up for more freight and that would have taken freight off the M6.
01:28 So there would have been a benefit all round, you know, the M6 would have functioned better
01:33 as a result of HS2 and perhaps that argument wasn't made as well as it should have been
01:38 over the years. You know, it was always about the journey speeds and really it was about
01:42 the whole transport system, road and rail, functioning better. So we are where we are.
01:48 I think what's been done so far here is really encouraging us that there is potentially an
01:54 option for your part of the world and mine and we're looking forward now to it going
02:01 to its final stage in March where we have got an agreement from the Secretary of State
02:06 that it will be presented to him and he's said to us he has an open mind about what
02:10 it might say.
02:11 You've got quite a simple solution in Staffordshire concerning the West Coast Main Line where
02:15 it goes down to two lines and that's something that you've looked into as one of the three
02:20 alternatives.
02:21 Yeah, so there's different ways of doing it, you know, it's not straight back to HS2 because
02:25 that's gone and we accept that that's gone. You could expand the West Coast Main Line,
02:30 you could create, if you like, bypasses off the West Coast Main Line so it's not a whole
02:35 new line but in the most congested areas of it you just have bypass sections of track
02:40 or you could build a whole new line and it's that work now that the consortium is going
02:45 to look at in detail and then give us recommendations next month.
02:49 And one last thing, we've got a new Vistra behind you with Birmingham, what do you think
02:53 of Birmingham now with some of our changes on Broad Street and this new building in Harrop?
03:00 Looks great doesn't it and I've got to admit it, it looks really, really good and it's
03:04 good to see. I want to see all of the big cities in England doing well.
03:09 I was at Molyneux over the Christmas break, I went to watch Everton get quite a battering
03:15 actually at Molyneux but I walked out of Wolverhampton station and there as well, you know, in the
03:21 black country, brilliant to see the change that's coming through so it's not just the
03:25 city it's the areas around the city as well. So, you know, it's what we're trying to do
03:31 in Greater Manchester. I think in both city regions we're seeing that good transport infrastructure,
03:36 public transport infrastructure can lift economic growth and it's really now beginning
03:40 to come through. Devolution in England is most definitely working.