Examination of Witnesses

Part of High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 9:56 am on 9 July 2013.

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Sir Richard Leese: I am quite happy to start. In High Speed Rail’s draft proposals, Manchester would have only had one station, and it would have had a routing that would not have allowed for the airport station. In discussion with High Speed Rail and the then Secretary of State, we got agreement for Greater Manchester to construct a proposal that would justify the airport station. We did that and demonstrated very clearly the economic benefit that would come from an airport station and, clearly, that was accepted and is now in the proposed route. This is also perhaps a good example of, in this case, both DFT Ministers and High Speed Rail being open to proposals and willing to listen.

The point about the two stations in Manchester in comparison to other locations is that they are only about 10 miles apart. That means that the train has never accelerated while it goes from one to the other. The real problem with a high-speed network is that if there are too many stations, speeding up and slowing down become a problem. That is not an issue for those two stations in Manchester because the trains never speed up in the first place. They are very close together, and that closeness is what makes it work: if they were further apart it would not.