Northern Powerhouse Rail

Northern Powerhouse Rail
Map, originally envisaged in 2017, showing suggested improvements in the Northern Powerhouse framework, partly labelled HS3.
Overview
Owner	Network Rail
Locale	Northern England
Website	transportforthenorth.com
Service
Type	High speed railway
System	National Rail
Technical
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge
Electrification	25 kV AC overhead

Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), sometimes referred to unofficially as High Speed 3, is a proposed major rail programme designed to substantially enhance the economic potential of the North of England.^[1][2][3] The phrase was adopted in 2014 for a project featuring new and significantly upgraded railway lines in the region.^[4] The aim is to transform rail services between the major towns and cities, requiring the region's single biggest transport investment since the Industrial Revolution.^[5][6][7][8] The original scheme would have seen a new high-speed rail line from Liverpool to Warrington continuing to join the HS2 tunnel which it would share into Manchester Piccadilly station. From there, the line would have continued to Leeds with a stop at Bradford.^[9] The line was intended to improve journey times and frequency between major Northern cities as well as creating more capacity for local service on lines that express services would have been moved out from.

However, in 2021, the Johnson government significantly curtailed the scheme in the Integrated Rail Plan for the North and Midlands (IRP). Under the IRP the existing lines to Warrington from Liverpool will be upgraded, using the southern Liverpool–Manchester line. Instead of building a dedicated high speed line to Leeds via Bradford the scaled back scheme will only provide dedicated high speed rail track from Manchester as far as Marsden, West Yorkshire, where the line will join the upgraded TransPennine line to Leeds via Huddersfield.^[10]

In July 2022, the House of Commons Transport Committee expressed concern that the evidence base for the IRP was insufficient and made a number of specific comments. These included that

A full analysis of the wider economic impacts of the different Northern Powerhouse Rail options is needed, and BCR [benefit-cost ratio] analyses must be produced for all NPR options. Upgrading lines will bring modest benefits, but not to the transformative extent needed to end regional imbalances.^[11]

In October 2022, early on in her short-lived Premiership, Liz Truss said that her government's plans for Northern Powerhouse Rail meant a full new high-speed rail line all the way from Liverpool to Hull with a stop at a new station in Bradford.^[12] The succeeding government said in its November 2022 financial statement that only the 'core' parts of NPR would be funded.^[13] The project is classified as an England and Wales project, facing criticism from some Welsh politicians.

NPR forms part of High Speed North, the overarching proposal that includes improvements to both roads and rail.^[14][15][16] These developments are designed to improve transport connections between major northern English cities and transport hubs, including Liverpool, Manchester, Manchester Airport, Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Doncaster, Sheffield, York, Newcastle and Hull, as well as other significant economic centres.