When this blog commented
on the news that “Michael Jones,
Cheshire East Council leader, said he had held ‘positive talks’ with Network
Rail about building the new [Crewe] station
300 metres from the existing one”, which was accompanied by
talk of a monorail (no sniggering please, Simpsons fans), it looked like a
silly way of generating copy. It wasn’t. It
was something far more serious.
Crewe station, looking south
That distance was missing a zero from the figure: it is
actually 3,000 metres. The intention is to resurrect the attempt to rip the
railway station out of Crewe and dump it two miles to the south in an area
largely uninhabited at present. It is a scheme that saw
so much opposition first time round that it
was seen off relatively easily, and this time it is being slipped through
on the quiet. Until now.
“Leader of Cheshire
East, Michael Jones, wants Crewe’s HS2 station to be built by 2020, even though
the line itself won’t have been built” observed Radio
Stoke’s Phil McCann yesterday. But the HS2 proposals as they currently
stand do not feature a station on HS2 at
Crewe: there would be a connection to the new line, with trains off HS2 to
Liverpool and Chester stopping at the
existing station.
Moreover, if there were to be a station actually on HS2, it
would have to be well to the south of that currently in use, as at that point
the new line would be in tunnel some way beneath the surface. And any change to
the proposals already well progressed would mean everything for the route immediately
south of Crewe would have to be ripped up and restarted from scratch. At significant extra cost.
So what is Jones’ game? Ah well. He is using the Cheshire
and Warrington Local Transport Body (LTB) as a vehicle, with its response to
the HS2 consultation, including the proposal for not just a connection to the
new line at Crewe, but a new station,
to
be presented tomorrow. The author of the report, Andrew Ross, was involved
in the abortive 2008 plan.
The very first item in the proposition being put by the LTB
is “A new station and railway track
layout at Crewe delivered by 2020 which would accommodate HS2, and deliver a
fully integrated Hub Station, including dedicated HS2 trains”. The cost of
this – in the hundreds of millions of pounds – is being justified on the basis
that “the signalling needs doing anyway”.
Even deducting the cost of resignalling, the bill would
still be in the hundreds of millions, the station would no longer be in Crewe,
we would be left with the false promise of a pie-in-the-sky monorail, and the
business case for HS2 would take a significant dent, potentially losing Crewe
the connection it has already won. It should surprise no-one that Jones has not
seen fit to ask the electorate what they think.
This smacks of abuse of power and potential corruption. And that’s not good enough.
1 comment:
There is a more famous name from the 2008 scheme involved here. Non other than Pete Waterman, him famous for being Kylie's produced before she was really famous. In 2008 he was just a self appointed mouth telling various people how to spend their money. But now, he is 25% of the voting power on the new iQuango that is the Local Transport Body (is it only 3 years since iDave launched his bonfire of the quangos - yet another Coalition idea shot down in flames). Did I miss something - when did any of us vote for that?
So on Monday afternoon. 1 councillor from CEC, who doesn't represent Crewe, plus 1 from Warrington and 1 from Chester & West will join him in voting for a policy that would change the face of Crewe. None of the elected councillors have been consulted, none of the people - and as far as I can make out non of the regional Train Operating Companies!
The phrase Banana Republic doesn't come close!
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