Manchester and Liverpool mayors push new railway, pressuring government

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LIVERPOOL, England (Reuters) – The mayors of Manchester and Liverpool on Monday published plans for a new railway between the two northern English cities, raising pressure on the Labour government to deliver on promises to raise investment.

At an event on the sidelines of the Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool, the city’s mayor Steve Rotherham and Manchester’s Andy Burnham published a prospectus for a 17 billion pound ($23 billion) railway.

Rail links between the two cities, the third- and fifth-largest metropolitan areas in England, are plagued by bottlenecks on lines that date back to the Victorian era.

The two mayors said the new line would be paid for using funds earmarked for the cancelled Birmingham to Manchester leg of the HS2 high-speed railway line from London, axed last year by then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

The move from the mayors, both Labour Party representatives, represents a rising trend of regional leaders staking claims to greater autonomy, asserting influence over local infrastructure and challenging London’s dominance.

Earlier on Monday the transport secretary Louise Haigh described the Liverpool-Manchester line as “important” but said there was no single pot of HS2 money that could be deployed readily.

The prospectus said the new railway could add around 7 billion pounds in economic output per year to the 150 billion-pound Manchester-Liverpool economy.

“There will be genuine opportunity for some of our people to work in Manchester, and people from Manchester to work here,” said Liverpool city region mayor Rotherham.

“That really does shrink the whole of the north west and make that functional economic geography much more coherent.”

($1 = 0.7497 pounds)