Andy Burnham pricked up ears this week when he unveiled ambitious plans for an underground railway in Manchester.
The Mayor of Greater Manchester said the city’s transport network would have to go underground by 2050 if it is to keep up with the demand.
Outlining his ten-year strategy earlier this week, Burnham promised Britain’s third largest city its ‘best decade since the Victorian era’.
Burnham announced the eye-catching proposals, centred around a flagship underground hub at Piccadilly railway station.
Citing the limits of expanding the city’s existing Metrolink tram network on the surface, Burnham announced he had instructed Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) to ‘start planning’ for an underground network.
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Manchester previously experimented with the concept of a ‘Tube’ like railway between its two major stations, Piccadilly and Victoria.
The plan, dubbed the ‘Picc-Vic’, was considered in the 1970s.
Trains would have run every two to three minutes in twin tunnels between the hubs, and ten minutes to areas outside of the city centre.
But it was abandoned after the Westminster government decided the costs were prohibitive, having been estimated at more than £9million (or £139million in today’s money).
How would an underground system work?
In his speech, Burnham said the Bee Network, which comprises of Manchester’s Metrolink tram network as well as buses which have been brought under local authority control was fast reaching its capacity.
He said: ‘We are building the Bee Network on the surface. If we achieve our economic ambitions, we will be struggling to manage.
‘I am going to ask Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) to look at options for underground services. We will work with the government to look at financing it.’
The new subterranean concept would be centred around a new interchange at Piccadilly Station, he said.
It would complement the existing tram system, which runs on a mix of dedicated lines and streets shared with road traffic.
As well as relieving congestion on the local and suburban rail network, it would offer better connectivity within the city centre.
A total of 42 million passenger journeys are made on the tram network alone – up from 25 million in 2012.
The idea of an underground station at the city’s main rail terminus was previously considered as part of the now cancelled leg of HS2 and in plans for a new railway between Liverpool and Manchester.
Has Manchester attempted an underground system before?
In 1971, Manchester’s then transport authority presented plans to go underground, with promotional artwork depicting Victoria Line style tube trains which would run on a 2.75 mile between Piccadilly and Victoria.
The Picc-Vicc railway formed part of a four-phase 25-year plan for Manchester’s transport system.
The same decade, partially underground mass transit systems were established in both Liverpool and Newcastle.
But the Manchester scheme never took off after a failure to secure central government funding for the project, which would have cost £139million in today’s money.
Instead, the city revived its tram network, closed in 1949. The Metrolink has expanded to 99 stops across 64 miles of track.
In 2012, remains of the tunnel scheme were discovered by two lecturers at the University of Manchester.
Dr Martin Dodge and Richard Brook found what would have been the beginnings of a station dug 30ft below the Arndale shopping centre.
How much would a Manchester underground network cost?
One major obstacle to the project, like its 1970s predecessor, would be its inevitably huge cost, with underground railways notoriously expensive to develop and construct.
London’s Elizabeth Line was delivered at a final cost of £18.8billion, significantly up from the £14.8billion originally budgeted for the scheme.
The cost of Burnham’s ambitious ‘tube’ plans would certainly be measured in the billions, possibly as much as £10billion for what would almost certainly be a far shorter railway than Crossrail, an expert has said.
David Leeder, from consultancy Transport Investment Limited, said the mayor would struggle to deliver the scheme from local taxes and would instead rely on a grant from Westminster.
He told Metro: ‘Yes, the rail infrastructure in Manchester is undoubtedly crowded, but how will a multi billion pound scheme actually be funded when we are on the precipice of a public spending and borrowing crisis?
‘The city mayors are set up in such a way that their default answer is always ‘by a grant from the DfT / HM Treasury, to be paid for by taxes that mainly fall on London and the south east’.’
He added that the scheme, given its complexity, could eat up ‘hundreds of millions’ in just the development stage, and would likely require operating subsidies in the region of ‘tens of millions per annum’.
‘The passenger volumes in Manchester are a fraction of those in London. Yes it was very hard to make an economic case for the Elizabeth Line, even with such huge volumes, so it will be harder still in Manchester’, he said.
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