Labour mayors (left to right) Andy Burnham Mayor of Greater Manchester, Tracy Brabin Mayor of West Yorkshire, Sadiq Khan Mayor of London, Steve Rotheram Mayor of the Liverpool City Region and Oliver Coppard Mayor of South Yorkshire, gather at Arcadis in Leeds, to make a unified plea to the Prime Minister not to scale back HS2 any further, ahead of a Transport for the North board meeting, September 27, 2023
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CUTTING back on HS2 will leave much of the north of England in the Victorian era for transport, Labour mayors warned today.
As speculation mounts that PM Rishi Sunak is preparing to axe or freeze the Birmingham to Manchester stretch of the high speed railway, as well as moving the London terminus from Euston to Old Oak Common, miles from the centre, five mayors met in Leeds to condemn the move.
Labour Mayors Sadiq Khan (London), Andy Burnham (Manchester), Tracy Brabin (West Yorkshire), Oliver Coppard (South Yorkshire) and Steve Rotherham (Liverpool) also called for Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), planned to connect the main centres in the north, to be built in full.
Holding a mock train ticket reading “Save HS2, Save NPR, Save Euston,” they said that failure to build the entire network would “leave swathes of the north with Victorian transport infrastructure that is unfit for purpose.
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