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Rail links 'could bring billions to region'
A high-speed rail link from London to Yorkshire and a fast cross-Pennine route could help the UK economy benefit by more than £10bn, a report from a development agency group has claimed.
The Northern Way report envisages not only a west-east Northern Crossrail but also a connection to Yorkshire from London that travels via the east of England and the East Midlands.
The economic benefits would be 3.5bn for the North, 3.5bn for Greater London and 3bn for the rest of the country, said the group which includes three northern regional development agencies.
Professor David Begg, chairman of the Northern Way's transport compact, said: "These wider economic benefits come about through reducing travel times in city-to-city and business-to-business access.
"They appear not to have been taken into account in the (Government's) rail White Paper and are additional to those previously calculated for high-speed rail."
Northern Way wants to see a western line from London to the North West with connections to Heathrow and the West Midlands; an eastern high-speed rail line running from London via the east of England and East Midlands to Yorkshire, the North East and on to Scotland; and a trans-Pennine link.
Prof Begg, a former chairman of the Government advisory body the Commission for Integrated Transport, said: "The importance of a new high-speed trans-Pennine link in addition to a line on each side of the country is very clear.
"There are very worthwhile benefits for the North East and Yorkshire from a high-speed line on the east side of the country and for the North West from a high-speed line on the west side."
He added: "But a trans-Pennine link adds more than 40% to the wider economic benefits that we have identified for the North.
"What a trans-Pennine link adds is better region-to-region and better city-to-city connectivity within the North, as well as better connections from the North East to the West Midlands and from the North West to the east side of the country. A trans-Pennine link would help create a new economic geography for the North of England and the country as a whole."
The full story appears in Wednesday's Yorkshire Post
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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