TransPennine Route Upgrade is to be applauded but work needed to restore confidence in the region’s railway network

But the fact that the TransPennine Route Upgrade (TRU), the biggest engineering project outside of HS2, is both on time and on budget is to be applauded. While it is early to say that the TRU heralds a new era for rail travel in the North, there are reasons to be optimistic.

The TRU will cut journey times – passengers will be able to travel from Leeds to Manchester in 33 minutes and between York and Manchester in 41 minutes. It will also provide much-needed capacity, allowing eight more trains to run each hour.

As Heidi Alexander writes in The Yorkshire Post today “until we fulfil the economic potential of our northern cities, the ceiling of our national ambition will always be too low”.

Connectivity is going to be crucial if the country is going to solve the economic growth puzzle. And what does it say when rail journeys between two major European cities such as Leeds and Manchester are long, infrequent and often unreliable. It’s of course not just about major cities, towns need to be connected as well. One of the biggest issues is confidence. The reality is that confidence has been eroded in railway travel in the North. This was before the pandemic. And it is good to see the TransPennine Express managing director Chris Jackson acknowledge this in today’s newspaper.

Delivering Northern Powerhouse Rail in full would go some way to restoring confidence in the region’s railway network and could unlock £118bn of growth across the North.