{"id":133364,"date":"2024-09-25T20:00:11","date_gmt":"2024-09-25T10:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=133364"},"modified":"2024-09-25T20:00:12","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T10:00:12","slug":"manchester-mayor-andy-burnham-says-north-faces-armageddon-without-hs2-rail-links","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=133364","title":{"rendered":"Manchester mayor Andy Burnham says North faces \u2018Armageddon\u2019 without HS2 rail links"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The mayor of Greater&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/manchester\">Manchester<\/a>&nbsp;has warned of slower trains and \u201cArmageddon\u201d in the North if the government terminates the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/hs2\">HS2<\/a>&nbsp;line at&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/travel\/uk\/england\/birmingham\">Birmingham<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2023, Rishi Sunak controversially&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/uk\/politics\/rishi-sunak-hs2-scrapped-tory-conference-b2423737.html\">announced a scaled-back plan for HS2<\/a>&nbsp;from original promises to extend the line between the West Midlands and Manchester and improve regional transport links.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The former Conservative government\u2019s choice to scrap the Manchester link was confirmed by the new Labour government in the July King\u2019s Speech: \u201cWe are not reversing the decision to cancel the second phase of HS2.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Speaking at a fringe event of the Labour Party Conference, mayor of Greater Manchester&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/andy-burnham\">Andy Burnham<\/a>&nbsp;said: \u201cThe danger is doing nothing. Because if HS2 trains start rolling north through Birmingham and on to the West Coast Main Line we are looking at Armageddon,\u201d report&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/business\/2024\/09\/23\/north-faces-armageddon-without-hs2-links-andy-burnham\/\"><em>The Telegraph<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Beyond Birmingham, Mr Burnham said stations are \u201cnot set up to deal with those trains\u201d and predicted a \u201cworse train service\u201d than existing lines in the North.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2023, Rishi Sunak controversially\u00a0announced a scaled-back plan for HS2\u00a0from original promises to extend the line between the West Midlands and Manchester and improve regional transport links.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":133365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1089,47,85,1],"tags":[13569,12825],"class_list":["post-133364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hs2","category-rail-news","category-uk","category-uncategorized","tag-birmingham","tag-manchester"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=133364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133366,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133364\/revisions\/133366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/133365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=133364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=133364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=133364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}