Long-delayed background documents to the Integrated Rail Plan reveal the North’s plans for a new high-speed network would have connected the region up better than the government’s own.
The papers - branded 'threadbare' by Greater Manchester's mayor - admit journeys between Manchester and Bradford would have taken less than half the time, with at least three times more services an hour.
Manchester and Sheffield would also have been significantly better connected.
In fact almost every key northern route assessed by civil servants would have seen more hourly trains and shorter journeys under the North's plan.
But the proposal was rejected on the grounds of cost - even though no detailed analysis of potential long term economic benefits had been carried out.
According to the technical papers for the IRP, the original northern plan rejected by ministers would have provided ‘the greatest increase in connectivity and capacity’ of all the options considered.
However, the government argues, it scored lowest on ‘affordability and value for money’.
Today northern leaders questioned that claim, with Andy Burnham pointing to the huge economic benefit that the full high-speed network would have had in places such as Bradford.
“This assertion that the value for money is worse - I would say: on what basis has that been calculated?” he said.
Leaders elsewhere in the region also said the detail in the document did not ‘back up’ the claim.
Government launched the IRP in November, in a long-delayed £96bn announcement billed as a rail revolution.
But it prompted an instant backlash across the North as it emerged that the region’s own plan for a new high-speed network connecting east to west - drawn up with Network Rail - had been scaled back, slashing £18bn from its price tag and effectively halving its budget.
Instead of a brand new line connecting Manchester to Leeds via Bradford, with further connections either side to Liverpool and Hull and significantly improved routes to Sheffield, the plan proposed a series of upgrades to existing lines and a stretch of new route from Warrington to Marsden in West Yorkshire.
At that point the line would be bolted on to the existing Transpennine route.
As a result Bradford and Leeds would gain no high speed links at all, while Hull had been 'effectively removed from the UK rail map', its council leader warned at the time.
Ministers argued that their plan would still cut journey times, in some cases by almost the same amount - but critics said it was an incoherent, savings-driven hotch-potch of upgrades that would go nowhere near increasing the level of capacity, reliability, connections or economic benefit needed.
Two months after the plan was revealed, government has now published the background document to the IRP.
It reveals no longer-term, detailed economic analysis of potential benefits to the North has been carried out.
Instead it says an ‘early’ assessment had determined that the preferred plan of northern leaders constituted the ‘poorest’ value for money of the options available.
“In making these decisions we have acknowledged…that significant productivity improvements could flow if the major cities of the North and Midlands functioned more like a single economy and individual city regions were supported to fulfil their economic potential,” it says.
“However, given the early stage of scheme development, full analysis of the wider economic impacts of the different options has not been completed…the value for money assessment reflects a limited assessment of impacts on productivity based on reductions in journey times which bring businesses closer together.”
The ‘value for money’ assessment therefore did not take into account the fact that businesses and households may move into areas as a result of new rail lines making them better connected, it says.
"Assessing the scale of these impacts requires the use of complex modelling which was not feasible in the analytical timescales for the IRP, or the level of scheme maturity," says the document.
It concludes that while the North’s version of NPR would provide faster journey times and more trains than the government's plan on almost every route - particularly between Bradford and both Manchester and Huddersfield - it is too expensive.
“Transport for the North’s preferred network provides the greatest increase in capacity and connectivity, but scores lowest on affordability and value for money,” concludes the report on its final page, adding that the government's preferred option is 'likely to represent higher value for money and costs at least £18bn less'.
At today’s meeting of TfN’s board, northern leaders said they would be raising questions about the government’s calculations at a forthcoming transport select committee inquiry into the IRP.
Warrington councillor Hans Mundy said government had worked backwards from the budget it had decided was available, telling colleagues: “What we’ve ended up with is the Department for Transport talking to the Treasury and coming back with ‘what you can have with what we’ve got left for the North’.”
Liverpool city region councillor Liam Robinson said the plan had apparently been based on ‘evidence that doesn’t hold weight’, adding: “The North of England should not accept what has been proposed.”
Andy Burnham also cast doubt on the credibility of government’s analysis, adding that the transport select committee should ‘unpick’ the document, which he called ‘threadbare’.
“This assertion that the value for money is worse - I would say on what basis has that been calculated?” he said.
If it has only been based on railway connectivity, he said, the analysis is too narrow.
Freight opportunities had not been considered at all, he said, particularly from Hull to Liverpool, adding: "Bradford - what is the value for money for linking a city of that size to modern high speed rail?
“There must be an uplift to the economy in Bradford? There must be an uplift to UK plc.”
He added: “What we were told when levelling up came around was that we were going to have a different way of looking at these things.”
A DfT spokesperson said: "These criticisms ignore the many benefits our £96bn Integrated Rail Plan will deliver - better connectivity, greener travel and quicker improvements for passengers.
"This technical document - which is based on sources including TfN’s own work on Northern Powerhouse Rail - simply summarises how the options considered could impact things like capacity and connectivity, decarbonisation, affordability and value for money.”
