Developing Rail in the Liverpool City Region

Developing Rail in the Liverpool City Region

…Supporting Growth in the Sub-Regional, Regional and National Economies

2. Executive Summary

The LCR represents an area of enterprise and opportunity. In recent times the fortunes of the LCR have turned a corner. Since the millennium Liverpool's economy has grown faster than that of the UK. Recent forecasts for the LCR suggest that GVA will grow by 69% by 2030, 7% more than national GVA. The city centre has experienced a resurgence as a retail, tourism and business destination following a transformational investment programme. The Port of Liverpool is the largest Freeport Zone in the UK and one of Northern Europe’s top 20 container ports. Liverpool supports a vibrant and growing visitor economy worth £3.4bn per annum and is now the UK’s 6th largest tourist destination.

The LCR Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) has developed a Growth Plan & Strategic Economic Plan for the LCR¹ which sets out an agenda for driving economic growth. A key driver in this growth agenda is to deliver a globally connected City Region. Two key pillars of which are the SUPERPORT initiative and HS2. SUPERPORT seeks to bring together and integrate the strengths of the region’s Ports, Airports and Freight Community to create the most effective and cost efficient environment for freight cargo logistics and passenger transit in the UK. HS2 is set to create a step change in connectivity for the cities within its reach, which in turn represents a huge opportunity for attracting inward investment.

An Economic Study³ commissioned by the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and Merseytravel on behalf of the Liverpool City Region has indicated that a direct High Speed connection in to Liverpool and enhanced conventional rail connectivity will generate substantial benefit for the Liverpool City Region and thereby assist in the re-balancing of the UK economy for the benefit of the whole of the north of England, North Wales and Scotland.

The study indicates that the direct connection could generate the following benefits for the Liverpool City Region:

• 
  An uplift in Gross Value Added (GVA) of the order of £550m on a single year basis and £8.3bn on a 60 year NPV basis.
  
• 
  An increase in employment of the order of 14,000 jobs (with the potential for a total of 26,000 jobs).
  
• 
  A business rates uplift of up to £30m per annum.
  
• 
  An uplift in city centre property and land values of up to £180m.
  
• 
  A population uplift of up to 20,000 residents requiring 10,000 new homes to be constructed.
  

In his recent report HS2 Plus⁹, Sir David Higgins, Chairman of HS2 Ltd highlighted that improving the capacity, connectivity and quality of the LCR’s rail network will be as essential to supporting and stimulating economic growth as HS2 itself. Furthermore, the HS2 Growth Task Force¹² emphasised the important interdependence between HS2 and the existing rail network and the need for a wider review of rail services to ensure effective connectivity with HS2 and to exploit released capacity, including opportunities for growth for the rail freight industry to support the development of SUPERPORT and a network of cost-efficient and carbon-efficient supply chains.

With this in mind, Merseytravel in partnership with Network Rail and the wider rail industry has embarked on developing a Long Term Rail Strategy that aims to ensure that the railway, and the economic success of the LCR, is able to grow in an unhindered fashion and that rail travel is able to be a facilitator rather than a barrier to this growth. The economic benefits will not only be felt at a regional and sub-regional level, there will be national benefits too, such as the value of an expanding freight and logistics port servicing industries across the nation. There are also wider environmental and health benefits that flow from expanding the electrified rail network and rail attracting traffic from more polluting modes.

The LCR has an extensive passenger rail network, including an underground network that penetrates the heart of Liverpool city centre. However, the rail system has some inherent weaknesses that will need to be addressed in order to provide the fully effective and efficient transportation system necessary to attract inward investors to the region and to support the travel growth that is anticipated to follow. These fall into three categories: capacity, connectivity and quality. Forecasts of passenger demand growth on the region’s rail network indicate that, even without further interventions on the network, almost all lines in the LCR will be experiencing peak loadings in excess of 100% of train service capacity by 2033. Whilst one of the key benefits of HS2 will be to release capacity on the southern section of the West Coast Main Line (WCML), it will not release rail freight capacity north of Crewe, a key requirement to support the growth of SUPERPORT. In fact, with additional HS2 services operating over the WCML north of Crewe, the capacity constraint will be compounded. The LCR at present does not have direct rail linkages to some key centres of population and employment and Liverpool’s long distance connectivity with other major UK economic centres compares unfavourably with similar cities. The LCR Strategic Economic Plan identifies proposals for major developments, many in new areas that are currently without access to the rail network. The asset condition and capability of both infrastructure and rolling stock is also an impediment to improving the quality of rail services offered for both passengers and freight shippers.

The Long Term Rail Strategy for LCR provides a 20-year vision for rail infrastructure and services and sets out a prioritised package of schemes that aims to address these key challenges and provide a sustainable foundation for growth. This document sets out the context and rationale for the LCR Long Term Rail Strategy and provides an initial insight to the schemes and an outline programme that phases their delivery to align with the planned completion of HS2 and SUPERPORT by the end of control period 8.

3. Introduction

The LCR has seen a renaissance in recent years. Unprecedented levels of investment and development have improved the region’s economic performance. Liverpool city centre has changed beyond all recognition with its Waterfront now a world-class visitor destination; the look and performance of the city’s business district has been transformed and the city’s retail and cultural offer is amongst the best in the UK. The LCR has been successful in attracting private investment to support regeneration zones on the sites of former industries and turnaround of some the LCR’s major business such as Jaguar Landrover and Unilever. New industries have also started to emerge, such as life sciences which now account for over 57,000 jobs, with pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lilly, Novartis and Bristol-Myers Squibb having important bases in the region. The economic outlook has passed a turning point with reversal of declining employment trends. Population and GVA is now forecast to grow steadily.

The LCR is seeking to build on these successes and pursue an agenda for growth, with a vision to be “a globally connected City Region delivering sustainable growth, opportunity and prosperity for people and businesses”¹. The LCR strategy for achieving this vision is based on a twin-track approach. First, where there are genuine comparative strengths and competitive advantage investment will be prioritised and targeted to hasten the speed of growth. This approach alone will not be enough. So second, there is also a need to create an environment that supports growth across all aspects of the regional economy and in all sectors that ensures that all people and places benefit from the growth achieved and in a sustainable way. One of the key enablers is the LCR’s transportation system. Rail forms a major component of the LCR’s infrastructure. A successful growth strategy will require an efficient and high quality rail system which is integrated with other public and private modes, that provides both regional and national connectivity for passengers and has the capacity and capability to accommodate increasing freight flows to and from the region’s industries and port facilities.

National government is pressing ahead with its plans to build a high speed rail system that has the potential to serve as a catalyst for change. HS2 will dramatically reduce the journey times between north and south and provide much needed capacity relief to some of the most congested parts of the national rail network. Details of scope and phasing of HS2 are subject to refinement, but the recent review by Sir David Higgins highlighted the benefits of advancing the first phase of the project further north than had been initially proposed. HS2 is set to bring Liverpool much closer to London, the South East and even Heathrow, which, having worldwide connections, would also have benefits for the LCR. But, given the considerable investment required to deliver HS2, it is essential that the opportunity to realise the full potential benefits of the project are seized. That means ensuring that there is connectivity with high quality complementary rail services, that there is sufficient capacity in the region’s rail system to accommodate growth driven directly or indirectly by HS2 and that additional capacity to accommodate increasing railfreight is built into critical sections of the existing rail network which will remain as bottlenecks even after construction of HS2. On top of this, the LCR needs to grasp the opportunity and evolve and refine its land use and development strategies to maximise the benefits that HS2 can bring to the LCR. The aspiration is for a full High Speed link to Liverpool.

1. Purpose and scope of this report

This report has been prepared by Merseytravel to provide a rationale for a Long Term Rail Strategy for the LCR, by setting into context its role in supporting an agenda for economic growth. It highlights the importance of addressing the shortcomings of region’s rail system as an enabler to attracting private sector inward investment and realising the full potential benefits of HS2 for the LCR. In introducing the Long Term Rail Strategy, this report highlights the future needs for rail in the LCR and identifies priorities for rail investment in the near and medium term (to 2025).

The report draws on a number of relevant recent reports and studies, including:

• 
  The Liverpool City Region Growth Plan & Strategic Economic Plan (LEP) ^1
  
• 
  Consultant reports relating to recent studies:
  
  • 
    City Centre Strategic Investment Framework (Liverpool Vision)²
    
  • 
    HS2 and benefits for LCR (Steer Davies Gleave, commissioned by Merseytravel/LCR LEP)³
    
  • 
    Merseyrail Electrics, 5 year strategy (Merseytravel)⁴
    
  • 
    LCR: Long Term Rail Strategy (Mott Macdonald, commissioned by Merseytravel)⁵
    
  • 
    The LCR Freight Study (MDS Transmodal)⁶
    

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