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Leeds and Sheffield: £30 billion high-speed rail network go ahead UPDATED
A new £30 billion high-speed rail (HSR) network, with 250mph trains, which will improve transport links to Sheffield and Leeds, has been announced by the Government.
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Transport Secretary Lord Adonis gave Labour's backing to a new 335-mile London to Scotland HSR network which would drastically reduce rail journey times.
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Running from Euston in London, the first part of the route - from London to Birmingham - would start in 2017, cost between 15.8 billion and 17.4 billion and would reduce the journey time between the UK's two biggest cities to between 30 and 50 minutes.
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Lord Adonis said the Government supported a y-network of lines, with HSR lines north of Birmingham running either side of the Pennines to Manchester, the East Midlands, Sheffield and Leeds as well as to Liverpool, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
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He said the Birmingham city centre for the HSR network would be at Curzon Street and there would be interchange stations with the cross-London Crossrail project west of Paddington in west London and near to Birmingham airport.
Lord Adonis said the project would create 10,000 jobs and yield 2 in benefits for every 1 spent. The first 120 miles between London and the West Midlands would cost between 15.8 and 17.4 billion.
"The cost per mile beyond Birmingham is then estimated to halve, taking the overall cost of the 335 mile Y-shaped network to about 30 billion.
"This cost would be phased over more than a decade after the start of construction, which would not be until after the completion of Crossrail in 2017," he said.
"The journey time from London to the West Midlands would be reduced to between 30 and 50 minutes, depending on the stations used, with
Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield all brought to within 75 minutes of London - down from almost two hours 10 minutes now - and through services from Glasgow and Edinburgh to London down to just three and a half hours," he said.
The new network "would provide a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to overcome the acute connectivity limitations of the Victorian rail network," he said.
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Weather for Leeds
Wednesday 08 February 2012
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