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Labour mayors (left to right) Andy Burnham Mayor of Greater Manchester, Tracy Brabin Mayor of West Yorkshire, Sadiq Khan Mayor of London, Steve Rotheram Mayor of the Liverpool City Region and Oliver Coppard Mayor of South Yorkshire, gather at Arcadis in Leeds, to make a unified plea to the Prime Minister not to scale back HS2 any further, ahead of a Transport for the North board meeting, September 27, 2023
CUTTING back on HS2 will leave much of the north of England in the Victorian era for transport, Labour mayors warned today.
As speculation mounts that PM Rishi Sunak is preparing to axe or freeze the Birmingham to Manchester stretch of the high speed railway, as well as moving the London terminus from Euston to Old Oak Common, miles from the centre, five mayors met in Leeds to condemn the move.
Labour Mayors Sadiq Khan (London), Andy Burnham (Manchester), Tracy Brabin (West Yorkshire), Oliver Coppard (South Yorkshire) and Steve Rotherham (Liverpool) also called for Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), planned to connect the main centres in the north, to be built in full.
Holding a mock train ticket reading “Save HS2, Save NPR, Save Euston,” they said that failure to build the entire network would “leave swathes of the north with Victorian transport infrastructure that is unfit for purpose.
The HS2 debacle exposes what happens when public infrastructure is handed to private contractors – especially when set against China’s state-led high-speed rail success, says CARLOS MARTINEZ
Coal-fired stoves in traditional homes are the primary source of extreme levels of air pollution in over-crowded Ulaanbaatar. As more people become climate-displaced, the situation is likely to worsen, write SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
One of the major criticisms of China’s breakneck development in recent decades has been the impact on nature — returning after 15 years away, BEN CHACKO assessed whether the government’s recent turn to environmentalism has yielded results
