Transpennine Route Upgrade

The Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) is a major investment being made in the railway between York and Manchester via Leeds and Huddersfield in the north of England.

[2] It has Victorian infrastructure, covers difficult terrain including the 3-mile (4.8 km) Standedge Tunnel, and has poor access roads.

[3][4] To the north the Calder Valley line connects Manchester and Leeds via Rochdale and Bradford (where trains have to reverse).

[13][14] The whole £9–11.5 billion programme has been defined as phase one of Northern Powerhouse Rail, and is claimed to be the biggest infrastructure project in the UK.

[15] It consists of a succession of sub-projects[16] designed to give incremental benefits to rail users over a period of time, with an anticipated overall completion date of between 2036 and 2041.

[34] The equivalent transpennine road link is the M62 motorway, which provides the most practical route for heavy goods vehicles and other commercial traffic between Manchester and Leeds.

[35][36] Three of the five largest metro areas in England that contain a significant number of warehouses requiring deliveries to and from the ports at Merseyside and the Humber, are linked by the M62.

It is widely accepted that there is a North–South divide in England,[39] with government spending per person on drivers of growth such as transport infrastructure, being far higher in the South-East than the North.

In March 2021, Parliament's Transport Select Committee published a report in the series of Trains Fit for the Future enquiry.

There was also a call for the Department for Transport (DfT) to publish without delay a list of “no regret” electrification schemes, and then for the industry to act on them.

Northern Powerhouse Rail (sometimes called High Speed 3) was established in 2014 to substantially enhance the economy of the North of England.

[45][46] It would have provided new and significantly upgraded railway lines to transform rail services between the region's towns and cities.

[47][48][49][50] The original scheme would have seen a new high-speed rail line from Liverpool to Warrington then joining the HS2 tunnel which it would share into Manchester Piccadilly.

In November 2014, the deputy prime minister Nick Clegg reported on the government's desire to see the whole route upgraded and electrified.

[53][54][55] On other parts of the route, including between Leeds and York, bridge raising and other civil engineering works were started in March 2015.

[85] As of 2021[update], Network Rail are working on the sections between York and Church Fenton,[86] Huddersfield and Westtown (Dewsbury) and Manchester and Stalybridge.

[96] It is the best place on the route to provide a facility for fast trains to overtake slower ones, by increasing the number of tracks from two to four.

This includes quadrupling the track across most of the route, the provision of grade separation at Ravensthorpe and works to the stations, as well as electrification throughout.

Instead, it says a high speed line would be built east from Manchester to Marsden, which is just over the border into West Yorkshire, at the eastern end of the Standedge Tunnels.

The leaders of the upgrade held a round table conference November 2022 discussing progress and strategy for keeping disruption to a minimum.

In her bid to get that job, she had promised that the Transpennine route upgrade would be delivered in full, with electrification all the way between Liverpool and Hull including a stop in Bradford.

[100] In November 2023, a Freedom of Information Request uncovered by The Northern Agenda newsletter revealed that the government-operated TransPennine Express spent almost £2 million securing advertising for the delayed TRU programme in 2022/23.

[112] As part of the upgrade, eleven stations along the route will require a review of options for persons of reduced mobility such as step-free access and other enhancements.

[114] The latest plans in the TWAO call for a SFC (Static Frequency Converter) in the Ravensthorpe vicinity rather than a normal grid feeder station.

[121][122] A consultation has been launched with residents on the plan to close Lady Anne level crossing and Batley signal box as part of the upgrade.

[128] A TWAO was submitted July 2022 to close three level crossings (Rose Lane, Adamsons and Poulters) and replace with one new road and bridge with pavement and mitigated for reduced mobility access.