INSIGHTS: An alliance for the ages.

Here I am again and this time I’m very pleased to be writing a hugely upbeat blog about Midlands Rail Hub – in particular, the very recent appointment of an alliance to design and deliver the scheme.

To recap, Midlands Rail Hub is the flagship rail scheme for the Midlands. Through providing new chords (sections of railway line) at Bordesley, just east of Birmingham city centre, it allows us to fundamentally remap the way we operate train services into and through Birmingham. There simply isn’t space to run more trains into the city’s New Street Station. Hence, we sought an alternative solution to expanding New Street and its approaches. This was the genesis of Midlands Rail Hub in the 2010s, which instead runs additional train services into an expanded Moor Street Station – just a stone’s throw from the city’s forthcoming Curzon Street HS2 Station.

With the full scheme in place, we’re looking at an uplift of around 300 trains per day, which equates to around 20 million seats per annum. Many of these additional trains will extend far beyond Birmingham and the West Midlands, giving us a genuine step-change in capacity in moving people sustainably and efficiently between our towns and cities. All of this is possible with change from £2 billion, with every pound we invest returning us well over £1.50 in benefits – easily enough to satisfy the Government’s value for money criteria.

But back to today’s topic – the alliance. Our alliance is now up and running for Midlands Rail Hub. So, what is an alliance and why is this a pivotal moment in scheme development? This is a private & public sector collaboration, bringing together Network Rail (i.e. the public bit of the alliance) together with VolkerRail, Laing O'Rourke, AtkinsRéalis and Siemens Mobility. This alliance has a hugely exciting remit: working up the detailed designs for our scheme, together with our ‘Full’ Business Case, setting out the real detail on the benefits, costs and crucially, ensuring our strategic rationale for intervening in the first place is ‘bang on’ so we continue to enjoy cross-party political support. The alliance will then go on to deliver this work on the ground, with the obvious benefit of the alliance arrangement being that the same people designing it then deliver it.

It's also useful to note that the alliance has been appointed with future flexibility in mind. This is because our current funding settlement with Government is centred on what we call Midlands Rail Hub West (but inclusive of both the West and East Chords at Bordesley). There are some bits of the scheme where we don’t yet have a firm commitment – and when that commitment does come, the alliance is poised to take on this work, saving us valuable time and effort downstream.

I’ve previously called the scheme a ‘no brainer’. Nothing that has happened since I wrote that has changed my view in any way. It’s still a ‘no brainer’ with a firm tick in the box for both strategic rationale and value for money. And now with an alliance in place to design and deliver it.

Andy Clark is the Rail Programme Lead at Midlands Connect