Vernon Barker has joined Transport for the North as Interim Northern Powerhouse Rail Director at an exciting time, as options to deliver our ambitious vision to revolutionise the North’s railways are assessed and prioritised. We caught up with him to find out more.
We started off by asking Vernon to tell us a little about his background: “In the North I’m probably most recently known for having led the team that established and operated the TransPennine franchise, which saw the delivery of a transformation of the services which were previously run as regional inter-urban services into a true connection across the Pennines,” he told us.
“I have also been the Managing Director for First Group’s Rail Division in the UK, up until this time last year, and I ran TransPennine for nine years. Before that I also had the pleasure of being Finance Director and then managing Director for First NorthWestern, the regional operator in the North West of England. I have a strong connection with railways in the North.”
We asked Vernon why he’d been keen to get involved with Northern Powerhouse Rail.
“I was attracted to the interim role because I think we’re at a very interesting and critical point for the development of transformational rail services across the North of England,” he explained.
“I was also very keen to keep a strong momentum going to bring to fruition the plans that were outlined in Transport for the North’s initial strategy reports.”
Northern Powerhouse Rail has sometimes been referred to as HS3 or TransNorth. We asked Vernon to explain what it really is.
“Northern Powerhouse Rail is really the long-term ambition to link the economic centres of the North more closely together so that the North can compete both internationally and with the rest of the UK much more effectively. In order to do that the North needs far stronger, faster and more frequent rail connections. These are big and bold ambitions which are building on what’s happening in the shorter term, with investment through the new Northern and TransPennine franchises and through Network Rail’s Northern Upgrade Programme.”
We asked Vernon what progress was being made with Northern Powerhouse Rail.
“We’re at a very interesting stage in the development of Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR),” he explained, “Previously we’ve defined what we think good looks like in terms of frequency and journey times in the North.” [See diagram below.]
“The NPR team is now assessing information from Network Rail and High Speed 2 with high level feasibilities from an engineering perspective that show where we may be able to enhance and upgrade the existing network or alternatively provide new lines or new connections to the planned HS2 network. We are now looking at all those reports and with our partners across the North of England we’ll be prioritising the next stage of review, so we can decide which of those options we want to look at in more detail.”
“We will be prioritising those options through the late autumn and early winter. By December or January we should have prioritised options which we will be discussing with partner organisations. By early next year we want to be really clear about the options we’re considering in more detail.”
“There are a number of challenges with all the options presented. For example, if you upgrade the existing network you have to balance the need for greatly improved rail services with the need to maintain a decent level of service. Doing large-scale upgrades on the existing network whilst keeping trains running is very challenging – there is obviously a lot of risk in disrupting existing networks to try to improve them and we couldn’t have a situation where passengers were unable to travel.”
“But building new railway line is also challenging, particularly when you look at the geography of the North and realise that at some point you’d have to dig some tunnels! We’re at an early stage of evaluation but it does seem that, at least in some areas, the only solution which will meet our ambitions for journey time and frequency will be building new line. This is something that’s not really been done in the North on this scale since Victorian times so it will be challenging, but also exciting.”
We asked Vernon when he thought we might see this work coming to fruition.
“We are talking a relatively long time scale,” he told us, “Just as we are now using railways which were mostly built well over 100 years ago, we are now looking at a programme to be delivered over the next thirty years which will connect the North for the next century and beyond. But that obviously doesn’t mean that we won’t see any improvements to the railways in the interim. Investments in new carriages under the new franchise agreements and the electrification of train lines across the North will mean that passengers will see faster and more frequent journeys in the next few years.”
For such a big project, the importance of partnership working is paramount. Vernon told us he was impressed by the strong collaboration between TfN, HS2, Network Rail and the Department for Transport to explore and evaluate options for the bold ambition for Northern Powerhouse Rail.
“We have a real opportunity with the planned development of HS2, that we will be able to use some parts of that network to help us improve connections across the North as well as with the North and London,” he explained, “The extra capacity that HS2 will give us should allow us to have faster and more frequent journeys between some Northern cities. We’re working closely with HS2 to make sure that those requirements are reflected in their plans, so that the North gets the maximum benefit from this new railway line.”
“This isn’t about an individual connection. It’s about making sure that the North of England has a rail network which allows, for example, people in Hull to get to Manchester Airport, someone in Newcastle to travel to a meeting in Sheffield or for someone to commute from Liverpool to Leeds. It’s about opening opportunities for both people and businesses to operate in the North as a whole.”
We finished off the interview by asking Vernon what he thought was the best thing about living and working in the North.
“I think it’s the strong ambition for improvement,” he replied, “I particularly see that at the moment on the railways – people see what the railways can become and they are really dedicated to making that happen.”