Northern transport investment worth billions will improve rail, buses, roads and trams. The Manchester to Leeds journey could fall from 50 minutes to 42. Passengers may spend the saved eight minutes remembering previous upgrades, which is the closest Britain gets to high speed rail.
Northern transport investment accelerates the announcement
Ministers unveiled the plans beside a departure board showing DELAYED in six attractive fonts. The announcement arrived precisely on time, which officials said proved the system works when the train is made of words and has no passengers.
Derek Platform Vest leads the Office of Journey Time Compression. He said: “Eight minutes transforms everything. Commuters can miss breakfast, childcare and their first meeting with an entirely new sense of momentum. We call that levelling up, because it sounds better than making people late more efficiently.”
Engineers explained that the actual work requires tracks, power systems and stations. The publicity team had already completed its section by printing the word TRANSFORMATION on a train shaped lectern and taking a photograph of a minister pointing at a map as though he had just invented the north.
The scheme also promises a West Yorkshire mass transit network and a new Merseyrail station. Consultants have therefore begun the crucial first stage: choosing whether the vision document should feature a sunrise or two businesspeople pointing. A third option, a train, was ruled out as too aspirational.
Passengers welcomed investment but asked when services would become reliable. Officials answered with a colour coded map. Green meant funded. Amber meant business case. Purple meant somebody once mentioned a tram near a Treasury official and everybody had to have a lie down.
Finally, the first faster train reached Leeds eight minutes early. Nobody noticed because it had left the previous Thursday. Mr Platform Vest declared the timetable beaten, the north reconnected and requested funding for a second platform clock, which will be installed shortly after the sun burns out.
Read the real story: the northern transport funding announcement.
