Manufacturers have urged the government to revive the northern section of HS2 in order to allow an expansion of rail freight in the UK.
Rail freight usage will need to rise at least 75% by 2050 in order to remove lorries from UK roads and decarbonise the transport sector.
However, a report from Make UK and Barclays Corporate Bank warns that domestic rail capacity is simply too low to accommodate the amount of additional rail freight needed. It calls for the sections linking Birmingham with both Leeds and Manchester to be revived as a way to shift goods around the manufacturing hubs in the North of Great Britain, as well as helping to meet demand for their products in the South.
It advocates for a series of logistics hubs along the HS2 corridor that would link major ports such as Felixstowe with the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.
One train is able to replace up to 129 heavy goods vehicles – a tonne of freight moved by rail produces about a quarter of the carbon...
