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20 Miles More
20 Miles More is a campaign group founded by Liverpool business people to ensure that the city is fully linked to the proposed HS2 high speed rail network. The campaign was launched by local businessman, Andrew Morris, in January 2014 and is supported by the Respublica think tank headed by Phillip Blond. The group has responded to the official consultation into Phase 2 of the high speed route by the production of a report and has kept up a continual dialogue with local authorities, political leaders, transport professionals and Liverpool businesses.

The name, 20 Miles More, refers to the twenty miles of additional high speed track necessary to give Liverpool a dedicated connection to the HS2 network.

The Campaign
The 20 Miles More campaign began in January 2013 with the publication of the Government Preferred Option for Phase 2 of the High Speed Rail Network. The campaign's organisers considered that the proposal left Liverpool at a serious economic disadvantage with respect to competing economic centres due to longer journey times, low capacity and a failure to release rail capacity for the development of passenger and freight. They considered that the response by responsible authorities in the Liverpool City Region to this problem was not sufficiently robust and felt that an independent business led approach was the way forward.

Initially, the group worked together to produce a report in response to the formal consultation process. However the interest and involvement of local businesses led to the formation of a campaign that was launched on 31st January 2014, the last day of the consultation. The launch took place at Liverpool's Royal Liver Building attended by members of the press and BBC.

The launch resulted in local, regional and national recognition for the 20 Miles More organization and its aims. Chair, Andrew Morris, was interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme by John Humphrys and the launch presentation featured in the BBC North West Tonight TV programme that evening.

The Report
The 20 Miles More report amounts to 100 pages devoted to examining the HS2 proposals, as they affect Liverpool and the Liverpool City Region in detail, assessing the impact of those proposals and outlining alternatives. A major plank of the report is the presentation of an argument for a Liverpool direct link with outline proposals for both routing and service provision. In developing this argument, 20MM made the suggestion that a direct link to Liverpool could serve, not only as a link to the main trunk route of HS2 and, therefore, to London and Birmingham but also as the first section of a west-east high speed rail route linking Liverpool to Manchester and Manchester Airport with the opportunity for further extension across the Pennines to link to Leeds, Sheffield and Hull. Since the publication of the report, this concept has emerged as a government proposal for an 'High Speed 3' rail route linking the major towns and cities of the North of England.

The Response
The existence of a campaigning organization independent of the public sector organisations tasked with promoting the interests of the Liverpool City Region is believed to have influenced the position taken by these organisations. In particular, a business breakfast held in April 2014, attended by Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson was to result in a collaboration between the Mayor and the Respublica Think Tank in the production of a report into the economic benefits of a direct HS2 link to the city of Liverpool.

The Case for 20 Miles More
The publication of the HS2 Phase 2 documentation in 2013 revealed that there were no plans to provide an HS2 service to Liverpool comparable to that proposed for Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Birmingham. Specifically, no dedicated infrastructure was planned to serve the city or region, which would be linked to the new line at a junction South of Crewe. Consequently, the first thirty five miles of the Liverpool to London journey would be on speed restricted Victorian infrastructure that is, in places, currently subject to congestion.

The implication for the Liverpool service is that journey times will be significantly longer than those from Leeds and Manchester and the fact that services are to be operated by 200m long 'classic compatible' trains rather than 400m long 'captive' trains will result in much lower capacity. The lack of new infrastructure will mean that no existing infrastructure will be freed up to provide additional passenger or freight services. This is of especial significance for the planned increase in freight movements from the planned Liverpool Superport.

The financial implications of this proposal were evaluated in a report produced by accountancy firm KPMG on behalf of HS2 in September 2013. This report revealed that the GVA uplift attributed to HS2 would be considerably less in the case of Liverpool than for comparable city regions. The possibility that investment in HS2 could actually lead to a reduction in GVA was even mooted in the KPMG report.