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Imagine an age when people could live in Glasgow and easily commute to an office in Newcastle without flying. Or when you could get from Liverpool to Ireland in less than the time it takes to get from one side of London to the other. It might sound impossible, but one of Britain’s leading architects reckons there’s a way to make that idea a reality.
The president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Chris Williamson, has revealed his futuristic designs for a high-speed rail line that would allow people to travel across major cities at lightning speed.
Williamson envisages the line connecting nine cities in the UK and Ireland – Dublin, Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool and Bangor in Wales – in one continuous circuit to create a ‘single, connected northern city’. He calls it: The Northern Loop.
The concept is inspired by the extremely ambitious (and somewhat dystopian) vertical 170km-long smart city planned for Saudi Arabia named The Line. The engineering part of the idea was developed with input from civil engineering consultants Elliott Wood. It would see high-speed tracks raised on an elevated stone viaduct, with trains running every five minutes, zooming at speeds of up to 300mph (although the fastest trains in the UK right now travel at less than 200mph).
That would mean that all nine cities would be within a maximum of 90 minutes of each other. Belfast to Dublin would take around 20 minutes, Newcastle to Glasgow would take roughly half an hour and Manchester to Edinburgh would take less than an hour.
Obviously the Loop will need to cross the Irish Sea twice – once between Glasgow and Belfast and once between Dublin and Bangor – which would require either tunnels or bridges and conversations over border arrangements.
There’s no official backing for the project but Williamson plans to formally present it as part of London’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition this year. He estimates that it would cost £130bn to build.
It’s worth noting that the inspiration behind the Loop is pretty controversial and, many believe, is doomed to fail. The Line has been significantly scaled back from the initial plan and, three years after construction began, progress seems to have stalled to a halt.
Chris Williamson said: ‘Maybe I have been too influenced by the scale, the vision and the ambition of NEOM The Line in Saudi Arabia, having worked on the high speed stations running alongside the one hundred and seventy kilometre long city for the last few years.
‘But we in the British Isles should be equally ambitious about our future. At present the Government seems to expect each city to compete for the same investment funding, when we need to encourage connectivity and collaboration.’
Did you see a vast new city for one million people is being planned for the UK?
Plus: A new high-speed railway line has been proposed between two of England’s greatest cities.
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