PREVIEW

One of Britain’s top architects has unveiled an ambitious proposal for a raised high-speed rail network that would link nine cities across northern Britain and across the Irish Sea.

The Loop is the brainchild of the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Chris Williamson. It would connect Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool in England with Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland, Bangor in Wales, as well as Dublin and Belfast.

Williamson described the scheme as a manifesto designed to “inspire” and “provoke” debate about Britain’s future infrastructure and regional development.

If built, The Loop would form a continuous circuit, with trains running in both directions on an elevated viaduct at speeds of up to 300 miles per hour. The journey time between any of the cities would be no more than 90 minutes.

According to the proposal, travel from Edinburgh to Manchester would take less time than crossing Los Angeles, and the network would make it possible for people to live in one city and work in another, such as Newcastle and Glasgow.

The idea was influenced by Saudi Arabia’s Neom project and The Line, a 170-kilometre-long megacity planned in Saudi Arabia, on which his practice has worked in recent years. That project has since been scaled back.

Williamson, who is a co-founder of architecture studio Weston Williamson + Partners, 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.”

He hopes linking the nine cities would create a “northern powerhouse” with a population of around 10 million, comparable with other major global cities.

The Loop would be the UK’s third high-speed railway if constructed. The first, High Speed 1, opened in 2003 between London and the Channel Tunnel. The second, HS2, is currently under construction between London and Birmingham. Planned extensions to Manchester and Leeds have been cancelled or remain in limbo amid concerns over rising costs.

The Loop proposal goes far further, crossing the Irish Sea twice. This would require either tunnels or bridges, building on previous suggestions by architects and engineers to create fixed links between Great Britain and Ireland.

The estimated construction cost is £130bn, with projected economic benefits of around £12bn a year, according to Williamson.

Beyond transport, the scheme is conceived as a broader piece of national infrastructure. Williamson said the rail corridor could also act as a “ring main” for energy, distributing power generated by onshore and offshore wind, alongside small modular nuclear reactors located at key hubs.

Those behind the concept designs argue this concentration of energy and connectivity could support new industries such as data centres, advanced manufacturing, and energy-intensive production, while waste heat could be reused for food growing and other purposes.

The engineering concept has been developed with input from structural engineering firm Elliott Wood. The tracks would be raised on stone viaducts made from pre-tensioned stone beams, with materials sourced locally to create what the designers describe as a “vernacular” that fits within the landscape.

Trains, around 50 metres long, would run every five minutes. Services would be point-to-point, travelling directly between cities without intermediate stops, while other trains would pass through stations as passengers board and alight.

From stations, automated vehicles would handle the final leg of journeys, extending the reach of the system beyond the core network.

Though the project may seem far-fetched Williamson insists it could act as a catalyst for long-term economic renewal.