Inflated prices could send the cost of a flagship railway restoration into the billions of pounds, the North East mayor has been warned.

Fears were aired on Tuesday over the amount of money it would cost to reopen the mothballed Leamside Line.
Putting trains back on the disused route is a key pledge of regional mayor Kim McGuinness and has long been seen as vital to the future of the North East.

Restoring the Leamside Line would allow for an extension of the Tyne and Wear Metro to Washington, a new Tyne-Tees passenger rail service, and the freeing up of space on the congested East Coast Main Line by providing an alternative path for freight.

But there are questions surrounding its cost. A previous estimate put the price of building the Washington Metro Loop alone, using the northern section of the Leamside Line, at £745 million – but it is now listed as a £900 million scheme in the recently-published draft Local Transport Plan.

That document does not predict a cost for restoring the full length of the Leamside Line, all the way from Tursdale in County Durham through to Pelaw in Gateshead, though that would clearly be substantial.

At a meeting of the North East Combined Authority’s (NECA) overview and scrutiny committee, Conservative councillor Richard Dodd pointed to the spike in costs on the Northumberland Line, where passenger trains between Newcastle, Blyth and Ashington are due to start running again shortly, as evidence of the dangers such projects face.

The cost of that scheme has jumped from an original £166 million to almost £300 million due to inflation and complications in the construction work.

Coun Dodd, who represents Ponteland, said: “My fear is that £1 billion on the Leamside Line now would be £2 billion or £3 billion by the time people see it.”
The Local Transport Plan sets a target date of 2032 for the Washington Metro Loop to open and 2035 for the full Leamside Line. 

Ms McGuinness has already suggested that investment from private businesses, alongside Government funding, will be needed to bring the huge plans to fruition.

She said on Tuesday: “The point for me is that we want all of these things to be delivered. Of course we have seen some projects escalating in cost and a period of real inflation at scary levels. 

“This is about planning, about how we get the sequencing and the planning right for the projects we want to see and make sure that the right level of planning goes in.

“In a sense, that is an easy answer. But we have an incredible group of experts working on these projects now and we are watching over that and making sure they are all properly costed and looked at.

“Then we need to go and get the funding. That will take time and the costs might be higher by the time we get there. The truth is I don’t know how much it is going to cost. We have an estimate.
“The transport fund we have is really big, but it won’t deliver everything. It will require us to do more, it will require us to do public-private partnerships and think differently.”

This summer, NECA agreed to spend more than £8 million developing business cases for the Leamside project.

A spokesperson for the combined authority defended the region’s record on significant transport projects.

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They said: “Nexus, which is leading delivery of the project, has a very good record in delivering major infrastructure projects with the £104 million Metro Flow project coming in £5m below budget last year.  

Nexus is now undertaking a detailed phase of engineering surveys and scheme development to create the full technical plan for building the railway to Washington within a tight cost envelope.”