Manchester united

摘要

For ￡33 billion ($49 billion) and a 20-year wait, Britain is to get a high-speed rail line connecting London to the north of England. For ￡32 billion-odd less than that sum, it gets the Northern Hub. Far less controversial or glamorous-the funding process was a bit like a church-roof appeal at first, says Chris Fletcher of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce—the project is a terrific example of the kind of infrastructure that Britain badly needs to build. It consists of a series of schemes aimed at improving railway travel around Manchester, the north of England's most successful city. One of them, the building of a short curved section of track known as the "Ordsall chord" (see map), might appear humdrum.