A £130,000,000,000 high-speed rail linking UK and Ireland – pipe dream or a reality?

A quick train journey from Manchester to Dublin instead of a short-haul flight? That could be the future of travel in the UK, according to a top architect.

While the UK’s troubled HS2 project is still years from opening, proposals have been envisioned for a high-speed loop linking up the British Isles like a Eurostar of the north.

Named ‘The Loop’, it would connect the north of England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland like a giant Circle line on the Tube.

With an estimated £130 billion price tag, the proposal by the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba), Chris Williamson, has drawn inspiration from Saudi Arabia’s desert megacity, The Line.

Let’s take a look at the proposal and how realistic it might be.

Inside ‘The Northern Loop’

The proposed ultra-fast route would run through Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Bangor, Dublin and Belfast.

‘The Northern Loop’ could reshape where people can live and work, Williamson said.

Each of the nine cities would be reachable within 90 minutes thanks to the trains travelling at nearly 300mph (482kmh) every five minutes.

Instead of a bullet train whizzing underground, the loop would be built on an elevated viaduct, with services operating directly between cities without extra stops along the way.

This means people could ‘live in Newcastle and work in Glasgow,’ Williamson suggested, with eight international airports also on the route.

Williamson, who has worked on the high-speed stations for the Saudi mega-city development The Line, said it would help create ‘a new global city, dispersed but connected.’

The Northern Loop is described as ‘Northern Powerhouse comparable with other major global cities’ with potential to connect around 10 million people.

The hypothetical proposal comes off the back of the Northern Powerhouse Rail announcement last month.

It revealed a plan for a faster link between Liverpool, Manchester and Yorkshire. The Northern Powerhouse rail upgrades are seen as a plaster after the cancellation of the northern leg of HS2, known as phase 2, which was scrapped in 2021.

‘Someone’s had their crayons out’

However, rail expert Mark Smith, who runs the popular Man in Seat 61 website, cautioned that the Loop is likely to be a pipe dream.

‘Someone has had their crayons out,’ he said, adding that the proposal is ‘a non-starter.’

The cancellation of HS2’s northern leg ’emasculates’ any more grandiose projects like the Loop, he said.

Firstly, a tunnel in the Irish Sea longer than the Channel tunnel would be unrealistic, while any bridge over it would need to factor in the busy shipping lane, the expert said.

And secondly, trains travelling at 300mph would not be possible, especially as the fastest high-speed train can reach 217mph at the moment.

‘If you go faster, you increase maintenance costs,’ he explained.

‘HS2 phase 2 was going to be a conventional railway, which was actually planned and organised. We can’t really even get that.’

A spokesperson from Riba told Metro: ‘We welcome the conversation sparked by The Loop, a speculative project submitted to the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition by our President, Chris Williamson. 

‘The Summer Exhibition is a space for exploring ideas about the future of cities, infrastructure, and design – and projects like The Loop are part of a broader conversation about how architecture can respond to long‑term challenges.  

‘As an organisation, we remain focused on support our members, advocating for the profession, and engaging with issues that matter to the built environment, while encouraging creative thinking and debate across the built environment.’

Though train passengers in the north will have to make do without a high-speed connection, train ticket prices are set to be capped in Scotland in the year ahead.

Rail fares usually increase every April, but the £4.3 million investment means the fares will be frozen in 2026-27 financial year, Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, announced today. Scotland has also scrapped peak fares.

Some train fares have also been frozen in England until 2027.

The Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, has protected all regulated fares from an increase until next year, including season tickets, peak returns and off-peak returns, set to affect over a billion passengers.

What is Saudi Arabia’s Neom and The Line?

Saudi Arabia has been working on its futuristic mega-city Neom in the desert, estimated to cost an eyewaterig $8.8 trillion.

But the oil-producing giant recently scaled back the project, first touted as Saudi’s version of Silicon Valley and a home for nine million people by 2045.

Plans included The Line, a car-free 105-mile-long city running completely off renewable energy sources, with flying taxis and robot maids serving the population along with an indoor ski resort.

However, it is believed to have been scaled back after the price of Saudi Arabia’s main source of income, crude oil, took a hit.

The project led by the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is now thought to focus more on building data centres and AI.

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