London's £19bn Elizabeth line opens today - but where's the Crossrail for the North?

Today is a big day for rail, London’s £19bn Crossrail.

Four years late and £4bn over budget, more than 70 miles of train lines and 10 new stations will span London and the South East from Reading and Heathrow in the west, through 42km of new tunnels under central London, to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the South East. Its first passengers will board today, initially taking journeys between Paddington and Abbey Wood.

Crossrail is a welcome development. The densely populated capital calls for more links to new housing, a jobs boost and greater transport capacity. East-west links have long been a problem across the country, and Crossrail is London's remedy.

READ MORE: North’s own rail plan would have meant faster journeys and more trains, admits government - but it was too expensive

But London does not have the monopoly on chronic housing deficit and capacity shortage on public transport. Nor is it the only city with ambition. Manchester has areas of dense population and a housing crisis in the style of London’s. It's also a haven for start-ups and the fastest growing tech city in Europe, with the highest graduate retention outside the capital. And yet its rail links, and those of cities across the North, are often old, slow, overcrowded and unreliable.

Which is why the Government’s full steam ahead attitude to an over-budget Crossrail - and Boris Johnson’s dispatch last week that a £30bn Crossrail 2 is in his sights - might be tough to take for passengers in the North who have been forced to endure creaking infrastructure and lousy timetables for years, compounded by derailed plans for the vital east-west links of Northern Powerhouse Rail, the eastern leg of HS2, and an underground station at Piccadilly.

All of which