Plans for HS2 on the cheap threaten to turn swathes of Manchester into a building site and botch a once in a lifetime opportunity

Short-sighted plans for a HS2 station in Manchester threaten a decade of chaos in the city centre with vast swathes of land becoming a building site.

As the HS2 Crewe-Manchester Bill is today prepared for a second reading in parliament, the Manchester Evening News demands the government does not botch one of the most important transport projects ever to be built in the north of England - by doing it on the cheap.

This is ministers’ one shot to build an underground station at Piccadilly which will future-proof passengers’ desperate need for capacity, reliability and resilience on the rail network. If they don’t make this choice then our city centre faces being scarred by a concrete jungle of viaducts and ugly structures on valuable land.

READ MORE: Ugly concrete stilts could soon tower over Manchester, kill 14,000 jobs and wreck city's 'once-in-a-lifetime' chance

The HS2 line from London to Manchester, via Birmingham, Crewe and Manchester Airport, will mean a new station on the northern flank of Piccadilly train station.

This was widely expected to be an underground station. But November’s Integrated Rail Plan stated the surface station as the ‘preferred option’, while in April, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the underground option had been ruled out because it would ‘take a lot of money out of other parts of the network’.

But this is short-sighted and stifling to long-term ambition, say leaders here. The cut-price overground station will see trains emerge from the ground in Ardwick before travelling on a mile-long viaduct of up to 12 metres in height to reach the new surface station.

London’s HS2 will get a ‘super hub’ - the new Old Oak Common in West London - an 850-metre station with 14 platforms, six