A high-speed rail line for the North

Theresa May has just announced that she will spend £24m in the North. Unfortunately, it's going on cycling. While this is still welcome, it's hardly a priority. HS3 is such a thing; it's what a priority looks like, and sounds like, and is like. It's a priority.

The Cameron administration pledged an 'HS3' link for the North. What they meant was a line linking Leeds and Manchester, electrified to run at about 140mph at most. HS2 is planned to reach 250mph. We need a line that runs at the same speed as HS2.

Remember 'Northern Powerhouse'? That was just George Osborne's posh name for Manchester The North of England is not just Manchester. It's much, much more. We want HS3 to run into Liverpool and Bradford. And we want half of the trains into York and then north to Newcastle, and the other half to Hull. These cities desperately need a better service than the one they have today.

And we also need a high-speed line from Manchester to Sheffield. Sheffield can't be overlooked anymore. The importance of connecting it to Manchester is really very obvious. There is already talk of a new road in a tunnel between the two cities. Why not make it rail? We can only see the real benefits if it is a high-speed line. And then it'll certainly be worthwhile.

My parents used to live in Durham. My father worked in Middlesbrough, my mother at the University of Manchester. She had to commute from Durham to Manchester Piccadilly and back every day - and although there were no changes involved, it was piteously slow.

I've travelled that line. It was slow then and it's just as slow now. And the trains are even more crowded, the M62 and the A-roads more packed. But there's no alternative.

This is what we want to change. For the North to have more autonomy the major cities need to be connected together - certainly more than they need a high-speed umbilical cord to London. People say that 'it's grim up north' - and it's not true. But maybe that's from their experience of travelling from one side of it to the other.

We need to build a Britain for the future. And we need a North for the future. Much more infrastructure and spending per head is located in London and the South East. It's time to redress the balance. We need a level playing field.

This is more important than HS2. It will effect local business and economies in a bigger and better way. It will massively cut journey times between the fractured sides of the North. Communication between Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and Hull would improve massively. The North would seem more united. And as for the many, many people that use the current Trans-Pennine line between Yorkshire and Lancashire, their journeys would be improved ten-fold. Bradford would be connected properly for the first time. Over 500,000 people live there, and it contains some of the most deprived areas in the North. It would benefit greatly from a high-speed service as its economy would improve and its people would be better connected.

So that's what we want: a new, high-speed railway line from Manchester to Bradford, Leeds, and then a junction: Hull one way, and York (joining the mainline to Newcastle and Teesside) the other way. And we also want a high-speed link between Sheffield and Manchester. Except this: we don't just want these projects, we need them.

Chris Grayling heads up the DfT, so he's our target for this petition. Come on, Chris, make it happen!

This is our message to Theresa May: here you have a brilliant opportunity to show how you are committed to improving the North. Take it with both hands, honestly. You need us. Remember that.

HS3 gives us a platform (not just a railway one, either) for working on that. Here we have the foundations of a proper, working, breathing North, a North for the future. We all just need to see it.