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Watch video of Preston rail commuters giving their views on Tory plans for a new high speed rail link
Train journeys from the North West to London would be slashed by 45 minutes under a new high-speed rail link.
The Tories have pledged to launch a competition to build a high-speed link alongside the existing West Coast mainline if they came to power.
A future Tory government would contribute £1.3bn per year to the cost of track and land for the new line.
The track would run between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.
And journey times between London and Manchester would fall from 125 minutes to just 80.
The line would be linked to Heathrow and replace an estimated 66,500 internal flights a year, including 36 flights each day between Manchester and the capital.
The Tories would ditch plans for a third Heathrow runway, with building work starting on the high-speed line as early as 2015.
Shadow Transport Secretary Theresa Villiers said: "This is one of the toughest decisions we face as a nation and David Cameron has not ducked it."
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