Kieran Preston: My life of public successes and private tragedy: the journey of transport chief

LET’S face it, transport isn’t sexy. The announcement of a new bus route never saw anybody go weak at the knees and no one ever burst into spontaneous Vegas high kicks at news of a train line electrification.

Understandably, we punch the air as Yorkshire lands a Harvey Nichols, or another arena, perhaps a restaurant carrying a celeb chef’s branding. Obvious stuff.

Yet looking back on our regeneration of the last 20 years, the unsung hero of regional renaissance has been public transport and the local hero of public transport is Kieran Preston.

It’s no coincidence that he took over the role of director general at West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Authority, Metro, exactly two decades ago. He is one of the less public figures who has quietly, contentedly worked behind the political scenes to make things happen. Small wonder he was rewarded with an OBE in 2005.

Shortly after starting the job in 1993, he led the drive to make commuter routes between key Yorkshire towns and cities quicker and more frequent, realising that the influx of new workers had to remain fluid or the post-recession financial upturn would grind to a halt.

And that determination to keep us moving can be traced right up to today when Preston and his team led the recent campaign to secure the high speed rail link (HS2)from the midlands through Sheffield and on to Leeds.

“We made the business case for HS2,” he says “And as a result we actually changed the government’s position on it.

“Its a great time for transport at the moment because I think there’s a greater recognition that transport doesn’t just move people and goods around, it’s also about jobs and investment. It’s finally seen as the major weapon for regeneration that it really is.”

For proof, look no further than cities like Manchester, Nottingham and, of course, Sheffield, where having a supertram (a sore point for Preston in terms of Leeds’s axed supertram, more of that later) played a crucial role in renewing communities.

At the age of 62, he’s watching 20 years at Metro, and 45 years in public service, reach its zenith. A string of key transport projects ranging from Leeds’s trolleybus to more train stations and HS2 will become a reality over the next 20 years, largely due to his leadership. Which is a particular achievement given the fact that, as Preston put the finishing touches to so many of these major projects, he was simultaneously dealing with the terminal illness of his wife, Denise Preston.

It’s coming up to the third anniversary of her death, which came after a painful nine-month battle against an aggressive form of small cell cancer. She was 55 and had started dating her future husband when she was 17 and he was 21.

Denise was a senior officer at Leeds City Council, with responsibility for parks. She was known in civic life not just for achievements such as bringing music extravaganza Leeds Festival to the city, but also for being a no-nonsense, glamorous woman. So the prospect of hospital gowns and hair loss was particularly daunting.

“She’d go to chemotherapy with her latest Harvey Nichols dress on and full make-up,” recalls Preston, with a proud grin. “She was so utterly, stunningly brave – and it wasn’t just an act either.

“Initially the cancer was discovered in her bowel and liver and, after a couple of scans, they said they could probably sort it out. But later they discovered they were secondary cancers and they couldn’t cure it because they couldn’t find the source.

“So, apart from during the chemo, she wasn’t actually that ill, not up until the last month – but from then it was just horrendous.

“But I had to be strong for the boys. It was particularly hard on our son Liam because he was just sitting his finals at university. But they were both very close to Denise and telling them the news, it was a horrible thing to have to do.

“Quite honestly, during that period, and for a year or so afterwards, you don’t care about anything. I just couldn’t be bothered with anything anymore.

“But what I found out is that some people are utterly kind. I got loads of letters from big players in and around Yorkshire taking the trouble to write and say: ‘Everything will seem horribly black right now, but there is a life, if you can hold on’. Or some people would just have a few quiet words with you, you know? Either way it made a big difference.”

One leveller was the influence of his brother and his mates (who cheekily nickname him ‘KT’ due to his Christian names: Kieran Thomas). They took Preston under their wing and also took him on to the golf course and back to Elland Road. Meanwhile, his sons, he says, became more like mates to him and he discovered a source of mutual support.

But perhaps the biggest boost came from Denise herself, who wanted them to recall the good times they’d enjoyed as a family.

“She gave me a complete rollocking one day,” says Preston, laughing. “I was railing about her being ill and she turned on me and said, ‘Don’t you dare! Not after the perfect time we’ve had together. What you’ve got to do now is just man up and get on with it mate’.

“And she’d do other things. For example, there’s a heart- shaped blackboard in the kitchen at home and one of the boys had written in chalk: ‘Happy Easter’. Then Denise rubbed it out and wrote in its place: ‘Happy Every Day’.”

These days Preston sounds more optimistic and far more philosophical. He has changed for the better, finding himself more “patient and kind” than he was prior to 2010. As a Catholic, his ordeal didn’t even test his faith: “God can’t micro-manage,” he says.

But he does have some regrets, some surprising. One source of remorse was his introduction of the turkey twizzler to Leeds schools. Born and bred in the city, Preston started working for Leeds City Council as a civil servant at the age of 18 (leaving the Swarcliffe family home to gain his qualifications as he worked). After rapidly moving up the ladder, one of the cost-cutting measures he introduced was bringing an end to the “cooked from fresh” meals that were served up to kids at lunchtime, in favour of the kind of fare Jamie Oliver fought to ban.

Another regret was that his father (who, like his mother, 
came from Irish stock) never saw him take on the job of running West Yorkshire’s transport network. “He was a railwayman all his life,” says Preston. “And he would have been incredibly proud.”

But arguably his biggest chagrin stems, predictably, from supertram – the scheme which was set to do for Leeds what a supertram did for Manchester and Nottingham. After years of working to put the bid before the Department of Transport, at the final hurdle the project was torpedoed in 2005 by the then transport secretary, Alistair Darling.

“I’ve met him many times before, but I wouldn’t walk over to speak to him now, put it that way,” says Preston. “I am bitter about not getting the supertram. I was furious with the Department of Transport.

“What really annoyed me was that the business case was actually stronger than the Nottingham or the Manchester tram. But instead of saying ‘We can’t afford it” – because they’d had to spend all their money putting the railways right – they distorted the figures and said we couldn’t afford it.

“It’s like saying: ‘I’ve got a £100,000 mortgage on a house’ then someone comes along and says: ‘Actually, that’s more like a £300,000 house because that’s how much it would cost over so many years of paying it back.’ They said it would cost us over £1bn – that’s how they spun it. And, for me, that was lacking in integrity.”

Fortunately, the Leeds trolleybus (also known as NGT: Next Generation Transport) should go a long way towards healing that particular wound, and it looks as though the scheme could be up and running by 2018.

But as much as Preston would like to remain in his role until 
the opening ribbon is cut, he can hear that golf course calling him from afar. “Besides,” he says. “I think if I stayed on that long, there would be a knock at the door sooner or later.”

Curriculum Vitae

BORN: November 30, 1950.

LIVES: Halton, East Leeds.

FAMILY: Sons, Liam, 23, and 28-year-old Kieran Charles (KC).

EDUCATION: St Theresa’s Primary School, Cross Gates. 
St Kevin’s Middle School, Cross Gates, Leeds.
Leeds Polytechnic, BA (Hons) Business Administration.Professional Qualifications: FCILT, FCIPD.

EMPLOYMENT:
Leeds City Council 
(1968-1993); Metro
(1993 to present).