Rail fare freeze is a bright spot but we still need improvements in the region - Andrew Vine

The decision was long overdue. There can’t be a regular rail user anywhere in Yorkshire who didn’t resent regularly having to pay more for services which never seemed to improve, with cancellations and delays making them late for work, and overcrowding turning routine journeys into ordeals.

But one move in the right direction by freezing fares cannot disguise the fact that our region’s rail services have an awfully long way to travel before they are meeting the needs of passengers and the economy.

We still look enviously to the south-east and wonder why paying customers are denied the equivalent of fast, frequent services that speed commuters into London.

Yorkshire awaits a definitive commitment from the government to Northern Powerhouse Rail to transform services across the Pennines. Maybe 2026 will see a date set for work to begin, but nobody sensible would bet on that happening.

Despite the encouraging noises made by ministers, who undoubtedly would like to see a new network fit for the 21st century, they may yet conclude that it is too expensive and try to fob the north off with a cheaper – and inferior – set of proposals.

The north-south divide in funding for rail improvements remains as acute as ever.

That much was demonstrated a few days before the government announced the freeze on fares, when it trumpeted the next phase of building a new line between Oxford and Cambridge, saying it will boost that region’s economy by £6.7bn.

The Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, was correct to point out this was an investment that would create jobs and lay the foundations for long-term prosperity.

Could we have the same, please? We deserve it no less than the people and businesses of the south-east and need it a whole lot more, because our prosperity lags so far behind theirs.

Yet plans to improve rail services in the north have consistently been delayed, underfunded, scaled down or, in the case of the high-speed link to Sheffield and Leeds, axed.

And the services between these two great Yorkshire cities provide another illustration of the need for the government to somehow find the money to make radical improvements to our network.

In October, civic leaders from West and South Yorkshire, including mayors Tracey Brabin and Oliver Coppard, went to London to press for major investment in both services and the stations in Leeds and Sheffield.

There was wholehearted support from the business community for their case that these two regional economic powerhouses are woefully under-served by the railways, with just one fast train an hour, which is stifling growth.

The government ought to be regarding Leeds and Sheffield in the same light as it obviously regards Oxford and Cambridge – as engines of massive economic development.

But those engines can’t fire on all cylinders without a decent train service, lack of which the mayors said is causing Yorkshire’s economy to miss out on £25bn a year.

They want to see four fast trains an hour, plus upgrades to both city’s stations to improve connectivity for onward travel.

It seems barely believable that northern regional leaders should have to press their case in this way, when the importance of good rail services is a fact of life for the south.

London would grind to a halt without the trains that bring an army of workers into the capital every day, yet governments have for decades failed to provide the north with similar infrastructure.

Both Labour and the Conservatives have been content to allow a huge area of the country to make the best of a creaking system that has seen little transformational improvement since the Victorian railway pioneers built it.

It will be a test of the government’s determination to grow the economy whether it finds the money to improve services between Leeds and Sheffield as part of a wider commitment to making Northern Powerhouse Rail a reality rather than a vague ambition for some unspecified point in the future.

The government’s stewardship of the railways so far does not fill anyone stuck on a Yorkshire platform for a train that doesn’t arrive on time with confidence that things are going to get better.