Stephen Joseph: Heed warning signals to keep rail revival on track

While all of that is great, and a tribute to the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and the other northern authorities who have fought back against an initial view by some London bureaucrats that, in effect, the North was lucky to have any railways at all and that continuing Pacers was all the region deserved, it is not the full picture.

Recently, we have had the much vaunted “pause” in northern electrification. This is part of wider problems with the Network Rail investment programme; after delays, cost escalation and missed targets the Government has stepped in, got rid of Network Rail’s chairman, and imposed around six different reviews of Network Rail from different angles. The electrification and most of the other projects within the £38bn investment plan look like being shelved while new boss, Sir Peter Hendy, carries out a review of Network Rail’s engineering programme, to be published in the autumn.

This has, to put it mildly, cast a shadow over George Osborne’s plans for creating a Northern Powerhouse to rival London’s economic dominance. The Northern Powerhouse is the Chancellor’s vision of northern cities transformed – rebalancing the economy and establishing the North as an economic force. Big investment in rail is a fundamental part of achieving these goals, enhancing services between a string of cities and making them more than the sum of their parts.

On top of the electrification “pause”, the Government has been embarrassed by debate over funding for the Northern Powerhouse. For example, rather than the claimed £13bon investment, the real figure looks more like £3bn – this is less than the figure earmarked for major road schemes in the area.

People in the North are entitled to feel that they are losing out – especially when they see electrification between London and Bristol exempted from the general “pause”, so that even more transport investment is going to the South.

The Chancellor must address this – and not just to save his blushes. Much of the rationale for the Northern Powerhouse makes good sense and major investments are needed to end the overbearing dominance of the South East. Links between key cities in the North are currently substandard and the rail network is ideally placed to address this with such investment badly overdue.

Last year at Campaign for Better Transport, we set up a Right Track North campaign to support local authorities and bring together different interests to push for real improvements in the North’s railways. We produced a Right Track North Charter and ran events and lobbying to get an investment-led rather than a cost-cutting Northern franchise. All this – and the campaigning by many other groups across the North – resulted in the Transport Secretary overruling his civil servants and including new trains in the franchise specification.

Our Right Track North campaign is now calling on the Chancellor to work with the Department for Transport and Network Rail to end the delays to the promised rail electrification schemes and to set a clear timetable for delivering the essential improvement work which will bring us closer to European standards in rail travel with better journey times, more reliable trains and lower emissions. There are affordable and sensible smaller schemes, such as filling in the electrification gap between Leeds and York, which ought to go ahead now, irrespective of any pause or review.

The Chancellor needs to get serious on funding the Northern Powerhouse. While Network Rail has struggled to make progress with capital projects, income from franchising has consistently exceeded expectations. This money should be used to address skills shortages and weaknesses in the supply chain. The forthcoming Spending Review needs to confirm the replacement of the Pacers and the other upgrades in the new rail franchises, let the North get on with smart ticketing and make sure vital investments are made to to get the Northern Powerhouse project on track.

There is also a case for redeploying some of the billions sitting in the major roads budget earmarked for smart motorways and other schemes. These are the wrong priorities. There’s a stronger case for getting on with the investment in rail, and also in fixing local roads where there is a huge maintenance backlog. The major road projects would not benefit the economy in the way we need, and will drive up air pollution and carbon emissions around the North’s cities.

Stephen Joseph is chief executive of the Campaign for Better Transport.