The only way for West Yorkshire to get a tram network is to abolish the Treasury in its current form - Gareth Forest
I was two years old when the government first announced it would build a new mass transit system for Leeds. My youngest child is now almost two, and the government has just announced the effective cancellation of the third proposal for a regional tram.
I say cancel, not delay. You cannot delay infrastructure projects like this by a decade. The technology goes out of date, the teams working on it disband. You have to start again.
We were promised a YIMBY government. But it turns out when it comes to building actually useful things that Northerners need, the claim that Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are YIMBYs is a fiction.
I do not envy Mayor Tracy Brabin’s task. She has been blocked from delivering one of her key manifesto pledges, all while being expected to carry the can for a dysfunctional government.
But her claim on radio last week that “the process is the process” pretends that this is a technical issue, rather than a political decision. The Mayor insists that the government is “as frustrated as I am.” Yet it is the government who has imposed this ‘delay’.
Everyone agrees that West Yorkshire, the largest urban region in Europe without a mass transit system, needs a tram. But the Treasury is requiring the Mayor to submit a ‘business case’ before pressing ahead with planning the network.
The claim is that this is to ensure value for money. But what is the point of a business case, other than to dish out millions of pounds of taxpayer money to private consultants, just to tell us we should try running more buses instead of a tram?
Because that is the risk. The Treasury’s obsession with cutting corners and refusing to invest in long term projects in the north is what will kill this latest tram proposal if we are not careful.
We are told that everyone from the Prime Minister and Chancellor down are on board with this project. But this reveals the ridiculousness of our political system. The Prime Minister should not have to be ‘bought in’ to a regional transport project.
We would not now be in this situation if we had control over our own funding and transport powers in West Yorkshire. But the UK is the most politically centralised country in Europe aside from Malta – and Malta is smaller than Wakefield.
It is absurd that an important regional infrastructure project like this cannot be funded and delivered by West Yorkshire’s politicians. Instead we need to go cap in hand to the Department for Transport and are to have a peer of the realm, Lord Hendy, mark our homework.
An infrastructure project of this importance should be a political choice, not one for bean counters. The civil service did not believe there was a strong business case for the Humber Bridge, but the importance of that bridge to the people who lived there was evident, and it was a political choice to build it. To suggest that it shouldn’t have been built today would be laughable. But this is exactly the crossroads we find ourselves at (again) with a tram for West Yorkshire.
If a politician says they will build something, then they should build it. What was clear listening to the radio last week is that people in West Yorkshire are tired of broken promises, especially from Sir Keir Starmer.
The concern about money is a red herring. According to the IPPR, the north has lost out on £140bn of transport funding compared to London over the last decade. We should be getting more money for this project. Instead the project is being reviewed for value for money.
Because as Gareth Dennis, the railway engineer, puts it, no one today would unbuild the Edinburgh Tram, despite the rising costs.
And yet the extraordinary thing is, Leeds has unbuilt its mass transit system once before.
Mayor Brabin claims these delays are due to the ‘unprecedented’ nature of the project. But the two proposed tram lines are not a patch on the dense and extensive tram network Leeds, and the rest of West Yorkshire, boasted until 1959.
The truth is Leeds was a pioneer in mass transit, and we should be again today. In the three decades since Leeds’ first mass transit proposal, Lyon – a city of comparable size and density, has built a dense tram network of eight lines, supported by an underground metro. Lille, our sister city, has a tram network. These networks are funded by local and regional government. The pattern, and our problem, is obvious.
It is surely not beyond the wit of man to build a new mass transit system for our region.
Unfortunately the Treasury believes it is. That is why the only way to get our tram is to abolish the Treasury in its current form. It is the Treasury’s internal policies, its quangos, and the spring and autumn budget bonanzas, which are the main blockages to building West Yorkshire’s tram.
The Chancellor and the Treasury hold all the cards, and they don’t want to let go for fear of losing control.
Gareth Forest runs the West Yorkshire Needs a Tram campaign and chairs the Better Buses for West Yorkshire passenger coalition.