West Yorkshire Mass Transit: Can’t you manage with better buses? The answer is a resounding no - Andrew Vine
In the more than 35 years I’ve been reporting and writing for The Yorkshire Post, one story has come around repeatedly with depressing regularity – broken promises and betrayals over plans for a Leeds tram system.
Governments have come and gone across those three-and-a-half decades, and every single one of them has let down Yorkshire’s biggest city and most powerful driver of the region’s economy after raising its hopes.
I’ve heard pledges to give Leeds a tram system made with enormous fanfare, and then, months later, seen a press release quietly issued saying the plans have been deferred or scaled down.
The reason has always been the same – it will all cost too much – and always comes accompanied by the same lame old question: Can’t you manage with better buses instead?
And now it’s all happening again, like one of those films in a museum that runs on a repeating loop all day long.
Like many another Yorkshire resident who has followed the litany of let-downs over many years, I had an overwhelming sense of déjà vu when it emerged last week a secret Whitehall review into the latest proposals for trams had urged West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin to focus on buses as a cheaper alternative.
The same old story. The same obstacles put in the way since the 1990s raised yet again.
The cost-benefit analysis doesn’t add up, say the London pen pushers who see no irony in using the country’s finest mass-transit system to get to their offices while denying the people of West Yorkshire the same opportunity.
They ignore the fact that the cost-benefit analysis never added up for the Sheffield Supertram system either, which started running in the early 1990s and provided a massive boost to the city after a decade of decline in its traditional heavy industries.
The system has proved such a boon and is so essential to everyday life that a Sheffield without its trams is unthinkable.
The same applies to the trams introduced in Nottingham and Croydon at about the same time. Over the course of decades, the inward investment and transport improvements trams bring far outstrip their costs.
In what now seems those far-off days of the 1990s, there was a willingness to invest in the future for the benefit of cities such as Sheffield. Call it vision, or call it pragmatism, there was a recognition that infrastructure had to be put in place in order for them to move forward and create prosperity.
In the case of Leeds, that recognition gave Leeds its best chance of getting trams, but the opportunity was lost almost 30 years ago. Worse, it set the pattern for every broken promise that has followed.
Shortly after Tony Blair’s 1997 election landslide, his deputy, the late John Prescott, came to the city to convene a meeting with civic leaders and property developers at what was then the West Yorkshire Playhouse.
The media were excluded but within a couple of hours of the meeting ending, The Yorkshire Post knew exactly what had been said.
Mr Prescott offered a deal. If the developers built to boost Leeds, the government would give the city a tram system. This informal public-private partnership would turn it into a northern economic powerhouse.
The builders kept their part of the bargain. New buildings started going up and old ones were renovated. The plan worked. Over the next few years, investment started pouring into the city and new jobs came with it. The skyline we know today had its foundations in that spurt of development.
But the government didn’t honour the deal. It wasn’t Mr Prescott’s fault. Whatever one thought of his politics, he was a man of his word. He wanted Leeds to have trams because he saw the need for them, but was stymied by the Treasury which wouldn’t make the funds available.
Revivals of the plan have foundered on the same intransigence and lack of foresight ever since.
Even the very slimmed-down tram network envisaged today – two lines, to the south of Leeds and to Bradford – is likely to go the same way.
That much is to be seen from the careful phrases of Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander when she talks about supporting a West Yorkshire mass transit system while emphasising the need to get value for money.
We can translate that into something much simpler and wearisomely familiar: Can’t you manage with better buses?
The answer is a resounding no. West Yorkshire is not remotely short of buses already, and more of them are not going to create an efficient and modern mass-transit system.