Why Yorkshire cities must meet climate challenge over transport – Yorkshire Post Letters

THIS month has witnessed some UK cities finally taking on board the enormity of the challenges raised by urban pollution and climate change. Birmingham has made the courageous and surely correct decision to restrict car use in the city centre.

Trolleybus technology has advanced from double-deckers as Leeds transport debate intensifies – Yorkshire Post Letters

Even greater credit must go to Glasgow, with an ambitious plan to become carbon neutral. These examples, positive though they may be, are put to shame by Copenhagen where 50 per cent of all journeys are made by bike, and where the city is on target to be carbon neutral by 2025.

Decision on HS2’s future ‘needs to be fact-based’ says Transport Secretary Grant Shapps

On green issues, the old song might well go ‘there is nothing like a Dane’. Sadly, as a frequent traveller in all Yorkshire’s four big metropolitan areas, namely Leeds, Hull, Bradford and Sheffield, I feel deeply concerned that our region is just not facing up to the enormity of the challenges.

Only Sheffield has a tram system, which, to be frank, is a disgrace as anybody visiting Belgium or Holland sees them in far smaller places than the Yorkshire cities.

Congestion and pollution are catastrophic in all four Yorkshire cities, where far too little is being done to improve bus and rail services. The incredible fact that one can not access the KCOM Stadium in Hull by train, even though it stands right next to the only two rail lines, is utterly staggering and unthinkable in mainland Europe.

This region, which led the world into industrial and technological revolution, should be in the fast lane towards a greener future, not crawling along like so many of the cars that bedevil our city routes.

We need to step up – and do it quickly. A note to the politicians in London, it is not so much a powerhouse we need in the North – but a greenhouse.

Whitehall has to change

From: Dr David Hill CEO, World Innovation Foundation, Huddersfield.

WHAT Boris Johnson’s policy aide Dominic Cummings is doing is fundamental to the successful future economic wellbeing of Britain – Whitehall without change will continue to act like a mill stone around the neck of any possibility of having a successful future for the British people.

Unfortunately the majority of people do not know Whitehall gets away with literally doing nothing positive year in, year out. Time for great change, therefore, and Cummings has to fully succeed in his attempts to change Whitehall and its inner workings of for the overall good of the British people. For without this great change in mindsets and operational workings, we certainly will not succeed.

Welcome for the Lords

From: Coun Nigel Boddy (Lib Dem), Fife Road, Darlington.

CAN I just say how very pleased I am that the House of Lords (The Yorkshire Post, January 20) is being moved to York? I work in York. I hope it isn’t long before the House of Commons comes north to York permanently, too.

Plainly the plan to pull down and rebuild the National Railway Museum at York must now be cancelled. No one wants to see building workers dig up part of Leeman Road and see part of it closed to traffic permanently. No one will want that degree of disruption behind York Railway station if the House of Lords is to be moved to York too.

They were going to spend £53m demolishing and rebuilding the National Railway Museum at York. This museum is perfectly fine as it is. The arguments to spend that money instead in Darlington, on the bi-centennial of the Stockton to Darlington Railway in 2025, are now much stronger.

I am sure everyone in York will (like me) welcome their Lordships.