Electric train link is eminently sensible idea

WHAT an extraordinary, incoherent rant from self-styled transport expert TE Marston of Otley (Yorkshire Post, August 8) on “crackpot proposals over trains”. He clearly does not scrutinise his Yorkshire Post thoroughly enough.

The eminently sensible idea to electrify the currently overcrowded and grossly unreliable Leeds-Harrogate- York line using second-hand London Underground trains available by 2014-15 would have multiple benefits, including greatly increased passenger capacity.

Journey times would be reduced, while boarding and alighting would be swifter (each carriage on the 20 six-car trains having four doors on each side).

This scheme, proposed by Harrogate Chamber of Trade and Commerce (composed of hard-headed businessmen who are hardly likely to be “crackpots”) as a stand-alone project, taken out of the rail franchise system, does not, as Mr Marston claims, include a tunnel to a station under City Square; it will continue to terminate in Leeds Station.

However, the idea of eventually putting the line underground as proposed by James Bovington (Yorkshire Post, July 22) – with other subway stations in central Headingley, Hyde Park and University – makes entirely good sense when it can be offered.