October 1: Local rail left directionless for sake of grandiose schemes

TOM Richmond always has our local interests at heart and is quite right to highlight the lack of direction in rail planning in both our region and nationwide with its misplaced emphasis on turning stations into shopping centres and pie-in-the-sky schemes such as HS3 (The Yorkshire Post, September 25). It’s this obsession with rail rivalling air that is preventing sensible spending on valuable life-enhancing local projects such as reopening Skipton to Colne or extending electrification to Scarborough and Grimsby.

The Conservatives had raised hopes that decades-old transport problems would finally be addressed with electrification of the Midland Main Line and York to Manchester via Leeds. Of course all train lines between major cities in France, Germany, Japan, Spain and Italy were electrified decades ago. Labour have an absolutely appalling record on local rail transport – not one metre of track was electrified in West Yorkshire under the last Labour government and I am struggling to think of any new local stations reopened in their 13-year tenure.

That said the pause – I’m being charitable – on vital electrification projects and which will probably push our Harrogate line scheme into the long grass (in which by that time I will have been buried) has occurred on the Tories’ watch and will do nothing to promote the much vaunted economic regeneration of the North.

At a municipal level, I find no Leeds councillors who share the vision of a city metro system with central area rail tunnels linking main passenger destinations quickly and directly. Yet such systems have operated for years in our twin cities of Lille and Dortmund. No one seems to think that the rail tunnels in Glasgow, Liverpool and Newcastle have proved a costly waste of money – indeed one of the reasons that Tyneside universities are so popular with students from Leeds is the ease of getting around on the Metro.

Yet to suggest such a system here is to be regarded as living in cloud cuckoo land as if somehow no matter who is in power Leeds is cursed with an inability to promote an ambitious rail-based and ecologically friendly electrified transport future.

The quality of our urban fabric has improved remarkably. However if Leeds is serious about distinguishing itself from its competitor cities then an excellent way to do so would be to promote and finance a municipal and regional electrified metro network which would be more akin to Zurich’s excellent system than Liverpool’s good one.