Time to increase rail funding in North and reverse cuts – Yorkshire Post Letters

IT is interesting to note that the Government’s recent Spending Review, billed as taking forward ‘levelling up’ the country, reduced spending on rail infrastructure by over £1bn over the next five years, a cut of 10 per cent.

As is typical of this Government, this was hidden in the small print, not in the headline announcements.

This also probably means that a greater percentage of the spend is going on projects like HS2, not the services and trains we, in Wakefield and across the North, need now. Commuters in this district make over five million rail journeys a year. They’ve had to put up with inadequate and ageing trains, poor punctuality and the increasing failure of private operators to provide anything like a decent service for years.

Now is not the time to reduce spending on local rail services. This is the time to increase it, especially to support jobs and businesses as part of our recovery from Covid. 

From: Ron Firth, Campsall.

THE Chancellor would be considered rash indeed if he were to elaborate on plans for levelling up and promise billions more on projects which may have to be scrapped or amended once we get through the pandemic (The Yorkshire Post, December 8).

After all the flak that the Government has received over its handling of Covid (not altogether justified), it is to be congratulated, together with all medical staff and scientists, on leading the world with vaccinations. Although we cannot claim to have better scientists etc than the EU, Brexit does give the UK an advantage in that we have sole control on any decisions made whereas the EU has the built-in delay in having to deal with 27 members.

Horse, cart, 20mph limit

From: Michael Green, Baghill Green, Tingley.

YOUR reader Bob Mansfield (The Yorkshire Post, December 9) expresses his unhappiness that the 20mph speed limit zones which have been introduced around schools in North Yorkshire are operative 24/7, and not just during school hours.

He should count himself lucky that he doesn’t live in Leeds, where the council, in response to lobby groups largely from outside Leeds, are nearing the end of a campaign to impose 20mph limits on practically all the roads in the district, even, in some cases, “A” roads.

The council has long given up the pretence that this is only for the safety of schoolchildren. Instead, it seems to be working on the basis that motor transport of all kinds is some sort of evil which should be eradicated, and that we will all be much better off if we revert to the times of the horse and cart, when people only ever ventured beyond their immediate locality as a special treat.

The council did say it would publish “before and after” surveys for each area, with the intention of being able to demonstrate how much things have improved. In my area, it still hasn’t done an “after” survey, more than three years after the scheme’s introduction. Is that because it knows the answer will be embarrassing?

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