‘New love affair’ with cars ‘will deter commuters from returning to trains’

A “new love affair with the car” will make commuters in Yorkshire reluctant to return to trains and buses for their daily journeys, transport leaders warned yesterday.
Passengers board trains at Leeds train station. Picture: SWNSPassengers board trains at Leeds train station. Picture: SWNS
Passengers board trains at Leeds train station. Picture: SWNS

They also said that a move away from permanent office working would have long-term knock-on effects for road congestion and “kill off” expensive annual railway season tickets.

An online conference hosted by Transport for the North, the umbrella organisation for local government and business leaders, heard that a “huge effort” and “clear communication” would be needed to persuade travellers that public transport was safe, as they emerged from quarantine.

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David Sidebottom, director at the watchdog Transport Focus, said: “People feel safer in cars at the moment and that is a challenge. We have to understand those anxieties and barriers.”

He said passengers in the North needed a more flexible ticketing system similar to the Carnet cards used in London.

“In the early days of lockdown we saw thousands of rail passengers wanting to hand back their annual season tickets, and that has stuck now. We need to kick-start rail fare reform, and the annual season ticket may be a dead product – I can’t see many people needing to go back to something that was so expensive – or to travel four or five days a week.”

Judith Blake, leader of the Labour-controlled Leeds City Council, acknowledged that frequent delays, cancellations and overcrowded trains had become “a daily fact of life” but warned that if travellers could not be lured back on to public transport, the region was “heading for another disaster in terms of congestion and pollution levels”.

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She added: “The real concern is this new love affair with the car. I think that’s deeply challenging.”

Mrs Blake criticised what she called the Government’s “last minute, late announcement” mandating the use of face masks on buses and trains from Monday, which she said had been taken “without any guidance or even discussions with operators”.

She added: “It was not a good message. It’s time national governments understood that we can do these things far better locally.”

The Harrogate Conservative MP Andrew Jones, a former Rail Minister, admitted that it would be “hard” to persuade people to return to public transport “until they feel absolutely secure”, adding that “not everybody will feel secure about wearing face masks”.

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The conference also heard that reopening long-abandoned rail lines such as the one between Skipton and Colne, the so-called “missing link” connecting east Lancashire and West Yorkshire, could form part of a strategy to win back passengers. The Skipton line closed in 1970 but has been the subject of a campaign for reinstatement.

Referring to that route and another in Northumberland, Mr Jones said: “I think there is an opportunity to bring individual new lines back into use, and priorities for immediate delivery need to be clear and emphasised.”

He also called for “total commitment” to the north-south HS2 high speed line, as well as an upgrade to the east-west TransPennine line and the so-called Northern Powerhouse scheme to connect cities across the region, when he said were “confused” in the public mind.

But he said decision-making in Britain was slow and cumbersome and would “not survive” the urgency that was now needed.

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“The challenge to get stuff done has been ridiculous in the UK for far too long,” he said.

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