YP Letters: Minister's hollow words on slow train to Hull

TRANSPORT Secretary Chris Grayling’s “High-speed vision for future of Yorkshire transport” (The Yorkshire Post, January 30) will ring hollow in the city of Hull.

Fine words from Mr Grayling until you reflect that this is the man who has just cancelled the long-planned electrification of the line from Selby to Hull, leaving the city with a connection which was indeed planned, and made, by his beloved Victorians.

Victorian signalling, Victorian manually controlled level crossings and a Victorian 70mph speed limit – despite the line being the longest and straightest section of track on the entire UK network.

And yet private finance was made available to the Government for this by local enterprises and Hull Trains.

If the so-called Northern Powerhouse is ever to materialise in any meaningful way it must surely be done by bringing all of the North’s resources into the fray rather than simply those of Leeds and Manchester, and a modern electrified line linking the North’s two largest port cities of Liverpool and Hull must surely be the driving artery of such a scheme. Hull being Yorkshire’s great port city deserves better from a minister whose doublespeak promises much but delivers so little.