North rail delay risks Grant Shapps repeating Chris Grayling’s failings – Yorkshire Post Letters

IN response to Grant Shapps (The Yorkshire Post, January 11) offering reassurance as to the Government’s commitment to levelling up, mere words and no action will do nothing to reassure. His government needs to finally approve and implement projects previously announced.

In July Mr Shapps wrote in The Yorkshire Post acknowledging there had been a lot of words and no action, and this needed to change. He also wrote an article for Conservativehome.com, in which he described the experiences of a Marsden to Manchester commuter, who gave up using public transport because the trains were so awful.

We hoped that that showed a recognition of the need to deliver improvements for passengers at places like Marsden. We were encouraged that, unlike Chris Grayling, Grant Shapps “gets it”.

Slaithwaite & Marsden Action on Rail Transport (SMART) has asked two questions about the Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU). Will it deliver full disabled access at all stations on the route, including Marsden? Will it deliver for Slaithwaite & Marsden the half-hourly service that most routes in the Leeds and Manchester city regions take for granted? These are the same questions we have been asking for several years since TRU was first announced. We still don’t have answers.

In July we were led to believe that a decision on the scope and funding of TRU would be forthcoming in December 2020. Now it turns out that the decision has been put back at least another six months, which doesn’t say much for the supposedly accelerated decision-making process. We are closing in on 10 years from the original announcement of TRU, and it still hasn’t been approved.

Mr Shapps needs to deliver on past promises fast, starting with TRU in full, before his credibility goes the same way as his hapless predecessor’s.

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