We asked the candidates for the West Yorkshire mayoral election the following.
In the Colne Valley we have been waiting for decades for our substandard train service to be improved. As long ago as 1999 Railtrack (as was) recognised that the route was congested and came up with a range of proposals for improving it and increasing its capacity. Almost none of those proposals have happened, whilst passenger numbers have increased by about 150%.
In 2011 the government announced the Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU), including full electrification and all stations along the route being made fully accessible. Ten years after it was first announced, hardly any of TRU has been approved, it�s unclear whether the line west of Huddersfield will be electrified and it seems that station accessibility is still regarded as an optional extra.
We are not asking for much. We are asking for Marsden and Slaithwaite to get the half-hourly service that most other routes in the Leeds and Manchester city regions already take for granted, and for Marsden station to be made fully accessible. TRU, in full, can deliver these outcomes.
What, as mayor, would you be able to do to make this happen, and make it happen quickly?
These are the replies we have received. As we receive more replies we will publish them here.
The governments performance on rail improvement delivery has been appalling. I have received considerable criticism from lobbying organisations like Northern Powerhouse for criticising the obsession shown by decision makers on HS2, with almost weekly press releases from Council leaders calling for confirmation that it will be built, and virtually no mention at all of conventional rail schemes like TRU. The National Infrastructure Commission’s report that HS2 and other committed schemes could not all now be delivered through delays and ballooning costs of HS2, confirmed my concerns.
Transport for the North has performed poorly over the past 6 years in pursuing TRU and other improvements to conventional local rail improvements, and I have criticised the WYCA leadership (I am on the Board as an opposition member) for it’s overly passive approach to performance on our historically overcrowded and unreliable network. The Blake/Williams review has disappeared and made no difference so far, and Grant Shapps’ Transport Acceleration Council can’t even reveal the “100 projects” it is “accelerating”.
As Mayor I would be free without compromise to challenge vocally the performance of Conservative ministers and Labour Council (and therefore WYCA) Leaders on delivery of rail infrastructure. TRU would be the top of the list for delivery confirmation, as you have pointed out it is a decade in the waiting, and we need conventional rail improvements at pace to get our economy moving, rather than the vague future capacity delivered as a byproduct of HS2.
[Cllr Stewart Golton, Liberal Democrat Candidate]
I would want to make the case for rail and rail freight as a substitute for road building and road widening and give electrification a much greater priority. Having a rolling programme of electrification as they do in Scotland would be a much more efficient way of ensuring we had certainty over when it was actually going to happen. I would use the Mayor’s significant role in Transport for the North to push for this.
Marsden Station is very poor in terms of access under the Disability Discrimination Act. I would reprioritise the West Yorkshire Transport Fund away from road building and widening and would want to use it for projects such as improving the footbridge and installing lifts in stations like at Marsden.
[Cllr Andrew Cooper, Green Party Candidate]
We have also had a 40 minute zoom call with Matt Robinson, Conservative Party candidate, who has said that if elected he would like to arrange a meeting early on to discuss things further.