Disabled Access Update (Integrated Rail Plan November 2021)

Posted on November 30, 2021 by admin

Confirmation from the minister responsible that the Trasnpennine Route Upgrade will make all stations along the route, including Marsden, fully accessible. [with the caveat that everything in the Integrated Rail Plan is “subject to approval”, para 5.3, page 142 of the report]

Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)

Can the Minister confirm that there is lots of good news in the integrated rail plan for my constituents who use Huddersfield station, Slaithwaite station and Marsden station on the trans-Pennine route? I thank the Minister for visiting Marsden last year with local rail campaigners, and will he confirm that we can get investment in disabled access at Marsden railway station as well?

Andrew Stephenson (The Minister of State, Department for Transport)

I am happy to confirm that, as part of the trans-Pennine route upgrade, every single station in my hon. Friend’s constituency will see massive investment, including to make them all fully accessible to disabled passengers.

Filling in some of the details will be critical in building public confidence that this time it will actually happen.

Provision of full disabled access is good news. Given the on/off nature of the commitment to disabled access over recent years, there is bound to be some scepticism as when and whether it will happen. This is entirely understandable given that we thought it had been approved in 2011, and it turned out that it hadn’t.

The process now needs to move on from the commitment being made to involving the community in discussions as to how it is to be done and how it can be used as a catalyst for regeneration.

Posted in accessibility, Campaigning, Electrification, Marsden, Slaithwaite, Transpennine Route Upgrade | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Reaction to the Integrated Rail Plan

Posted on November 30, 2021 by admin

The government’s long-awaited Integrated Rail Plan was finally published on 18th November.

In (very brief) summary

  • Most of the eastern leg of HS2 will be cancelled. It will go from Birmingham to the Nottingham area, there will be no continuation from there to Sheffield and Leeds.
  • The western leg of HS2 will continue as planned from Crewe to Manchester
  • The Transpennine Route Upgrade from Manchester to Leeds and York will be electrified throughout, with some three- and four-tracking where practicable. Completion expected 2032.
  • Northern Powerhouse Rail, previously envisaged as a new high speed line from Liverpool to east of Leeds, will not be built in full. Instead, there will be a new high speed line from Warrington to Manchester (mostly shared with the western leg of HS2) and from Manchester to Marsden where it will join the upgraded Transpennine Route. The timeline places this in the early 2040s.

There has been a lot of mostly negative reaction from politicians and business interests within the region. A series of links to reports and opinion pieces (mostly from the Yorkshire Post) and quotes from business or political figures regarding the government’s Integrated Rail Plan published on 18th November.

We did look for some quotes from people within the region supportive of the government’s position on Northern Powerhouse Rail/Transpennine Route Upgrade, but failed to find any. If we do find any, we will add them in.

Faster journeys, to more places, more quickly. That’s what Yorkshire can look forward to thanks to our multi-billion pound investment in the North’s railways.

Because I believe you’ve been stood waiting on the platform for long enough.

Under our Integrated Rail Plan, Northern Powerhouse Rail will run from Leeds to Manchester in just 33 minutes, cutting journey times almost in half, with long stretches of brand-new high-speed track. Capacity will double.

I promised to fund NPR between Leeds and Manchester. This does that – this is one of the three options presented to us by Transport for the North.

But high-speed rail is grindingly slow to build. Under the original blueprint, first drawn up more than a decade ago, Yorkshire would have not have seen the benefits of our investment until at least the 2040s. Levelling up can’t wait that long. And towns like Wakefield, Doncaster, Dewsbury and Huddersfield would have suffered as trains were taken off the existing main lines.

So rather than just waiting for another two decades for a scheme that snubs much of Yorkshire, we will do more, and sooner.

The travel time between Leeds and Manchester will be almost identical to what was promised under the old plans, but you’ll see trains leaving platforms far sooner.

Connectivity is key to prosperity, and that’s what this £96bn blueprint delivers. Not just speeding up journeys between London and a few cities 20 years hence, but levelling up communities right across Yorkshire today.

Boris Johnson, Prime Minister

“Leeds becomes left-behind Leeds and if Leeds is left behind, think what Bradford is thinking. It becomes ‘left behind Yorkshire’ as I see it.”

“It upsets me that it is going to be left behind from decisions being made in London with a London lens. The alternatives put forward are just a smokescreen for cutting Yorkshire out of the future of the country.”

“We’ve lost the vision of a future of the North and Midlands as an economic entity that can stand on the world stage of which being well connected together is a central part of. You can’t have prosperity without being well connected.”

“Going, ‘You’ll be able to run high-speed trains on existing track’ is a bit like saying, ‘You’ve come off the motorway, you’re still in the same car but you are now doing 30 miles an hour’. You are still in the same car but you are not on the motorway.”

Professor Andrew McNaughton

 “The Integrated Rail Plan is a huge moment for the North, and the announcement of the new line from Warrington through Manchester to Marsden, as well as the confirmation of HS2 in the west coming to Manchester and Manchester Airport, is welcome.

“However, the lack of a full new line across the Pennines will dramatically reduce the capacity and potential for rapid economic growth, in particular in the cities of Leeds and Bradford. What Northern leaders had proposed was an economically transformational vision. What we have is, as ever, second class.

Henri Murison, Director, Northern Powerhouse Partnership

“a realistic plan for major long term investments to improve rail for the North and Midlands in the face of public spending constraints”.

Sir John Armitt, chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission

“The deeper you dig into the IPR, the worse it gets. No NPR link from South Yorkshire to Manchester or Hull. No faster trains from Sheffield to Leeds.

“They’re locking in a second class solution for Northern transport for a generation. It’s not levelling up, it’s business as usual.”

Dan Jarvis, South Yorkshire Metro Mayor

“They spent £100 billion and got a massive raspberry from everyone.”

“I think the economics of it and the benefits it brings the north of England, both the eastern leg to Leeds but also, crucially, the east-west link from Manchester across Leeds and Bradford, are very self-evident.

“The business community in the north, the council leaders – both Conservative and Labour – in the north, are absolutely clear that it would create the connectivity to allow these metropolitan clusters to grow and bring economic growth to the north.”

George Osborne, former Chancellor of the Exchequer

“I feel it’s a betrayal of the Government’s levelling up promise. It doesn’t deliver a high-speed line across the Pennines with a crucial city stop in Bradford,”

“It does not support our ambition as northern leaders for a stronger, fairer and better connected North for all.”

“Whitehall seems not to listen to Northern voices. HS2 will now stop short of Yorkshire and the high-speed Northern Powerhouse Rail line will stop at the border.”

Tracy Brabin, West Yorkshire Metro Mayor

“This is about the future of the North of England for the next 100 or 200 years. That is the significance of the decisions that are being announced today.

“We are not prepared to consign our grandchildren, great grandchildren and beyond to being second best when it comes to transport in this country.

“We need the plan that we were promised, a plan that would unlock the northern economy.

“The fight will go on. And we’re asking all Northern MPs to put party politics aside and consider what is best for your constituents in generations to come.”

Andy Burnham, Greater Manchester Metro Mayor

“I’ve heard some people say that we’re just going about electrifying the Transpennine route – this is wrong.

“What we’re actually doing is investing £23bn to deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail and the Transpennine route upgrade, unlocking east-west travel across the North of England.

“So, in total, this package is 110 miles of new high-speed line, all of it in the Midlands and the North.

“It’s 180 miles of newly-electrified line, all of it in the Midlands and the North.”

Grant Shapps MP, Secretary of State for Transport

“This is not the first time our city has been promised major infrastructure investment, only for it to be curtailed or cancelled. It is 10 years this month since the Transpennine Route upgrade was announced, yet we are still waiting for the fully-defined scheme.

Even Thursday’s announcement of the electrification of the TransPennine route is only a rehashed version of a scheme that was promised in 2011 but has so far remained undelivered. And with only a quarter of West Yorkshire’s railways electrified so far, against a deadline of 2050 for the full network to be completed, it’s difficult to be optimistic that this will be achieved.

Councillor James Lewis, Leader of Leeds City Council

The Prime Minister promised that HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail were not an either/or option. Those in Leeds and Bradford might be forgiven for viewing it today as neither. That is the danger in selling perpetual sunlight and leaving it for others to explain the arrival of moonlight

Huw Merriman MP, Chair of the Transport Select Committee

“This will have been the only time in history when massively improving everybody’s rail services would have been counted as a betrayal. It’s a strange approach.”

Grant Shapps MP, Secretary of State for Transport

“The issue has never been getting to London, the problem is getting across the North itself,”

“The strategy from some council and business leaders in the North of asking for everything has blown up in their faces and the North is going to be short-changed as a result.

“If the Northern Powerhouse link doesn’t go ahead because of overspend on HS2 they should hang their heads in shame.

“Anything less than the new link would be a massive disappointment and a huge missed opportunity.”

Philip Davies MP (Con, Shipley)

“The trouble is that talk is cheap. We’ve got to put our money where our mouth is and every government has come along and said we want to level up and use different terminology for that but then they look at the price tag and tend to step back. We’ve got to be prepared to invest significant amounts of money for a significant period of time to deal with this.”

Kevin Hollinrake MP (Con, Thirsk & Malton) 

On Radio Four Today Programme

Grant Shapps: ″I should mention that this plan is actually for three high speed lines – the Birmingham to Nottingham and Derby one, Crewe to Manchester, and then a second one in the north which runs from Warrington through Manchester to the west of Yorkshire.

“A lot of this detail has been lost in the newspaper headings.

“There will be a new high speed line.”

Mishal Husain:  in Yorkshire, there’s going to be two miles of high speed tracks, correct?”

Shapps: “That’s right – it comes into the west of Yorkshire…”

Husain: “And stops.”

Boris Johnson was elected on a promise to level the playing fields – to make things better for households across the country.

“We were promised a Northern Powerhouse, we were promised a Midlands Engine and to be levelled up.

“What we have been given today is a great train robbery – robbing the North of the chance to realise its full potential.”

Jim McMahon, Shadow Transport Secretary

“The Prime Minister repeatedly promised that HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail would be built in full. Today that promise has been broken and Leeds and the North have been betrayed.”

Hilary Benn MP (Lab, Leeds Central)

“After 11 years of campaigning for improved rail connectivity both within and across our region, today’s announcements are extremely disappointing and will call into question just how serious this government is, on its levelling up promises.

Amanda Beresford, chair of West and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce,

“Businesses across the Midlands and Northern England will be justifiably disappointed to see the goalposts have moved at the eleventh hour, and concerned that some of the areas most sorely in need of development will lose out as a result of the scaled back plans.”

Beckie Hart, CBI Yorkshire director

Links to a range of press articles (both news and opinion) regarding the Integrated Rail Plan.

Some of the links are behind a paywall

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/columnists/norths-betrayal-mps-must-force-vote-on-hs2-and-northern-powerhouse-rail-downgrade-tom-richmond-3467035

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/columnists/yorkshire-rail-downgrade-seems-like-a-classic-political-fudge-justine-greening-3464697

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/columnists/the-region-has-been-betrayed-on-hs2-and-northern-powerhouse-rail-the-yorkshire-post-says-3464995

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/columnists/how-transport-investment-will-level-up-britain-grant-shapps-3449741

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/columnists/boris-johnson-our-integrated-rail-plan-for-hs2-and-northern-powerhouse-rail-in-yorkshire-3461833

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/business/the-betrayal-over-hs2-and-northern-powerhouse-rail-means-yorkshire-cannot-trust-this-government-ever-again-mark-casci-3458440

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/from-bold-promises-to-disappointment-how-hs2-and-northern-powerhouse-rail-were-scaled-back-3463181

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/what-governments-cut-price-northern-22202253

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/hs2-creator-pleads-for-boris-johnson-u-turn-on-left-behind-yorkshire-after-leeds-leg-axed-3464937

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/yorkshire-to-get-just-two-miles-of-high-speed-track-under-boris-johnsons-integrated-rail-plan-3463377

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/hs2-to-leeds-axed-while-npr-route-will-stop-at-yorkshire-border-grant-shapps-confirms-3462428

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-will-u-turn-on-scaled-back-rail-plan-former-chancellor-george-osborne-predicts-3465357

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/northern-leaders-say-the-fight-will-go-on-after-government-downgrades-rail-plans-3463467

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/19/england-scaled-back-rail-plans-are-not-a-betrayal-says-grant-shapps

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/20/hs2-transpennine-express-train-passengers

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/politics/fury-from-yorkshire-council-leaders-over-hs2-and-northern-powerhouse-rail-announcements-3463934

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/business/transport-downgrades-set-to-harm-yorkshires-economy-business-leaders-3463207

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/20/leeds-hs2-government-eastern-leg-jobs-homes

Posted in Electrification, HS3, Northern Hub, Rail Strategy, Transpennine Route Upgrade | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Integrated Rail Plan

Posted on November 29, 2021 by admin

The government’s Integrated Rail Plan for the North and the Midlands was published on 18th November, just 11 days short of the 10th anniversary of the announcement of Transpennine electrification from Manchester to Leeds and York.

It contains some things which are good and necessary, and which are to be welcomed.

It has been much criticised, including by political leaders and business interests across the region, for being much less than the expectations which had been built up by government and others.

One description we have seen, several times, is that it is neither integrated nor a plan. This seems fair comment, as it leaves unresolved

  • how how high speed trains from London to the East Midlands will continue to Sheffield (and how this will impact on local services on existing routes in the area
  • how the amended Transpennine Route Upgrade and Northern Powerhouse Rail will affect local stopping services
  • how both projects interact with other existing routes
  • whether this is the extent of the government’s ambition for the foreseeable future, given the need to electrify (and decarbonise) other routes such as the Calder Valley
  • how it ties in with targets for reaching net zero carbon emissions by no later than 2050

The schemes in it are all aspirations, subject to approval (“commitments will be made only to progress individual schemes up to the next stage of development, and a re-authorisation will be required at that point.” Para 5.3, p142), and the word “could” appears no fewer than 78 times in a 162-page document, so everything that follows is about aspirations rather than definite commitments.

In a document such as this, it would be normal to look at the supporting detail to understand what it will deliver, when and how. Unfortunately there is no published supporting detail.

HS2 Eastern

One headline is that the eastern leg of HS2 will go no further north than Derby/Nottingham, and the section onward to Sheffield and Leeds will not happen. There are other places to discuss this; it does not much affect our area. Many others, fair more qualified and knowledgeable than SMART, have commented on this.

Transpennine

The second part of it is that what happens with the various ideas for providing increased capacity and speed between Manchester and Leeds.

The two proposals, both a bit vague as to what infrastructure they would provide and what outcomes (in terms of journey times and frequency) they would deliver, were

  • Northern Powerhouse Rail, a completely line between Manchester and Leeds with a cringeworthy name. The route was never even vaguely defined, there was pressure from civic leaders in Bradford for it to go via there, but whichever way it went the topography would be challenging. Finding a route round and through urban areas and hills was never going to be easy. It’s unclear whether this has been rejected on grounds of cost, because it is considered undeliverable for technical or environmental reasons, or a bit of both.
  • the Transpennine Route Upgrade, consisting of upgrading the existing route with electrification, resignalling and some four-tracking. The scope of this has been argued, mostly behind closed doors in Whitehall, for the past 10 years (ok, 9 years 354 days) during which time plans for electrification have stalled.

The Transpennine Route Upgrade has been announced in the Integrated Rail Plan. As stated above, announcement does not yet equals approval. This needs to happen, and it needs to happen at the earliest practicable date. The estimated date in the IRP for completion is 2030-32. This is far from impressive for something which was identified as necessary in 1999, announced in 2011 and should have been completed in 2016-2018.

This appears to be a bit more ambitious than the scheme announced in 2011, as (subject to the missing detail) it involves not just electrification and resignalling but also three- and four-tracking wherever practicable. SMART has long advocated that the scheme should be as ambitious as this, our criticism of basic electrification with no additional track was that it would be at capacity on day one.

Station Accessibility

The minister has confirmed (twice) that the Transpennine Route Upgrade will include all stations (including Marsden) being made fully accessible, so this is good news. There have been public campaigns going back a long way, and SMART has more recently concentrated on talking to people and organisations (Transport for the North, West Yorkshire Combined Authority, etc) to secure their support.

Filling in some of the details will be critical in building public confidence that this time it will actually happen.

Provision of full disabled access is good news. Given the on/off nature of the commitment to disabled access over recent years, there is bound to be some scepticism as when and whether it will happen. This is entirely understandable given that we thought it had been approved in 2011, and it turned out that it hadn’t.

The process now needs to move on from the commitment being made to involving the community in discussions as to how it is to be done and how it can be used as a catalyst for regeneration.

Capacity

Once the Transpennine Route Upgrade has been completed, there will be additional capacity to enable more trains to run along the route, and for fast trains to overtake slow trains. This ought to benefit Slaithwaite & Marsden by enabling a more frequent stopping service which is less prone to delays; however, it depends on how the increased capacity is used.

It has been suggested in certain quarters that, rather than enabling local services to be improved, too many fast trains will lead to a reduction in the frequency of local stopping services such as ours. This is a risk, something which as a campaigning organisation SMART needs to be mindful of. It is not something which we particularly want to focus on, but it does need to be addressed.

It is not that long ago that the infamous May 2018 timetable was built around a headline of “six trains per hour between Manchester and Leeds”, with provision of a service at Slaithwaite & Marsden being treated as a bit of an afterthought which turned out to be unworkable. At the time SMART said that any increase in the number of expresses should only happen through an increase in the overall capacity of the route, not (as was the basis of the May 2018 timetable) by taking capacity used by local passengers and reallocating it to inter-city passengers.

Cutting local services to make way for more fast trains was unpopular (and rapidly reversed) in 2018 when it was tried before; it would be equally unpopular if it were to be proposed again at some time in the distant future.

The document focuses very much on the importance of improving local services as the rationale for upgrading existing lines rather than building new ones. Many knowledgeable commentators have pointed out that completely new lines were meant to release capacity for improved local services, and upgrades of existing routes might have the opposite effect. One thing we have noticed in the document is that whilst much of the text is about re-ordering priorities to improve local (or “intra-city”) services, all the predicted outputs in the report are about speed and frequency between the major cities, not about how frequencies of local services such as ours can be improved.

High Speed Line from Manchester to Marsden

Following on from completion of TRU (2030-32 in the text, possibly), the other headline proposal is for a “high speed” line from Manchester to (somewhere near) Marsden, at which point these fast trains from Manchester to Leeds would join the existing route and become a bit less fast. If this happens, this could be where the conflict between local stopping services and expresses comes into play. We would have to see some detail – if it exists – to make meaningful comment on this proposal. There is no detail to look at, almost the only thing that is known is that its completion is timed for the mid-2040s. We do not feel inclined to speculate on details of where and how this could be built.

Summary

Taken on its own, the TransPennine Route Upgrade, with its scope as ambitious as possible for upgrading the existing route, is what we have been advocating for many years. Of course we welcome it. Now we want to see it approved and implemented as soon as practicable.

Beyond that, it becomes a lot more vague, with an absence of any technical detail to make sense of what infrastructure will be provided and when, and what it can deliver in terms of improved local and express services.

We find it hard to believe that some of the proposals in the IRP will happen, or that many of the outputs will be delivered. The idea that from the mid 2040s, fast trains from Birmingham to Leeds and beyond will run via Manchester (reversing) and Marsden is just silly. We cannot see that 8 fast trains between Manchester and Leeds is practicable, sensible or desirable. More likely, there will be 4 fast trains, 2 semi-fast and 2 stopping services (which handily adds up to 8).

The Integrated Rail Plan contains some things which are good and need doing. It does not contain some other things which are good and need doing. It does not provide an overarching vision for how the rail network across the north will develop in the next 30 years. For a supposedly game-changing document, which has been years in preparation, there’s remarkably little to show for it.

It feels like many of the important decisions have yet to be made, and that the Integrated Rail Plan is not the final word.

Posted in Electrification, HS3, Transpennine Route Upgrade | Tagged , | Leave a comment

“Huddersfield Railway Station to be shut for 30 days as part of ‘blockade’ for £1.5 Billion Rail Electrification Scheme”

Posted on October 18, 2021 by admin

[From Huddersfield Hub, 15 October 2021. Incidentally, we’d like to put in a plug for the Huddersfield Hub, which is a newish news website for Huddersfield. They aim to cover local news, business, sport, what’s on, community and charity events across the Huddersfield area.]

Huddersfield Railway Station will be closed for a month – twice – when modernisation work gets underway as part of the £1.5 billion rail electrification scheme.

As the date of a public inquiry is revealed, the scale of disruption facing Huddersfield has started to emerge.

The Department for Transport has announced that the public inquiry will be held at the John Smith’s Stadium from November 2.

And documents published ahead of the inquiry have given some insight into how much disruption will be caused.

The scheme will see electrification of the line between Huddersfield and Westtown just outside Dewsbury with the number of tracks doubled from two to four along most of the route.

Eight bridges will be rebuilt including a narrow bridge over the railway in Colne Bridge Road near to Bradley traffic lights. When work goes ahead the road could be closed for up to two years.

The scheme will also mean an internal modernisation of the historic grade I-listed Huddersfield Railway Station.

Deighton and Mirfield stations will also see significant upgrades and there will be a brand new station at Ravensthorpe.

Documents submitted to the inquiry have revealed that the scheme is due to start in January 2023 and be completed in June 2026.

It also reveals that Huddersfield Railway Station will have two “blockades” – extended periods of closure – in Easter 2024 and Easter 2025.

During the first blockade the station will be closed for 30 days and trains will be replaced by buses.

John William Street and Fitzwilliam Street will be closed for work on the railway bridge. During the blockade work will take place 24/7. There was no detail about the length of the second blockade.

Kirklees Council lodged a formal objection to the scheme by Network Rail, forcing the public inquiry.

Despite the objection, the council is not opposed to the investment and, conversely, is very much in favour of the scheme going ahead.

The council made the objection because it had a number of concerns about the sheer level of disruption – not just to the railway but the roads as well.

Though council officers had been talking to Network Rail since 2017, councillors felt they had been kept in the dark over many of the details.

When Kirklees Council agreed its objection at a meeting in July, Clr Will Simpson, Cabinet member for Greener Kirklees and Culture, said:

“This is not a small matter and we don’t object like this for the fun of it.

“A scheme like this will inevitably have a big impact but we have not had proper information or adequate assurances on behalf of our residents.

“I don’t think any of us oppose this investment, we welcome it and we need it. But this is going to cause significant disruption.”

Clr Peter McBride, Cabinet member for Regeneration, said the Department for Transport had behaved “appallingly” and residents had to be protected as much as possible from the disruption.

The inquiry will be chaired by inspector Paul Singleton as Network Rail seeks wide-ranging powers under the scheme.

These include compulsory purchase of land, the permanent stopping up of footpaths and the closure of Huddersfield Broad Canal and the Calder & Hebble Navigation.

The Canal & River Trust and HD1 Developments Ltd, owner of the grade II-listed brick-built warehouse behind Huddersfield station, have also submitted formal objections.

Huddersfield Railway Station to be shut for 30 days as part of ‘blockade’ for £1.5 billion rail electrification scheme – Huddersfield Hub

Posted in Transpennine Route Upgrade | Tagged | Leave a comment