SMART

[Press release from West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin, dated 26th November 2021, follows]

In a letter to Grant Shapps, West Yorkshire Mayor, Tracy Brabin, says that communities “feel betrayed” by the Government’s Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) and that it is “simply not good enough for West Yorkshire”.

She stresses she will not give up on her campaign for the delivery of high-speed services to Leeds and Northern Powerhouse Rail, with a stop in central Bradford.

She warns the Secretary of State that failure to deliver both projects will cause long-term damage to the region, and she wants to make sure that she and other West Yorkshire leaders are allowed to work jointly with Government on its rail plans to avoid this happening.

And she asked for clarity on the funding for the mass transit system for West Yorkshire.

She says in the letter:

“The plan will limit the growth and potential of West Yorkshire for many decades to come. I would like to make it clear to you that this will not be the end of our ambition.

“Northern Powerhouse Rail, with a stop in central Bradford, and delivery of high-speed services to Leeds via Sheffield, are core to the existing future plans for these cities and the wider region.

They would be transformational for our economy, for decarbonisation, and the additional rail capacity we need. I will not stop making the case for either of these projects.”

Now she’s asking the Secretary of State for clarification on the details of IRP and is pressing for assurances that she and other West Yorkshire leaders will be involved in how it is rolled out.

She calls for a “truly joint piece of work” on the study the Government says it needs to establish how a high-speed link which would replace the HS2 leg to Leeds can be achieved.

“By working together, we can conclude, once and for all, the high-speed rail solution for Leeds and Sheffield and the connections onwards to East Midlands and London to restore business confidence.”

And she urges the Transport Secretary not to allow “yet another study” to distract from the urgent need to address capacity issues at Leeds Station.

On mass transit for West Yorkshire, the Mayor asks the Secretary of State to confirm how the £100m committed for project planning in the IRP will be allocated.

And she says people in Bradford urgently need to know how they can connect with the rest of the north, with a new city centre station not included in the government’s plans, even though it would slash journey times to Manchester by two thirds and take thousands of vehicles off the roads.

She welcomes the Government’s commitment to a TransPennine Route Upgrade, but is asking for clarity on what will be done to ease the disruption which the work will cause along the route in towns such as Huddersfield and to ensure local services are protected.

[ends]

Link to press release is
Mayor tells Transport Secretary that rail plan will limit West Yorkshire’s growth “for many decades to come” – West Yorkshire Combined Authority (westyorks-ca.gov.uk)

Link to letter is letter-from-mayor-tracy-brabin-to-dft.pdf (westyorks-ca.gov.uk)

In the context of the stated 33-minute journey time between Leeds and Manchester, Mayor Brabin says in her letter that she would like more detail on the assumed stopping patterns at intermediate stations, to ensure that the IRP meets local as well as inter-city rail needs. This is something which is of particular interest to SMART, as it is unclear (to say the least) whether the scope of the works is sufficient to meet the aspirations both for more and faster expresses and a more frequent local stopping service than at present.

The government’s Integrated Rail Plan for the North and the Midlands was published on 18^th November, just 11 days short of the 10^th 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.