There have been campaigns going back at least 30 years for
provision of disabled access at Marsden station. Others will be better
qualified than us to comment on earlier campaigning, so we will restrict
ourselves to commenting on 2011 onwards.
It’s worth pointing out that the standards that have to be
met have increased over the years. If you are familiar with Brighouse station,
the arrangement of ramps giving access to the Halifax-bound platform would
probably not conform to the standard required today.
Provision of step-free access at stations is not cheap. Whatever you think it might reasonably cost, it will be a lot more than that. It’s not the time and place to go into the range of reasons why construction projects on the railway are so expensive. That’s just how it is.
There are basically two ways of funding provision of disabled
access at stations. Either they can be funded through the Department for Transport’s
Access For All programme, or done as part of a route modernisation.
Access For All
Access For All is a bidding process. Local authorities submit bids. We are not sure whether train operating companies can also submit bids. The Department for Transport makes the decisions. Stations with higher passenger numbers will score more highly in the bidding process, which will tend to give a South-Eastern bias. Likewise the easier, and therefore cheaper, locations to fix will score more highly.
Access For All is split into bidding rounds, with some
rounds being for large scale projects (e.g. provision of step-free access) and
some for “Mid-Tier” funding which is for small scale improvements such as
tactile strips and handrails.
Even the handful of projects under Access For All each year take a long time to be implemented. Compared to the scale of the challenge to make all stations accessible, Access For All is just tinkering at the edges.
The Transpennine Route Upgrade
The other funding method is to include station accessibility
within major projects, and it just so happens that we have one of those taking
place around here. Or rather we thought we did. Electrification of the main
North Transpennine route between Manchester, Leeds and York was announced in
the 2011 Autumn Statement. It wasn’t called the Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU)
at the time, but that is what it has since been named.
There was no ambiguity in the announcement. The route would
be electrified in full. In the context of disabled access, bridges at Marsden,
Greenfield and elsewhere would need to be raised or replaced and that would involve
disabled access being provided at those stations.
We have not had sight of plans for how this would be done at
Marsden, but we were given to understand that such plans had been prepared. Our
understanding was that it involved creating a new station access from the old
goods yard, with accessibility issues being resolved from that end of the
station rather than from the road bridge.
This was all looking promising. The route would be
electrified by 2016, with all stations along the route being made fully
accessible. Unfortunately what was promised in 2011 didn’t happen.
Although the engineering solutions are different for each station,
the funding and decision-making process is the same for Mossley, Greenfield and
Marsden (and also for Slaithwaite, which is fully accessible only for
passengers who are being dropped off and collected by car). So decisions made
about station accessibility apply to all four stations.
At some point the Department for Transport informed the
local transport authorities along the route (Transport for Greater Manchester –
TfGM – and West Yorkshire Combined Authority – WYCA) that as the stations along
the route would be made fully accessible as part of TRU, they would not be eligible
for Access For All bids. This is referenced in TfGM committee minutes.
Years passed. Access For All bidding rounds came and went.
The Transpennine Route Upgrade which had been announced in 2011 and
re-announced several times since turned out not to have been approved, let alone
funded.
Partial Electrification
Discussions must have taken place behind closed doors, and
some of these led to the idea that only certain parts of the route would be
electrified, with the trains being bi-modes operating partly on diesel power. Chris
Grayling was particularly associated with this enthusiasm for bi-modes.
The idea of partial electrification, and in particular
leaving the Stalybridge to Huddersfield section unelectrified, is and always
was daft. Electric trains are lighter and more fuel efficient, and better at
climbing hills than diesels. So it never made any sense to leave the hilly part
of the route unwired, nor to plan for heavier trains carting diesel fuel back
and forth across the Pennines.
These discussions must have been taking place prior to December 2018 when we met with Chris Grayling, and we asked him the direct question of whether TRU would deliver full disabled access at Mossley, Greenfield, Marsden and Slaithwaite stations. He said he did not know the answer but would find out. We never got an answer.
Nevertheless, because this daft idea was being taken
seriously by Chris Grayling and the Department for Transport, the local
transport authorities were told in August 2019 that they could now apply for
Access For All funding for Mossley, Greenfield, Marsden and Slaithwaite stations
because TRU would not deliver station accessibility at those stations. No
electrification = bridges not being
raised = no works to provide station accessibility.
At short notice, WYCA were allowed to make a bid for station accessibility at Marsden. The round of Access For All funding at that time was for “mid-tier” funding, which as we have observed is meant for small scale improvements. At very short notice, WYCA submitted a bid with support from Kirklees Council. It was unsuccessful, possibly because mid-tier funding was never appropriate for the scale of the works required at Marsden.
2018 Timetable Changes
At the same time as investment decisions were being made (or rather avoided) behind closed doors, there was the long running saga of the timetable changes. One of the impacts of the timetable changes which were implemented in May 2018 was that westbound trains at Marsden called at the non-accessible platform 2 rather than the accessible platform 3. It saves 1½ minutes by not going into the platform 3 loop, which is critical in making the timetable work operationally on such a heavily used route.
Whilst the height of platform 2 was eventually raised, this
merely mitigated a problem which should never have been created in the first
place. It did not improve station accessibility.
It has been argued that 50% disabled access at places like
Mossley, Greenfield (currently) and Marsden (until May 2018), where disabled accessibility
is available in one direction only, is no better than 0% access. Nevertheless,
SMART is firmly of the opinion that any change in disabled access from 50% should be
to increase it to 100%.
We believe that the situation at Marsden, with 50% disabled
access having been reduced to 0%, is unique across the entire network. It is
legal because it is as a result of a timetable change. Had it been done as a
result of an infrastructure change it would have been unlawful.
Support for Station Accessibility to be provided as part of TRU
A wide range of people and organisations are supportive of all
stations along the route (and specifically including Mossley, Greenfield, Marsden
and Slaithwaite) being made fully accessible as part of TRU.
That list includes Kirklees Council, Oldham Council, Transport for Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire Combined Authority, Transpennine Express, Northern Railways, councillors and MPs representing Mossley, Saddleworth and the Colne Valley, Transport for the North, senior councillors on West Yorkshire Combined Authority and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham. At least some of that might be as a result of speaking with people like us. It’s noticeable how, in discussions about TRU, our elected representatives often bring up the subject of station accessibility unprompted.
None of them, unfortunately, have a role in making, funding
and implementing the decisions that need to be made.
That leaves Network Rail and the Department for Transport.
Certainly there are people within Network Rail who are supportive, but we do
not know whether it is the collective view within Network Rail that station
accessibility should be a core element of TRU rather than an optional extra.
Whatever thinking there is within the Department for
Transport remains a closely-guarded secret.
In July 2019 Grant Shapps was appointed as Secretary of State for Transport. He is certainly more energetic about investing in the North than his predecessor, and has been saying all the right things. Nine years after TRU was first announced, and three years after it was supposed to be completed, there has been funding approval for parts of TRU (although what the funding approval covers is still very vague). We were encouraged that his department is now looking at a much more ambitious scheme than the scaled back Grayling version. It was also encouraging that the minister responsible, Andrew Stephenson, was prepared to meet us at Marsden station to see for himself why disabled access is necessary and how it could be achieved.
As at today’s date (21st June 2021) the government is supposed to be publishing its much-delayed Integrated Rail Plan “soon”. This should indicate (amongst other things) whether TRU is to be implemented in full, including station accessibility.
