Transport Insights

Heidi Alexander has cast new doubts over whether West Yorkshire’s plans for “mass transit” will ever amount to anything more than “a few better buses”, in what appears to be an ongoing battle between her department on one side and chancellor Rachel Reeves and mayor Tracy Brabin on the other.

The Yorkshire Post (paywall) reports:

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has refused to guarantee that the planned West Yorkshire mass transit system will include a tram network.

It adds:

It comes after The Yorkshire Post revealed last year that civil servants could overrule Ms Brabin and turn the mass transit system into a bus network, with West Yorkshire Combined Authority asked to set out an alternative business case for buses. The Department for Transport is the ultimate body which will sign off the plans for the scheme.

It also comes after the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA), led by Brabin, refused to disclose a “peer review” of the scheme by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) on the grounds that it would damage public confidence in the scheme.

The Yorkshire Post article shows Alexander not only repeatedly refusing to commit to the trams that Brabin and Leeds MP Reeves have been pushing for but also refusing to back Reeves’ insistence that “mass transit does not mean a few better buses”:

Asked if she could rule out the possibility of the system consisting solely of buses, Ms Alexander added: “What I want is a mass transit system for Leeds and West Yorkshire, and Tracy is making the case very powerfully as to why that should be a tram. We’re looking at routes at the moment. We will need to evaluate the final bit of the business case. But all of that work is going on at pace.”

That last bit about evaluating “the final bit of the business case” and work “going on at pace” is transparent spin.  A report to the WYCA in January said:

Preparation of the Strategic Outline Case (SOC) remains underway….

The SOC is the crucial first stage in developing a business case for a major project

…Finally, it acts as a gateway to the Outline Business Case

It added:

In September we advised the Combined Authority that the SOC was forecast for submission to the DfT in March 2026 it is now expected towards the end of summer 2026 to ensure a more robust and high-quality outcome.

Obviously, the bit about a more robust and high-quality outcome is another implicit admission that the scheme is not in great shape.

The Yorkshire Post quotes Brabin as saying:

I understand the fine line the Secretary of State has to walk on this as the decision maker for this project. However, I am clear that West Yorkshire needs a Mass Transit system. That means a tram – and we have the backing of business, local leaders and the Chancellor Rachel Reeves on this. 

But it is clear that if Alexander wanted to commit to the idea that mass transit means trams, she could do so and her approach contrasts with transport ministers’ constant habit of announcing local road schemes whose formal approval is a long way off, not to mention the unwavering commitment to the unfunded Lower Thames Crossing, which isn’t due to have a full business case until 2028, but where work has already begun.