Transport Insights

The latest government document to reference plans for a West Yorkshire mass transit system shows ministers’ ability to offer little more than warm words – and hype – including an empty promise to deliver more than “warm words”.

In fact, like Lord Peter Hendy’s “long overdue” PAYG upgrade, this statement in the Treasury’s Northern Growth Strategy: Next Steps document could be seen as a stinging critique of the government’s approach:

The north of England has waited far too long for a government that matches warm words with concerted ambition…

It continues:

but by working in lockstep with northern Mayors, businesses, and communities , we can see the North define its own future.

The problem is that central government has recently waded into the West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s plans for mass transit in an utterly Stalinist way that includes putting the scheme back by years and telling the authority that it has to prove that it cannot just be a few better buses.

“Working in lockstep” with northern mayors to allow the North to define its own future is a bit like the Soviet Union invading Czechoslovakia to help it define its own future.

The document also refers to:

£10.4 billion up to 2032 for northern intracity transport through the devolved Transport for City Regions (TCR) settlements… which will support…Transformative schemes such as the development of a mass transit network in West Yorkshire;

Yes, to be clear, West Yorkshire’s £2.1bn share of this cash up to 2032 includes some unquantified cash to support the development of mass transit, subject to business case approval by central government.

But the biggest hype comes in the claim that:

West Yorkshire Mass Transit will transform how people move across the region

If built, it will significantly improve the way some people travel in Leeds and Bradford and between the two but do nothing for Wakefield, Calderdale and Kirklees.