Transport Insights

There’s pressure on Andy Burnham to allow West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin to just get on with her plans to build a tram network but, unsurprisingly, nothing has actually happened yet.

The West Leeds Dispatch notes that:

Campaigners in Leeds have called on new Prime Minister Andy Burnham to make a “cast iron pledge” to deliver trams across the region.

West Yorkshire Needs a Tram campaign yesterday (Monday, 27 July) marked ‘Supertram Day’ by calling on Mr Burnham to fully fund a West Yorkshire mass transit system, 33 years after the last attempt at a city tram was approved.

On 27 July 1993 the Leeds Supertram Act received Royal Assent, but it was scrapped less than a decade later by a Labour government citing rising costs. In the intervening time London’s Elizabeth Line was approved and built, the French city of Lyon has built eight mass transit lines, but Leeds has remained without a tram.

Well, there’s a bit of history I didn’t know, although I lived in Leeds at the time.

Meanwhile, the Yorkshire Post/Yorkshire Evening Post reports:

West Yorkshire mass transit: Tracy Brabin could get powers to help with tram project, Angela Rayner says

Andy Burnham’s ambitions for fiscal devolution could see Mayor Tracy Brabin able to collect taxes and approve West Yorkshire’s tram system herself, a senior Cabinet minister has said.

There’s a very obvious “could” in both bits here, which makes this little more than wishful thinking…for now.

It does look as if Burnham, as both a former mayor and someone who has made devolving powers from London a big part of his agenda, might well let Brabin have her way.

But another possibility is that someone in central government might well be whispering in his ear that she doesn’t have a great record on the issue so far.