You might imagine that if a train service is unreliable, you would make it more reliable, rather than scrapping or curtailing it, but not the publicly-owned Northern Rail or the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA).
A rail service linking two former Yorkshire City of Culture winners is to be scrapped by a train operator in a bid to tackle what it said was “poor reliability”.
Northern plans to axe the Hull to Halifax route, which stops at Leeds and Bradford, due to regular delays which it said often ended with the service being terminated at Bradford or Leeds.
To tackle the issue, the Hull train will now terminate at Leeds – no longer continuing on to Bradford and Halifax. Passengers wanting to travel to Hull from Bradford would instead have to change in Leeds, a spokesperson said.
A paper to the WYCA “Weaver Network Board” last week backed the plan to curtail the service introduced in 2019 without ever asking what the cause of the delays is, or whether they can be fixed:
The Hull–Leeds–Bradford–Halifax service has experienced poor reliability for some time. Delays occurring on either side of Leeds often affect the wider route, meaning services are regularly terminated early at Leeds or Bradford and do not reach Halifax as planned.
There may be complex reasons why certain diagrams and timings are unrealistic on a crowded bit of the rail network, but it would be good to see the question being addressed.
Looking at the video of the meeting, the officer presenting the paper did nothing beyond reading from it and no members asked the question, why not fix it?
On the bright side, the plan would see the Bradford–Halifax–Huddersfield service extended to start and finish at Leeds, which I think would produce the benefit of more trains at Low Moor and Brighouse because it would use the stopping line.
On the even brighter side, Mayor Tracy Brabin described bringing track and train together under Great British Railways – i.e. the model previously used under British Rail and widely used elsewhere – as:
A really amazing innovation from Peter Hendy
Transport Insights 
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