What does the Integrated Rail Plan mean for light rail?

You probably can’t help but have noticed that over the past few days there has been a major transport announcement from the government affecting the midlands and north of England with details of the Integrated Rail Plan –  which includes £96 billion worth of investment – made public. Whilst the headline of the announcement is not really one for this website as it is all to do with the axing of the eastern leg of HS2 which will cut Leeds out of the high speed line there is also some possible green shoots for light rail, although as always there is no guarantee of this!

Before we get to possible light rail the headlines of the Integrated Rail Plan are:

  • Northern Powerhouse Rail connecting Leeds and Manchester in 33 minutes down from 55 minutes
  • HS2 East will run direct from central Nottingham to Birmingham in 26 minutes (down from 1 hour 14 minutes) and from central Nottingham to London in 57 minutes. Sheffield will also be linked to London within 1 hour 27 minutes.
  • HS2 West will run from London to Manchester in 1 hour 11 minutes and from Birmingham to Manchester in 41 to 51 minutes compared to 86 minutes now

(There is a lot more to the plan but this is not the place to report on that as it doesn’t really have any impact on our main subject matter – there are plenty of other places around who will cover it in far more detail!)

Knowing how controversial the decision to cut out the eastern leg going to Leeds would be, as part of the announcement the government tried to offer an olive branch to West Yorkshire by suggesting this would free up cash for a new mass transit system for Leeds and West Yorkshire. This has been widely reported in the media as being a tram system and it has long been an aspiration of the region to have a tram system but with the term mass transit system used in the press release there is no guarantee anything which does run will indeed be tram or whether it will end up being a cheaper option.

£200 million worth of immediate funding has been made available to plan the project and start building it with the government committed “to supporting West Yorkshire Combined Authority over the long term to ensure that this time, it gets done”. That comment is an obvious look back at how Leeds has been trying to get a modern tram or trolleybus system for many, many years with successive governments (of both right and left leanings) turning the plans down as not being value for money. But maybe this time something will happen – trams or some other form of Metro would seem to be favourite although knowing how these things go don’t rule out some form of bus service instead when that’s realised to be a lot cheaper!

Speaking in the House of Commons, Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps said: “We will start work on a new West Yorkshire mass transit system – righting the wrong of this major city – probably the largest in Europe – which doesn’t have a mass transit system. We commit today to supporting West Yorkshire Combined Authority over the long term to ensure that this time, it actually gets done.”

In response to the announcement (specifically about the mass transit system as the statement has a lot more to say than this!), Tracy Brabin Mayor of West Yorkshire said: “I welcome the support for our plans for a mass transit system for West Yorkshire. But we have been here before, with one government committing to the project, only for future ones to overturn it. Our region needs a long-term, multi-parliament commitment that will deliver on this promise. And mass transit is a not a substitute for an integrated rail network and nor will it take freight off our busy roads.”

We’ll keep an interested eye on what happens of this mass transit plans and whether in 10-20 years time we will see trams back on the streets of Leeds.

Whilst the Leeds plan doesn’t specifically mention trams, trams did get mention during Grant Shapps statement to the Commons although whether that is a positive remains to be seen. In noting that HS2 will now run into central Nottingham instead of going to an out of city station at Toton he said: “The original plans gave us high-speed lines to the East Midlands, but it didn’t serve any of the East Midlands’ three main cities, for example. If you wanted to get to Nottingham or Derby, you would have had to go to a parkway station and change on to a local tram or train.” With that not required will the proposed Nottingham Express Transit extension to serve the HS2 station (which would long-term have gone all the way through to Derby if ambitious ideas had been approved) now have a business case to be constructed or will it just be yet another tram plan in the UK which goes into the pile of not happening?

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