Tag: WYCA

Calder Valley and Halifax rail: time to plan upgrades!

Letter from The Halifax & District Rail Action Group and Electric Railway Charter to election candidates, councillors, WYCA members

1. Fully electric train operation is the most energy efficient means of operating railways

…a key objective in a world that must strive to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, notably CO2. Compared with diesel or bi/tri-mode trains pure electric trains are

  • simple, cheaper to build; reliable, cheaper to maintain; by 66%
  • lightweight giving faster acceleration and ability to serve more stops and carry more passengers;
  • more capable of using regenerative braking returning energy to the supply system.

Electrification is capital investment. Future payback will come through a railway that is less costly to operate, attracting more passengers, stimulating employment – and zero-carbon.

We welcome the recent West Yorkshire Combined Authority rail strategy. It is pleasing to see WYCA sticking to its guns and advocating electrification including the full Calder Valley. This and the government-proposed Leeds- Bradford electrification must seen as one scheme. The Calder Valley routes do require full electrification. Hybrid trains with multiple traction systems are heavier, waste more energy, and are potentially less reliable. By full we mean the whole route through Bradford and Brighouse to upper Calderdale. Manchester, Preston and beyond.

The full Calder Valley line was of course the top-ranked scheme in the cross-party task force Northern Sparks report 9 years ago EFT Report FINAL web.odf (transportforthenorth.com). Since then we have seen numerous other reports calling for electrification of most routes. Following Northern Sparks, campaigning groups along the Calder Valley lines launched the Electric Railway Charter. We are pleased that Calderdale Council has now twice passed resolutions calling for rail electrification. A rolling programme of electrification will reduce costs, and make the investment pay, by building up and carrying forward engineering expertise. No more stop-start.

2. Calder Valley line services – York/Hull and Leeds to Halifax/Brighouse, upper Calderdale, Manchester, Chester and Lancashire, plus Bradford-Huddersfield are due an upgrade: capacity, service, and speed.

Service improvements can be made with existing infrastructure, but we welcome proposals in the WYCA strategy for additional tracks that would allow passenger trains to overtake slower freights. Upgrades need to be made before electrification work starts. Meantime, we look for:

  • improved pattern; trains better coordinated between different services on the line;
  • new services so Calderdale can, for example, get across Manchester to access jobs, leisure destinations and connections. A service to Manchester Airport originally, promised for 2018 now, seems to be some years from delivery. This would build on existing Chester service.
  • all trains to call Sowerby Bridge – station with second fastest percentage passenger growth in Calderdale pre-pandemic, based on Office of Road and Rail (ORR) figures over a decade;
  • better service on Brighouse line – doubling frequency, faster trains direct to Leeds as suggested in WYCA rail strategy. Brighouse had fastest passenger percentage growth of… all Calder Valley line stations pre-pandemic. We also need better services N-S, Bradford-Huddersfield or Sheffield. HADRAG supports the list of possible reopening schemes mentioned on p68-9 of WYCA rail strategy – including the Crigglestone link for direct trains Bradford and Calderdale to Sheffield with attractive journey times.
  • Elland station – how can we get this started? Originally proposed 25 years ago!
  • new trains designed for passenger comfort – let’s think about access for disabled people, families, adequate toilets, view out of window, and of course provision for bikes.

3. Bradford issues

Many of us support the idea of a new through station in Bradford that would eliminate the need for trains to reverse. It would increase capacity, and cut journey times Calderdale-Leeds. For example Halifax- Leeds could come down from around 35 minutes now to 25 minutes or less. There is concern about the proposed new Bradford station site:

St James’ market has been suggested but is remote from the city centre. We ask whether:

  • other more convenient sites are being considered; and whether
  • account has been taken of effect on journey times for Calderdale-Bradford passengers.

We hope mass transit (see below) will provide a good, frequent link across the city centre reaching Forster Square at least, and open at same time as the new heavy-rail station.

4. Bradford and “Network North”.

The 30 minute Bradford-Manchester journey time suggested for a route swinging round via Huddersfield seems optimistic, dependent on capacity west of Huddersfield, and potentially locally disruptive to build, with no visible local benefit for Calderdale communities. We can see people in Bailiff Bridge and Brighouse objecting to one suggested route. So: ⦁ Would it not be better to upgrade the Calder Valley, line? With modest linespeed and capacity improvements, and electrification, Bradford-Manchester journey time would be reduced to little more than 40 minutes, perhaps less, including two stops (Halifax and Rochdale). Semi-fast services would operate between the fasts serving all stations Bradford to Todmorden. Benefits in our lifetime for Bradford and Calderdale. ⦁ A later phase might include a new high speed route, in tunnel Halifax-Littleborough, reducing the timing to about 30 minutes again with 2 stops. This is more fanciful but not impossible.

5. On mass transit we look forward to proposals about to emerge, and the upcoming consultation on initial routes. But it may be a decade before mass transit reaches Calderdale.

So: Mass transit must not be seen as a substitute for improving the heavy-rail Calder Valley line service including its branches through Elland and Brighouse, and the York-Blackpool trains. Mass transit does not mean fast transit.

Achievable heavy rail improvements can be delivered much more quickly, benefitting existing and would- be passengers. In our lifetime!

6. A major question is how any of the above is to be funded.

Rail development must be seen as investment in the interests of a green economy. It must be seen as affordable.

As concerned local campaigners HADRAG members would be happy to meet elected representatives or officers of the combined/local authorities either in public and/or in a small-group meeting. After the election, of course. Massive thanks to you for reading this. Map overleaf may be helpful. Looking forward to any response you are able to give or any questions you may have, with best wishes, Stephen

What’s in it for us?

WYCA agrees rail strategy

In line with our Electric Railway Charter!

It is good to record that West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) is sticking to its guns on electrification. The Metro rail strategy was formally agreed at WYCA’s full meeting in March, and includes as top-ranked (Tier 1) schemes:

  • The Calder Valley line extending the government’s Leeds-Bradford proposal to Calderdale, Preston and Manchester. The routes through Elland and Brighouse linking with Huddersfield routes are also included. York-Blackpool, Leeds-Manchester (and maybe on to Chester) could be electric all the way, as could trains via Brighouse. The Calder Valley network is noted as one of the busiest routes in the region. Full electrification would release a lot of diesel vehicles, and maximise the benefits of the Leeds-Bradford scheme – make sense of it in fact. We say track upgrades could be carried out along with – or preferably before – electrification.
  • The Harrogate line, already linked with electrified Airedale and Wharfedale routes, enabling large numbers of diesel trains to be removed. Electrification through to York would also link up with the electrified East Coast Main Line.
  • The Dearne Valley line linking Wakefield Westgate with soon to be electrified Sheffield-London, enabling service improvements on potentially fastest Leeds-Sheffield route.

Tier 2 includes the lines through Castleford and Wakefield to Knottingley (onwards to Goole), and Sheffield via Barnsley – where Northern currently routes its twice hourly fast (or fastish) trains from Leeds to Sheffield. Tier 3 would fill in gaps such as the Penistone line and Ravensthorpe-Wakefield.

The assumption is that the TransPennine Route Upgrade will electrify from Stalybridge through Huddersfield and Leeds to Church Fenton1, effectively completing wiring from Manchester Airport and Liverpool to York. Also assumed is that already announced schemes not only for Leeds-Bradford (the New Pudsey route) but also for Leeds-Hull will be there. Leeds-Hull is a government Network North proposal, as is Leeds-Sheffield (which latter we assume means the Dearne Valley route).

Rolling programme. But one project for our line!

The document gives equal ranking to Harrogate, Calder Valley and Dearne Valley routes. But Harrogate is always mentioned first, maybe just because it is less complex. Some of us would like to see our line at the top, as it was in Northern Sparks, the task force report that will celebrate its tenth anniversary next year. Then again, the Harrogate line is much simpler; could it even start before the Huddersfield main line is finished? Either way, the plan for full electrification is in line with our Electric Railway Charter, launched six years ago in Halifax (Electric Railway Charter). The Charter website lists several other reports that advocate, in one form or another, rolling electrification. The Calder Valley is always there.

It is vitally important the Calder Valley is seen as one project with Leeds-Bradford. Almost all trains from Leeds to Bradford Interchange continue to Calderdale and beyond. It would seem ludicrous to have to change traction from electric to batteries (or hydrogen) at Bradford. Bi-mode, even tri-mode trains might seem sexy to some engineers, but with two or more traction systems on board there is a lot of extra mass, more things to go wrong, less reliability and lower energy efficiency than pure electric. The Calder Valley also carries heavy freight trains for which the only sensible decarbonisation plan is full electrification. The strategy says batteries or hydrogen could be valuable as interim solutions on some lines including use of hybrid trains. But “the limited range and performance of such trains is likely to suit only low density, low traffic, low speed and shorter distance passenger routes,” says the strategy. As electric car drivers know, batteries are heavy2. And hydrogen, though the lightest gas, takes up a large volume.

Service frequencies need improving

Our line – including the route from Brighouse to Leeds via Batley – is shown by one of the maps in the strategy as having nine stations where service frequency needs improving. HADRAG agrees. We shall keep on pressing for all trains passing through Sowerby Bridge stop there (at present just 2/hr compared with Hebden Bridge’s 4/hr). Halifax and Bradford Interchange (currently 5/hr) are both shown as needing improvement. Walsden’s present 1 train/hr is marked “not acceptable”.

Brighouse’s twice hourly pattern is also shown needing an upgrade. We have pointed out that the nominal 2 trains/hr at Brighouse is effectively only a single train on each of the two routes E-W (Wigan-Leeds) and N-S (Bradford-Hud). Two an hour – at least! – is needed on all arms. And we say they should connect, to give reliable upper Calderdale-

Huddersfield connectivity (if not through trains). Brighouse-Leeds is proposed to be semi-fast, just one or two stops. We say target journey time should be 20 minutes. Elland-Leeds would be about 23 minutes. At half-hourly that would be a very attractive service.

There is little if any more on suggested new routes including the “Crigglestone curve” one linking the Calder Valley line south of Dewsbury with Barnsley and Sheffield. We think a Bradford-Halifax-Sheffield service could offer some attractive journey times, our headline being Brighouse-Sheffield in 55 minutes, maybe less. Spen Valley reopening through Cleckheaton could be a later phase, cutting off the corner to give a direct inter-city link.

Bradford-Huddersfield is described as part of strategic evidence for CV line enhancements. “Network North” (last autumn’s government statement) is invoked here with its suggested (optimistic?) 12 minute journey time, non-stop, presumably via a new route. But this would not improve the service for Halifax, and not, we guess, for Brighouse either. Clearly any Network North new line is some years away. We need our lines improving now.

A further complication is service disruption for the TransPennine Route upgrade.

Network North proposed a 30 minute timing Bradford-Manchester. And yes, it does seem optimistic. Business case must be dubious if it’s a new line for only 2 trains an hour. Better surely to upgrade the Calder Valley line and aim initially for a half-hourly fast service. This might take as little as 42 minutes Bradford-Manchester and would also serve Halifax and Rochdale. Complementary services in between would serve intermediate stations. Track -and capacity – interventions are pencilled by the WYCA strategy over the Sowerby Bridge to Rochdale section.

This could mean passing loops, for example between Mytholmroyd and Hebden Bridge or further up the route. Longer trains are suggested through Halifax and Brighouse.

Tunnel to high speed?

Away from the WYCA spotlight, Colin Elliff, experienced railway civil engineer, has suggested a new route across the Pennines involving a 15 kilometre tunnel from Halifax to Littleborough. A 30 minute journey time is proposed from Bradford to Manchester.

Elliff’s proposal is part of a portfolio of schemes that also go under the banner “Network North Ltd”, not to be confused with the government’s more recent adoption of a similar brand! It scores higher for us than Transport for the North’s publicly unspecified high speed plans, because it actually serves the big towns on our line. Could it be a later phase? It is certainly a generation way. We need to develop the lines we already have – now!

Back in the WYCA strategy, talk continues of a new Bradford station. This could be outside the present city centre – maybe 10 minutes’ walk. It would be a through station eliminating the age-old need for trains to reverse in Interchange. This would ease “pathing” of trains in and out of the station and increase capacity.

Could other, more convenient, sites be possible?

We must add that Bradford’s vision is for the city centre to expand and include the new station site.

An alternative cross-city route stretches the definition of feasibility: the new(ish) Broadway shopping centre blocks the way. Bradford to Leeds via Shipley is 13 miles, compared with 10 miles via New Pudsey. And junction conflicts at both Interchange and Shipley would constrain timetabling. Colin Elliff’s diagram suggests Bradford-Leeds via Shipley would take 15 minutes, compared with 12 minutes currently predicted via New Pudsey (we assume both of these are non-stop). It all adds up. With the new station, Halifax-Leeds could come down to 25 minutes or less. – JSW

WYCA Rail Strategy

As mentioned inside, West Yorkshire Combined Authority continues to give electrification high priority – including our line. HADRAG also welcomes an aspiration to increase the direct service Brighouse to Leeds to twice hourly. WYCA’s rail strategy is about developing and improving services on existing routes. Improvements we might reasonably hope to see as early priorities! The question of course is where the finance is going to come from. But these kinds of aspirations should be deliverable in a relatively short time and at reasonable cost – unlike either new high speed lines or mass transit. We also welcome suggested enhancements to increase route capacity, for example in upper Calderdale.

Supporting ideas to transform services in the Five Towns around Pontefract we look for a similar approach in our area – not least development of Brighouse (and Elland!) line services. Wakefield and on to York, and Sheffield via a reopened curve at Crigglestone would be destinations to transform connectivity from Bradford and Calderdale. Not everybody wants to go to Leeds!

The Sheffield proposal is listed among other longer term more tentative proposals, including a more direct Sheffield route via the Spen Valley (not Calderdale!). Others such include commuter services from the Worth Valley heritage line; Otley; and the direct line from Penistone to Sheffield
in South Yorkshire, potentially restoring direct Huddersfield- Sheffield trains.

Mass-transit – get your thoughts in by 16 January!

Header Image: They’ve had them for decades! When will it be West Yorkshire’s turn? Karlsruhe, Germany: tram-trains run on street or heavy-rail tracks. More recent examples can be seen in South Yorkshire!

West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s mass transit plans have been refined. There is a new, short consultation which closes two weeks into the new year – your opportunity to support progress but also to raise concerns. From HADRAG viewpoint main concerns might be how mass transit will complement existing transport including heavy rail, coupled with how long we shall have to wait for the trams (light rail), tram trains ultra-light rail or advanced buses that might eventually come our way. Phase 1 options not surprisingly centre on Bradford and Leeds, with light rail in the lead for East Leeds, Leeds-Bradford, and Leeds-Heckmondwike-Dewsbury. A fourth phase 1 proposal links Bradford with the Spen Valley and Dewsbury – mode still to be specified. Later phases could bring the system to north Halifax via Queensbury and on through Elland and Brighouse. The consultation can be found at this link: Have your say on the West Yorkshire Mass Transit Vision 2040 | Your Voice (westyorks-ca.gov.uk).

Surely there is little doubt that improving and developing our regional heavy rail network – existing lines! – can deliver benefits earlier than either still-to-be-developed mass transit or very long term, very uncertain high speed lines. Benefits will be different for different people. And the will of central government needs to be there. West Yorkshire Combined Authority has a strong rail team and the next draft rail study is out late spring (after the May local elections we guess). There is talk of infrastructure expansion: things like passing loops in the Calder Valley hopefully more ambitious than the now shelved (we think) scheme to facilitate diversions during TransPennine Route upgrade works. Our impression is that HADRAG’s ambitions chime at least in part with those of the combined authority. Better services for more stations!

Header Image: CC BY-SA 3.0 File:Heilbronn Bahnhofsvorplatz Stadtbahn01 2002-09-08.jpg. Under creative commons Share-Alike_License

Summer update: Part 2 – Elland station good news. Ambitious transport hub is another reason to upgrade Brighouse Line timetable!

 

Low Moor 153 edited
Huddersfield-York Sunday train calls at Low Moor station on the recent new station’s first day. In not too many years time this train should also serve Elland. Time for an update on this summer’s good news:

HADRAG welcomes this summer’s major step forward in planning Elland station as an ambitious transport hub, and calls for the Northern train operator to rise to the challenge of upgrading train services on the line. We say with a decent timetable Elland-Leeds by train could take just over 20 minutes. MORE BELOW…

Elland map

In June the combined authority’s West Yorkshire and York investment committee recommended allocation of up to £22million from the West Yorkshire Plus Transport Fund (WY+TF) to an ambitious project that should make the new station at Elland a local transport hub, with pedestrian, bus, park & ride and cycle links, by 2022.

This is a major step forward for Elland, the town that has been waiting for its own railway station since Brighouse opened 17 years ago. The scheme will now move forward towards the next hurdle, outline business case, which should be completed by the end of next year. By then the project will have achieved what Network Rail calls “GRIP 4” – single option development, with detailed design (GRIP 5) following over the next two years.

The £22M (which includes allowance for 20% overrun in delivery costs) buys considerably more than just a simple train station. The key elements of the ambitious  project are:

  • The new station itself, located at Lowfields Way. This would be next to the big “figure of eight” roundabout off the A629 bypass road;
  • Pedestrian, cycle and public realm improvements to link the new station to Elland town centre as well as to surrounding areas of planned employment and housing growth;
  • New footbridge over the River Calder. This will link to the Calder Valley Greenway on the canal bank (Route 66). It will also give good links to the station from the north and west where the Local Plan suggests significant housing growth. Current employers in the area could also benefit with opportunities for “intensification” of activity;
  • New bus infrastructure to enable bus-train interchange at the station, providing sustainable access from a wider catchment area; and
  • Dedicated station car park and highway access to bring in park & ride to bring in passengers from existing and new housing area around the periphery of the town.

This sounds very much like the sort of local transport hub that HADRAG called for just four years ago after we held our 2013 annual meeting in Elland .

We understand the car park could be built on two levels, and hope bus operators will be persuaded to provide services linking the station and all the surrounding communities. Sustainable commuting and leisure also look to be encouraged by the scheme. We look forward to being able to access the station on foot or with a bike from the canalside “green” route.

The station also has an obvious potential role in hospital transport for staff, patients and visitors. Could shuttle buses linking the two NHS sites at Calderdale (Salterhebble) and Huddersfield (Lindley) be developed to call at Elland station?

In terms of the local community, HADRAG says Elland station, with good park & ride and sustainable transport links should be seen as serving not just Elland itself but also Greetland and Stainland, a total “Greater Elland” population of more than 20,000. As such the station will have a catchment as populous as the areas served by stations like Brighouse or Sowerby Bridge. In fact we reckon any one of Sowerby Bridge, Elland or Brighouse stations potentially serves as big a population as the two main upper Calderdale stations – Todmorden and Hebden Bridge – combined.

Upper valley-Elland-Brighouse rail corridor: we hope for timetable improvements!

But of course Todmorden and Hebden Bridge, along with Halifax, currently have almost double the train service level of either Sowerby Bridge or Brighouse. Sowerby Bridge (and Mytholmroyd) should see some improvement next year with the Blackpool-York trains stopping. We really hope Northern will build on that at the end of 2019 when the next big timetable recast comes. And of course HADRAG continues to argue the case with train operator Northern for a better deal for the Brighouse corridor. In our response to Northern’s timetable plans we have specifically asked for future timetables to include make allowance for all trains that currently stop at Brighouse also to serve Elland. We have also want the Manchester-Rochdale-Brighouse-Leeds “valley bottom service” to run later at night and on Sundays, something that does not, so far, seem to feature in Northern’s plans.

As an ambitious transport hub, Elland station will be another reason to upgrade the timetable. Opening 22 years after neighbouring Brighouse, the new station may still seem frustratingly in the future. But at least by 2022 we hope there may be further timetable improvements. Under the existing service patterns, Elland would be served by hourly trains on the Manchester-Brighouse-Leeds and Huddersfield-Bradford-Leeds routes, effectively an hourly stopping service to key destinations. We have joined our colleagues in the Upper Calder Valley Renaissance Sustainable Transport Group in calling for a service from the upper Calder Valley to Huddersfield, meeting commuting, educational and other sources of demand. That would give an additional service along the Sowerby Bridge-Elland-Brighouse corridor. But we also need better services Elland/Brighouse-Leeds.

Potential for fast journey to Leeds

We want Northern, Network Rail and their train planners to rise to the challenge of providing an upgraded timetable for Elland/Brighouse rail corridor. It probably needs some capacity improvements in the Huddersfield and Mirfield area as well as a more ambitious approach by the train operator.

Finally, HADRAG has repeatedly, over may years, pointed out the potential to speed up trains on the direct Brighouse-Dewsbury-Leeds route. At present Brighouse-Leeds takes about 34 minutes, calling at nearly all stations. So that would be 37-38 minutes from Elland. A fast service, with maybe just intermediate stop, would easily cut the Brighouse-Leeds journey to 20 minutes. So stations all the way up the valley would get a Leeds service that could be 10-15 minutes faster than at present. Elland-Leeds could be about 23 minutes.

What could go wrong? One complication is the TransPennine Route Upgrade. This is the project that was meant to include Huddersfield Line electrification, though it sounds increasingly as though it may not. With or without electrification there is likely to be upgrade work to improve capacity that will mean diversions of TransPennine Express via the Calder Valley line while the work is going on. The plan seems to be that this will be completed before Elland opens. Fingers crossed, then. -JSW

Timetable booklets are a mess.

Sorry Northern (Arriva Rail North), we support all the good things you are doing and planning to do to improve services, but there’s no polite way to say this. Your new line timetable booklets are a dismally poor substitute for the excellent former Metro booklets. As expected, the train operating company has taken over publication from West Yorkshire Combined authority. There seems little point WYCA expending resources on duplicating a role given to the TOCs. Sadly, however, whilst WYCA/Metro’s single Calder Valley Line booklet showed all trains running on our line between Leeds and Blackpool/Manchester plus the Brighouse line, that information is now spread across three or four separate publications. Booklet 8 shows York-Blackpool services only. Booklet 36 shows Leeds-Todmorden-Manchester services.

New Booklet 45 shows all Northern services Leeds-Huddersfield and Hebden Bridge including Brighouse trains. This is a sensible idea. But there are no times shown for stations outside that area, through trains to York, Blackpool and Manchester being indicated only by footnotes with no indication of journey time or intermediate stops such as Rochdale or Blackburn. It’s good to see that Grand Central services are shown. But TPExpress trains on the Huddersfield Line are left out which means there is no timetable booklet showing the complete train service between Leeds and Huddersfield. Surely ridiculous. It’s doubly strange because we were told TPE and Northern would be cooperating, and because Northern’s Wakefield Line booklet (42) also shows East Coast and Cross Country trains. We’d actually like timetables that show all trains on a given route. A separate mini-timetable (44) shows Blackburn-Man Vic “Tod Curve” trains—one of three separate booklets needed to find all trains between the Lancashire towns of Accrington and Blackburn!  The  new format also means full-line posters are no longer displayed on West Yorkshire stations. And at the start of the new timetable Halifax station had only been supplied with local line booklets, not other WY routes. “MetroTrain” timetables served the county’s rail users well for over 40 years and were also available as an all-county book. What we have now is a confusing mess. We hope it can be sorted out for the May timetable change. It’s in our New Year message to Northern!

WYCA Also Wants More!

The new Northern franchise is indeed transformational. But we aren’t the only ones saying even more is needed to meet potential travel needs. West Yorkshire Combined Authority oversees the Metro brand in the county. At a recent  transport committee meeting, a report from officials highlighted gaps and areas for improvement, some of them close to HADRAG’s heart. “Adjustments” and smaller changes for discussion with Northern include:

  • Moving to 2 trains/hr at Low Moor
  • Sunday trains Leeds-Dewsbury-Brighouse-Manchester (one of two routes in the city region without a Sunday service);
  • Earlier Sunday trains Hebden Bridge/Brighouse to Leeds.
  • Possibility of starting the Bradford-Manchester Airport service before 2019 (it is actually to start 2017 on Sundays)…

And classed as “enhancements”:

  • WYCA goal of 4 trains/hour between Bradford and Manchester…
  • …with restoration of link between local stations like Walsden and Bradford. We could support that!

A separate report sets out a rail narrative for West Yorkshire. Elland tops the list of new stations listing benefits of connectivity, modal shift, network access and park & ride.

 

One System Public Transport could yield benefits for Brighouse-Elland corridor

We’re hoping that the city region’s transport strategy could encourage development of the rail corridor through Brighouse and Elland.

The following from HADRAG’s newsletter Halifax & District RAIL VIEWS, Autumn issue (October 2016):

<< Public consultation on West Yorkshire’s 20-year Transport Strategy closed earlier this Autumn. Coordinated by West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) and involving district authorities and the wider Leeds City Region local enterprise partnership, the strategy is written at a “high level” which means there is little detail of specific schemes, but that did not stop HADRAG calling for development of the Elland-Brighouse rail corridor, not just for a proposed city-region metro system but also for faster journeys between Calderdale, Huddersfield, Leeds and beyond.

With a cross-cutting theme of environmental health, wellbeing and inclusion, the five core themes of the Strategy are:

  • Road network — for efficient movement balancing needs of different users.
  • Places to live and work — making cities, towns and neighbourhoods more attractive.
  • One System Public Transport — transformational, connecting different modes.
  • Smart futures — using technology to better plan, manage and improve user experience of transport.
  • Asset management and resilience — involving best use of existing/future transport assets, fitness for future, sustainable, environmentally friendly and cost effective.

Centrepiece of the One System theme is a multimodal mass-transit network encompassing Halifax, Huddersfield, Barnsley, Wakefield, Selby, York, Harrogate, Ilkley and Skipton. “Heavy rail” is the core solution here and specifically emphasised for the Leeds-Bradford-Halifax-Huddersfield/Dewsbury-Leeds corridors. Use could also be made of “tram-train”, light rail or bus rapid-transit. Transfer of some rail routes to tram-train, using both existing train lines and new town and city alignments is seen as a possible means of providing the capacity for rail growth around Leeds station. Part of the idea maybe that if certain services (say from the Harrogate Line) could run tram-style into the city this would release heavy-rail capacity for more services going into or through the main station. Some campaigners may have mixed feelings here.

The first broad policy under the One System theme is to enhance the rail network as the core of an integrated ‘metro-style’ public transport system. Chiming with Rail North objectives, the aim is “to replicate across the city region the quality of rail travel (capacity, frequency, journey times, quality) currently enjoyed by customers using services between Leeds, Bradford Forster Square, Skipton and Ilkley”. These are of course the electrified Airedale and Wharfedale Lines.

And, talking of electrification, West Yorkshire will also press the case with the rail industry for a rolling programme of electrification building on the Trans-Pennine (Huddersfield Line) scheme and prioritising the Calder Valley and Harrogate lines. Still under the general heading of rail network enhancement, the policy promises “solutions to improve connectivity for strategic growth areas”, including Leeds-Bradford airport. New stations mentioned include Elland (as well as Thorpe Park in eastern Leeds).

The hope is that more local trains will be cross-city, continuing through rather than terminating at Leeds. This is seen as more efficient, enabling longer-term growth. Leeds train station will become the Yorkshire Hub (as in a sense it is already) linked to high-speed (HS2) platforms expected in the mid-2030s. The aim, indeed, is to be “high speed ready”, which we take to mean connecting regional links in place before HS2 arrives. (HS2 does seem likely to go ahead!)

On “HS3”, or Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), the Strategy calls for a Leeds-Manchester route with an intermediate hub in West Yorkshire. This is now thought likely to be in Bradford, causing us to speculate about routes and links with existing railways including most obviously the Calder Valley Line. Expect more on this from Transport for the North soon.

Remember, the NPR aim, in about 20 years time, is a 30 minute journey Leeds-Manchester. So let’s hope it’s not still 35 minutes Halifax-Leeds! >>

 

Farewell, faithful timetable!

Under the new Northern franchise responsibility for producing timetable booklets “passes to the franchisee”. So, from this December timetable, the familiar West Yorkshire Metro A6-size booklets for “Calder Valley Line” and other routes will be replaced by Northern booklets. The all-county combined volume will, we understand, be no more. Avoiding duplication is one thing. But we say Northern needs to improve significantly on its current booklets. At present the company shows York-Blackpool and Leeds-Manchester trains in separate tables, and some local Northern trains on our line are not shown in any Northern booklet at all—that includes  more than half the trains serving Brighouse! Metro officers at West Yorkshire Combined Authority have been working with Northern “to ensure local rail passenger needs are maintained”. The booklet for any route must surely include all operators’ services, meaning Grand Central and the rest as well as Northern itself. We have expressed our concerns with both Northern and WYCA, and await the new booklets with nervous interest. The all-county timetable will be greatly missed by those who travel widely about West Yorkshire. We might even be prepared to pay a cover price for a wider regional volume. How about it?