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Regarding the latest round of Beeching funding arrangements ( RAIL 920): we at the Skipton and East Lancashire Rail Action Partnership are very disappointed by the lack of progress on Skipton-Colne and other reopening projects.
However, the key issue which has been holding us up is now, at long last, finally coming out of the woodwork.
The Department for Transport’s three key algorithms of ‘webtag’, ‘PDFH’ (passenger demand forecasting handbook) and ‘BCR’ (Benefit:Cost Ratio) have now been shown to be inherently biased towards pumping ever-more transport investment into the already wealthy regions of the UK.
It’s a vicious circle. These very old algorithms automatically assume that poor people will never, ever, want to travel by train. That means poor people get a dismal or non-existent train service.
That poor service obviously means that very few people will travel on those train services. But without having access to good employment opportunities, those residents will remain forever poor.
The end result is that these antiquated DfT algorithms block investment in better rail transport in very large towns with lots of poor people - especially in the towns of the so-called ‘Red Wall’.
For this government to deliver anytime soon on its manifesto promises to ‘level up’ the UK, it must urgently address the inherent and severe bias within these now-antiquated forecasting algorithms.
For an example of this regional bias, let me compare SkiptonColne with East West Rail:
Skipton-Colne will connect far more people (East Lancashire alone is the size of both Oxford and Cambridge combined).
Our project is less than £200 million. EWR is £5 billion.
Both Oxford and Cambridge already have two good rail lines - and EWR is a third. Skipton to Colne is the first direct link from East Lancashire to nearby Leeds (note: only 35 miles).
Yet the EWR project has a positive BCR, while SkiptonColne’s is showing negative.
Why? The DfT’s BCR algorithm prioritises new housing (but not regeneration), reduced journey times and decongestion of roads. Those three issues all apply to Oxford to Cambridge. None applies to Skipton-Colne.
If this project was built with a realistic construction budget and a projection of some reasonably sensible passenger numbers, Skipton-Colne would have a positive financial case for reopening, but it still gets a negative BCR.
This ongoing ministerial obsession with the BCR number is frankly bordering on being lunatic.
The DfT is simply going to have to get its act together - on a large number of fronts - to move any one of the Beeching reopening projects further forward.
Frankly, if it cannot make Skipton-Colne ‘work’, then there is no hope for any other Beeching reopening project.