All roads lead to London for transport cash

From: Natalie Bennett, Former Green Party leader, Sheffield.

YOUR interview with Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, “I absolutely understand the need for Yorkshire transport investment”, could not have been more apt, published on the day the think-tank IPPR North (The Yorkshire Post, February 20) published a report demonstrating that more than half of UK spending on transport networks is in London.

Current planned London spending is £1,943 per person. In Yorkshire and Humber that figure is £190.

This is not just a question of “what is being built at the time”, as Mr Grayling claimed. It is long term under-investment that’s left our rail system in a parlous state, with, as the author of this report points out, it taking longer to get from Liverpool to Hull than it does from London to Paris. And the slashing of rural and local bus services has left many people unable to travel at all, or forced on to congested, polluted roads when public transport would be a better option. HS2 is only going to worsen the situation, focusing money, people and resources even more on London.

What’s needed is to abandon that expensive white elephant and make a coherent, cohesive, full plan for travel in Northern England, then invest to deliver it.

That’s something that needs to be done in the North. We know we can’t trust London, either to get it right or to deliver the cash.

From: ME Wright, Harrogate.

THE 1952 smogs and deaths mentioned by Andrew Vine (The Yorkshire Post, February 21) could at least be attributed to honest muck and ignorance. Now our lords and masters, both national and local, are able to get away with endless obfuscation and prevarication, because today’s atmospheric filth is mostly invisible.

Though a countrywide problem, the increasing chaos and congestion in the major European city of Leeds is yet another reminder that asking drivers to leave their cars at home will go largely unheeded, unless an effective and affordable option is provided. Council talking shops continue to take precedence over action; Westminster continues to dodge and deny and most of the city’s MPs sit back and watch it happen – or rather – not happen. Why?