The journey ahead

Transport key to healing divide

THE ELECTED Mayor of the Liverpool City Region did not pull his punches yesterday when he warned that the Government risked “splintering” the country if it did not deliver a devolution package whose terms went further than any had done before.

Steve Rotheram was the keynote speaker at an event in Leeds organised by the think-tank IPPR North. He did not say how he had made the 75-mile journey over the Pennines, but as he seemed to have arrived without incident, we can assume he did not use Northern Rail – because nothing could have better have illuminated the regional inequalities of which he spoke than the shambles that accompanied the introduction of the new train timetables.

Northern said a shortage of drivers had been to blame for the cancellation of one in seven of its services across the North, a situation described by Mr Rotheram’s counterpart in Manchester, Andy Burnham, as “appalling”.

The South was hit, too, but at least its cancelled trains were newer ones.

The new timetables are the rail industry’s own invention and they served to illustrate the inflexibility that has crippled it for so long; it simply cannot accommodate change.

Transport is at the heart of the devolved powers which Mr Rotheram said represented the best hope of restoring voters’ confidence in the political system. They could, he said, go a long way in helping to heal the rifts that divide our society.

How far, exactly, could they go? Those 75 miles would be a good start.