Electrified rail link could help reawaken Upper Don Valley

From: A Oldfield, Secretary, Huddersfield, Penistone and Sheffield Rail Users’ Association, Long Lane, Worrall, Sheffield.

THE Northern Powerhouse warrants trans-Pennine electrification but this seemingly is strictly for Manchester-Leeds, ensuring Sheffield remains isolated and trailing even further behind this duo. Does this not make a mockery of improved connectivity and better east-west links proposed by Transport for the North (TfN) when it comes to the Sheffield City Region (SCR)?

The Hope Valley line cannot deliver and all talk of a new line is classic smoke and mirrors. How, for instance, would it access Sheffield and at what cost?

The solution? A reinstated, electrified Woodhead route – back to the future – which means more to Sheffield than it does to Manchester, so it must be driven by the former. Improved connectivity is vital due to the Sheffield business/financial sector being smaller compared with those housed in Manchester and Leeds.

The Upper Don Valley is a rail market waiting to be tapped – to be reawakened like Sleeping Beauty – given the housing developments approved and with more to come, plus further expansion in Penistone.

Let rail be the economic enabler for this corridor. Since Barnsley Central is the seat of SCR mayor Dan Jarvis, does this not provide him with added incentive to back reopening Woodhead and restore a direct Barnsley-Manchester link?

Does not Woodhead also expose the Integrated Rail Plan as being short on ambition and vision when this is vital given all the ground to be recovered if the SCR wants to seriously connect and compete with other cities?

From: Paul Brown, Bents Green Road, Sheffield.

IF the Transport Secretary thinks that he can run the railways more successfully than Northern then I wish him good luck (The Yorkshire Post, January 10).

For many years now, the Government-controlled organisation which maintains the tracks has been removing redundant lines from the network. The plan has been to remove any loops and sidings which were not needed to fulfil the operating business requirements at the time the decision was taken.

To achieve more reliability it may be necessary to rebuild these extra tracks, a process which is expensive and disruptive as it requires any new tracks and junctions to be incorporated into a signalling and safety system linked to a main control centre.