Hitting buffers at sealed border
From: Peter Cookson, president, Pontefract Civic Society.
THE mass-transit scheme recently announced for West Yorkshire promises to improve connectivity across the county and is to be applauded (Kim Groves, The Yorkshire Post, February 25).
But it is only a partial solution to the general problem. Connectivity within a given local or sub-regional authority is one thing, but people need also to be able to travel conveniently across boundaries between different authorities. Who takes responsibility for this?
This problem of connectivity beyond West Yorkshire is acutely felt on the eastern side of the Five Towns area, where there is no usable rail connectivity at all out of the county.
The border is effectively sealed at Knottingley, with all services terminating at the boundary. This happens nowhere else in West Yorkshire and is a unique and serious disadvantage to the Five Towns that has been allowed to persist for decades.
In practice, anyone wishing to travel to the east or south from this district has to travel in the wrong direction to Wakefield or Leeds and back again at considerable time, and expense, before making any forward progress.
It makes no sense at all to terminate services in the Five Towns when they could be extended to more logical destinations beyond the boundary to improve connectivity, not just to the Five Towns but to West Yorkshire as a whole. These services, as they stand, are wasted opportunities, taking up valuable train paths that could be much better used.
Pontefract Civic Society has proposed a pattern of services to the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and Railfuture Y&H that we think would solve the problem, though we accept that implementation would be challenging in view of infrastructure constraints at various points on the routes.
However, “challenging“is not the same as, “impossible”, and we strongly urge that every effort in timetabling should be made to make this work with the infrastructure as it is now. Does the Government really mean what it says when it talks about “levelling up; building back better; improving Northern connectivity; reviving communities that have lost their industries; encouraging modal shift from car to public transport”? If so, here is a chance to do just that.