Leeds crossroads
Leeds has retained its title as the largest city in Europe without a tram or metro system, following the cancellation of the city’s trolleybus scheme in June. So what are its options now? ANDREW MOURANT reports
The recent cancellation of the city‘s proposed trolleybus scheme has once again placed Leeds at a public transport crossroads.
So for Leeds, it’s back to square one. The city that seems fated never to have a public transport system befitting its status as a provincial capital must come up with a new big idea, now that Secretary of State for Transport Patrick McLoughlin has axed plans for a guided trolleybus system.
Leeds was long ago left behind by the likes of Sheffield, Nottingham and Manchester, whose light rail metro systems have become an indispensable part of the fabric. In any event, a trolleybus option running north to south (dubbed New Generation Transport) was always second best - a poor substitute for the more ambitious and far-reaching three-line metro.
Ambitious… yet with costs that appeared to have ballooned out of control. With the original estimate of £ 500 million doubling, then-Transport Secretary Alistair Darling decided to kill off the so-called Supertram project. That was 11 years ago - 11 years in which Leeds has remained throttled by traffic, as its footprint and economy have grown.
Last month, the city council hosted a summit of interested parties and potential partners to try and find a way forward. The bad news is that around £ 27m has been squandered on a scheme that excited very few people, and which McLoughlin found many reasons to reject. The good news is that £173m, around 75% of trolleybus’s estimated cost, remains on the table.
“It’s very important that the use of this budget is ambitious,'' Dr John Nellthorp, senior research fellow at leeds University Institute of Transport Studies (IST), tells RAIL.
“Leeds city region has a population of three million - there’s plenty of potential for better mass transit. We’ve a heavy rail network that could be improved, a bus network, and nothing in between. I don’t think that should, or will, continue to be the situation for the next 30 years.
“I think we’ll either see more rail investment or some new mass transit. Of course, £173m can’t pay for a large part of a new mass transit network, but it can keep moving the city region towards that.'' Greg Mulholland, Liberal Democrat MP
for Leeds North West, has called for a tram train-based system, telling RAIL: “I think Leeds City Council needs to show some real leadership now. We have to fairly quickly look at the options.
“No one wanted the trolleybus scheme. It was only ever put forward because Alistair Darling said Leeds couldn’t have light rail. Darling was anti-tram - he set light rail in this country back 30 years.”
Following last month’s summit, council leader Judith Blake promised the “biggest ever consultation about the future of public transport in Leeds”. But she also talks about getting a new plan before the Department for Transport (DfT) by the end of the year.
Mulholland is uneasy. “Simply talking about lots of consultation won’t deliver anything,” he says. “We can’t wait - we don’t want lots of blue-sky thinking. We’ve had two failed schemes, Supertram and trolleybus, and wasted £100m.”
Last month, Parliament’s all-party light rail group suggested a tram-train solution, using existing rail lines with offshoots.
“This is exactly the same solution offered by Metro [the transport authority for West Yorkshire’s five local councils] in 2009,” says Mulholland, who chairs the group.
“It was backed at the time by senior leaders on Leeds City Council. The reason they didn’t develop it was because of restrictions only to consider bus-based routes. Tram-train has to be one of the things immediately put on the table.”
A solution in waiting? Officially, the city council seems very lukewarm, with a spokesman telling RAIL that there were only “very initial discussions” around tram-train in Leeds.
Mulholland would like to see a network created piece by piece - initially using the Leeds-Harrogate line and creating a short spur (just over a mile) to Leeds Bradford Airport. He says that would be far better than a proposed airport link road “that would cost £ 50m-£ 75m”.
“You’d take the tram out of the loop and off the A65 into the city centre at Kirkstall Viaduct. Once you get trams into the city centre,
There’s plenty of potential for better mass transit. We’ve a heavy rail network that could be improved, a bus network, and nothing in between. Dr John Nellthorp, Senior Research Fellow at Leeds University Institute of Transport Studies
people will be saying ‘where next?’ “The key is to start by converting an existing rail line. Leeds-Harrogate is the obvious one. It would serve many of the same commuters as the trolleybus route - the A660 corridor - and take pressure off the A65, two of the city’s most congested roads.
“The line is earmarked for - and urgently needs - electrification, so could be converted to tram-train at the same time. It would be the first line of a new network that could be developed in phases, to connect with Pontefract, Castleford and Wakefield and to Bradford via Shipley using existing heavy railway lines.”
Leeds Council has promised to “tap into the best national and international brains” to formulate its strategy, and Blake hopes to achieve this via the Leeds University IST. “We want to have access to the latest thinking. Since previous schemes were considered, technology has moved on fast,” she tells RAIL.
If it is to be tram-train, Network Rail will need to be involved. NR Chairman Sir Peter Hendy couldn’t attend the council’s transport summit, but sent a video stressing the importance of having a strategy for the city.
There was also assurance from Route Managing Director Rob McIntosh that NR will play its part in developing a system, although an NR spokesman explained: “But as we’re currently working to deliver the pilot scheme in Sheffield, we’re not engaged with anyone on bringing tram-train to Leeds.”
Meanwhile, Blake still wants to examine why Supertram came unstuck more than a decade ago, stressing: “I’m not convinced it
Alongside long-term projects, we need to identify schemes that can be delivered soon - such as park and ride sites, high-quality fast bus routes and new rail stations. Judith Blake, Leader, Leeds City Council
was a cost-based decision.” So what does she think was behind it? “That’s very difficult to speculate - the Labour government decided, but we [Labour] weren’t in power [running Leeds City Council] at the time. We’ve asked for a scrutiny inquiry to look into the background - not to dwell on the past, but to better understand why that scheme failed.”
What would Blake like to see? She’s hard to pin down on that, and nor does she believe that the city’s problems can magically be solved by rail-based solutions alone, be that some revival of Supertram or tram-train.
“Congestion-wise, other cities with rapid transport systems don’t fare much better than Leeds,” she says. “We need to see how we can free up road space - as a local authority we’ve a huge part to play.”
Blake is keen to talk up other noninfrastructure ways of improving transport, such as working closely with NR on digital station management, which she says would improve flows of train movements into the city’s hard-pressed main station. However, she acknowledges to being “very interested” in tram-train, albeit with reservations - for instance, about the capacity of rail lines into Leeds: “It’s on the table… but hard to say where it will go.”
This may not be the best time to be talking up tram-train, given all the problems that have plagued a proposed link from Sheffield to Rotherham. This finally won government backing in 2012 (costed then at £ 58m), and was due to open last year.
The scheme is being led by South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive (SYPTE), working with the DfT, Network Rail, tram operator Stagecoach Supertram and Northern Rail. Always a challenge with its tight curves and gradients, the route entails creating a new 400-metre connection between the existing tram route, Supertram and a freight line at Meadowhall.
People had become resigned to a two-year slippage, with the system finally opening early next year. But a Parliamentary answer teased out of Transport Minister Andrew Jones by Mulholland last month revealed that NR is now conducting a review of works needed to adapt the infrastructure so trams can run between Meadowhall South and Rotherham Parkgate.
NR has encountered “significant issues” with the approval of new electrification equipment needed to operate the vehicles. As for opening in spring 2017, “until the outcome of the review is known, no further details can be provided”, according to Jones. Although the lie of the land is different on the LeedsHarrogate line, Sheffield’s experience does not bode well for a quick tram-train fix.
Blake concedes that lessons should be learned from the rejection of trolleybus. “I don’t think it captured the imagination - we
Tram-train has to be one of the things immediately put on the table. Greg Mulholland, MP for Leeds North West
need to have the people of Leeds with us,” she says.
Nowhere was hostility more implacable than in the northwest of the city, around Headingley - home to many of the city’s best brains and most articulate protesters. Partly for that reason Andrew Carter, head of Leeds City Council’s Conservative group, favours any new system starting south of the River Aire - one that looks towards Wakefield rather than Harrogate.
“There’s huge investment on the south bank - this is where all the action is going to be,” he tells RAIL. “You’d be heading towards Wakefield, from where thousands of people come into Leeds each day.”
Blake agrees that the south could be a good starting point. Much of it lies in her ward, where (she claims) there are chronic problems with commuters coming off the M1 and turning parts of the neighbourhood into ‘rat runs’.
The original Supertram route drove deep into populous, yet deprived, south Leeds estates such as Belle Isle and Middleton. Carter believes that was a good thing. He is “very supportive” of tram-train, telling RAIL: “A lot of work has already been done. It makes sense.” Whereas a trolleybus system ‘in new clothes’ would not, he adds: “I don’t think you can get the modal shift you require that way.”
He believes that any new scheme trying to force a passage along the A660 through Headingley would be a bad idea.
“That road has always been a problem. It was only in the trolleybus scheme because it made the whole thing stack up in terms of usage by the numbers of students expected to use it. But by then they were moving into the city centre.
“The council has put in a whole range of restraining measures for cars, in advance of what they hoped would be a rapid transit system. But we only got part of the package. The easy stuff was done: controls of parking and where cars can go, bus lanes, streets blocked off to private cars - all of the downsides, but none of the upsides.”
Blake and Carter may not agree on much, but both feel successive governments have failed the city. It was Carter, when council
Congestion here isn’t that bad... we aren’t about to hit gridlock, and we’ve got time to get something in place. Andrew Carter, Head of Conservative group, Leeds City Council
leader, who received the depressing news that Supertram was being axed: “I was the poor, unfortunate chap who sat in front of Alistair Darling to be told that it wouldn’t be funded.”
The difference this time is the £173m that the city has been allowed to keep. And Carter sees that as just the start of a potential funding pot.
“You can lever millions (more) through the Local Enterprise Partnership for the city region and the transport fund - if you start looking at activity between Bradford and Leeds you can tap into more resources,” he says.
Blake has observed mass transit schemes in China and Singapore, when travelling to the Far East with government fact-finding missions. “There’s a lot of interest there in infrastructure development,” she says.
So could that mean Leeds trying to pull in foreign money… or technology?
“We need to look at the possibilities - it could be either. Alongside transformational long-term projects, we need to identify schemes that can be delivered soon - such as park and ride sites, high-quality fast bus routes and new rail stations.”
In the past year two stations designed to ease commuter loads west of the city have actually been built. Trains began stopping at the newest (Kirkstall Forge) in June. Initially, one train per hour will call in each direction, with more services during the morning and evening peaks. It follows the opening of Apperley Bridge station (Bradford), where services began last December.
Yet Carter, like Mulholland, thinks proposals for widespread consultation and getting a plan before DfT by the end of the year “aren’t compatible”, adding: “Congestion here isn’t that bad... we aren’t about to hit gridlock, and we’ve got time to get something in place.”
And despite Blake’s statement of intent to draw on the world’s best brains, Carter fears Leeds may end up relying on a familiar pool of transport experts. “I’d like to see a challenge between them - for them to be put under pressure by one another,” he says. “We need intellectual rigour - I’m not prepared to take one person’s advice.”