The Regional Monitor

When Yorkshire and Humber received news of its share of Alistair Darling’s local transport capital settlement just before Christmas, few were bowled over by the transport secretary’s festive largesse. The £213m package may have been an improvement on the previous year, but that wasn’t saying much; it still represented underinvestment, just in a less extreme form.

Much of this money is needed just to maintain the region’s vast transport network. The rest is to be spent on worthy – but decidedly unglamorous – projects. The more expensive works include the Leeds inner ring road, the Reighton bypass, a transport interchange in Barnsley, and the Sheffield inner relief road. At the smaller end of the scale, there will be cycle lanes in North Yorkshire, bus station improvements in West Yorkshire, and road accident-reduction measures in North Lincolnshire.

One scheme for which there is no money is the Leeds Supertram. It had been hoped that the three-line tram system would have reduced road congestion, increased investment and created thousands of jobs in the local area. The scheme was extremely popular and supporters included the local MPs, every party on the city council, the neighbouring councils and local leaders in sport, the arts and education. Even the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds was in favour.

In short, it was hard to find anyone who thought the Supertram was a bad idea, which is why its absence from the local transport plan is keenly felt – after years of prevarication, the plug was pulled once and for all in November. The multiple delays leading to the scheme’s demise were caused in large part by spiralling costs. The approved figure of £355m grew to £486m and even when this figure was scaled down again, it still proved too vertiginous for the Department for Transport.

The anger felt by many – the chairman of the local Passenger Transport Executive, Cllr Karam Hussain, called it “a disgraceful decision” – has been made all the keener by two factors: a perception of mixed messages and the London Olympics.

The mixed messages appear to be coming from the Department for Transport and the Government Office for Yorkshire and the Humber (GOYH). On the one hand, the GOYH has been encouraging the region to punch its economic weight, saying that if the three northern regions raised their productivity to the English average, the UK economy would be £35bn better off. On the other hand, the Department for Transport is seen to be denying Yorkshire and the Humber the tools to do the job; underinvestment in the region’s transport infrastructure is estimated at £200m per year.

“What is the point of the government publishing grand strategies such as its ‘Northern Way’, which claims to be a strategic plan to increase investment and economic drive across the north and which cites Supertram as an important element, and then turning the scheme down like this?” asked Cllr Hussain. “Where is the strategic thinking? Does the government’s left hand know what the right hand is doing?”

As locals don’t need reminding, London seems to be vacuuming up funding in preparation for the 2012 Olympics. The cost of the new ticket office at King’s Cross – which would have more than covered the Supertram – is frequently cited, through clenched teeth, as a prime example of unfair London-centricity. The capital currently receives three times more transport funding per head than Yorkshire and the Humber – and the discrepancy looks set to grow, particularly over the next six years. The fact that Yorkshire and Humber was the first region to lend its support to London’s Olympic bid has come to be seen by some as a bitter irony.

This is not, as it may seem, just a case of a region throwing a tantrum because it didn’t get what it wanted for Christmas. It should be remembered that Yorkshire and Humber is larger than Northern Ireland and has the same population as Scotland. Leeds is the fastest-growing city in the UK, and Yorkshire and Humber is one of the fastest-growing regions in the EU. Many feel that closing the transport funding gap would pay for itself over the longer term through increased private investment and higher productivity.

The demise of the Supertram dream, however, has not changed the region’s transport needs. In spending advice submitted to the government in January by the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly and Yorkshire Forward, “improving public transport links between the main urban areas in the Leeds city region, in particular to Leeds city centre” remains a top priority.

As a result, planners are now looking at the potential of a Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) system. An examination of the BRT proposals by consultants Atkins Transport Planning concluded that they would deliver “the majority of the benefits of Supertram”, while conceding that its drawbacks included decreased reliability, comfort and accessibility – with increased emissions. Yet at half the cost of Supertram, BRT has already won the favour of the Department for Transport. What the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds thinks is not yet known.