YORKSHIRE’S raw deal on funding for major transport projects

[timelesstable]

YORKSHIRE’S raw deal on funding for major transport projects could be about to get worse because of changes to the way central government money is shared out, MPs claimed today.

A report by the House of Commons Transport Committee says the underfunding of transport schemes outside London in recent years “cannot be allowed to continue”.

But it fears a new emphasis on competition for funds, created to raise the quality of bids, could increase the disparity between the capital and regions such as Yorkshire and the Humber.

www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/main-topics/local-stories/worse-to-come-on-transport-funding-say-mps-1-6650266

[Kenton Schweppes]

You sound surprised? Its been common knowledge that its been happening for years.

London gets everything it wants transport wise, Crossrail, DLR, Underground improvements, Trams, New buses, whilst we can't get rid of the dreaded Pacers, struggled on and on to get the Tod Curve (which we still can't use due to no rolling stock, that wouldn't have happened it London that's for sure) and the Ordsall curve, we can't have anymore rolling stock until the south gets their new trains and we get their cast offs, although we are getting some 319's for the Liverpool/Manchester route, although they won't be refurbed just given a respray with Northerns livery, it all feels like a token gesture.

In defence of London, it is the capital and the pressure on the transport is immense so it does need constant investment.

[rwilkes]

London trains are mostly more overcrowded that ours, with higher fares and parking has to be paid for. Northern authorities prefer to use their on free station parking and lower fares funding, and vanity projects like the NGT trolleybus. London and the SE pays more taxes per head for less government spend than the North. One cannot help feeling that if the northern authorities had used their brains more and gone for bread and butter projects like bus lanes, CCTV at stations and new trains, we might have got more funding as well.

[westyorkshirebus]

London isn't exactly immune to vanity projects either. The Borismaster being the most obvious one.

Also bear in mind, we are only possibly getting the NGT trolley bus because of the tight funding. We should have had about 10 years of a 3 line Leeds Supertram by now.

The rail network is the main issue around here though. Lack of carriages on Transpennine, no end in sight for the pacers, new stations dragging on decades never actually happening, no new rolling stock, the high profile electrification likely to be operated by cast off trains no newer than the diesel ones they will replace, the list goes on.

[dwarfer1979]

Jun 4, 2014 17:44:49 GMT 1 rwilkes said:

London trains are mostly more overcrowded that ours, with higher fares and parking has to be paid for. Northern authorities prefer to use their on free station parking and lower fares funding, and vanity projects like the NGT trolleybus. London and the SE pays more taxes per head for less government spend than the North. One cannot help feeling that if the northern authorities had used their brains more and gone for bread and butter projects like bus lanes, CCTV at stations and new trains, we might have got more funding as well.

The question about overcrowding actually isn't all that clear cut, London has more passengers but it also has much more carriages and so longer trains that can carry more and are designed to do so. The overcrowding into Leeds & Manchester can be as bad as anywhere into London as the trains are so much shorter and many of them (such as the Pacers) are utterly unsuitable to be carrying the loads on the routes they are doing. I'm not sure what the comparison to tax payement comes out like but London receives about double the public transport funding that anywhere else does, per head when looking across all spending but the bus network in London still receives almost as much in subsidy than the rest of England does combined. Besides which it is just London, everyone lumps it in as London and the South East but the South East outside greater London only really sees investment when it is benefitting London (such as Crossrail), in practicality most of the shire counties surrounding London are broke and have been for years as they have never received decent funding from Central Government, it was so bad that Surrey for one had begun its review of Bus Services with an aim of saving significant sums in subsidy 18-months before the financial crash occurred it had so little money. The problem was that under Labour the poorer authorities (mostly northern as that was Labours voter heartland but not exclusively) received top up funding from Central Government to make up for the fact that they had more less affluent residents so couldn't be expected to raise extra through council tax, the problem being that Labour then (to try to win over the idiot middle England voters who expect to get everything for little tax) capped council tax so councils couldn't increase it to make up the shortfall. If anything London is more prone to vanity projects (Borismaster, artics in or out, the cable car, DLR & tube extensions - if a tram or trolleybus is a vanity project then so are these. My problem with the NGT isn't that it is being done but how and where & what they are trying to get in alongside it to justify it) they just do it on such big scale and then struggle less to get funding so it is less obvious to those outside what they are.

[timelesstable]

Extra power and funds have been given to councils in West Yorkshire for new rail and road projects in the area.

The West Yorkshire Plus Transport Fund will receive £180m over six years and a further £420m from 2021 as part of a 20-year deal.

The money is in addition to a £573m local growth fund grant for the Leeds City Region.

Full Story: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-28196645