30 June 2009

Despite pledging 182 additional carriages for the Northern Rail Franchise in 2007, it has emerged that the Department for Transport (DfT) now plans to almost halve that figure.

It is also unclear how many of those much-needed carriages would be new, when they would be introduced or whether they would meet the needs of local networks in terms of electric or diesel traction.

Cllr Downes has called on West Yorkshire and Leeds City Region MPs to make their voices heard at the Westminster Hall debate ‘Spending on railways in the North of England’ on Wednesday 1 July, to prevent what he called DfT ‘backsliding’.

He said, “The number of additional carriages that the DfT is proposing for the whole of the Northern franchise would barely meet the 60-90 carriages it identified in 2007 for the Leeds area alone.

” 'Since the late 1990s numbers of peak rail passenger in West Yorkshire numbers have almost doubled and that number is continuing to grow, yet Northern Rail has had no new carriages in the last five years.
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“Sixty percent of all peak hour arrivals into Leeds carry standing passengers and across the 3 hour peak period, 11% of arrivals into Leeds are operating above maximum capacity,” he continued.

“By contrast the franchises providing commuter services in London and the south east have had 580 new carriages over the same period,” he continued. “It looks as though the DfT is once again aiming to sell northern cities short by overlooking the desperate need we have for extra capacity to reduce overcrowding on our trains.”

He added, “I am sure our MPs will be very unhappy with this situation and the knock on effect it could have in undermining economic recovery and delaying growth and will want to make this very clear at Wednesday’s debate.”