The North East has been promised a “revolution” to radically overhaul struggling rail and bus services blighted by cancellations and delays.
As Northern mayors and transport bosses assembled in Newcastle on Monday, passengers across the region were told that the incoming £4bn devolution deal for the North East could help deliver vast upgrades – including reopening a critical mothballed route, seizing control of the bus network and slashing ticket prices. Much of the talk from local leaders at Transport for the North’s (TfN) annual summit focused on the long-running campaign to restore the disused Leamside Line between Gateshead and County Durham, something Labour’s shadow transport secretary confirmed her party would deliver if in power.
But the gathering came amid mounting outrage over the country’s ailing train services. It was held a day after rail fares were hiked by more than five per cent despite months of misery for passengers, while many attendees struggled to make it to the conference at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on time because of the latest raft of cancellations on TransPennine Express (TPE) trains that should have been bringing them from places like Leeds and Manchester.
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Speaking at Transport for the North’s annual conference, North of Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll said that the North East’s rail connections were worse today than in the 1850s and that a “transport revolution” was needed to get people out of cars. Mr Driscoll, who is hopeful of being Labour’s pick to stand for the larger North East mayor post in a 2024 election, pledged that he would create a “total single network” allowing travel across bus, Metro and rail services around the entirety of Tyne and Wear, County Durham, and Northumberland using a single ticket – with a daily cap on fare prices.
The mayor is hopeful of pushing ahead with a much-heralded reopening of the disused Leamside route, which would finally allow for an expansion of Metro services to Washington, and is understood to be keen on bringing privately-run bus services back into public control. Labour’s shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, confirmed that her party would build HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) in full, including the reopening of the Leamside Line, if it was in government – saying that the “unacceptable” state of the North’s transport infrastructure had made the region “less than the sum of its parts”.
Mr Driscoll told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “The game-changer is when you take everything to a single network. As long as people are unsure whether their bus is coming, or whether it will connect with the Metro, or if you take a bike on a train whether there is somewhere safe to park it at the other end, then we will not get that modal shift.
“This is entirely possible and happens in a lot of countries around the world, we have to think about how we get the money for it.”
He added: “Sometimes the job of a politician is not to spell out every detail, it is to say ‘at the end of this decade, we will put a man on the moon’. I am saying we can build this transport system and, if I am the mayor, we will.”
After the Government faced major criticism for scaling back its pledges to build NPR last year, transport secretary Mark Harper told the conference that there had “never been a question of our commitment to the North ever being put on the backburner”. However, the minister said he had to be “straight with people about how we pay for things”, adding: “People who come to conferences like this and pretend, with no way of paying for it, that they are going to do things to get a clap are not being straight with people.”
Mr Harper had earlier been to Northumberland to announce that passenger rail services will be returned to the disused line between Ashington and Newcastle next summer, rather than as planned at the end of this year.
He also confirmed that the North East would receive £118m from the Government this year to make improvements to bus services, which is part of previously announced £163m Bus Service Improvement Plan funding. It was later announced that the money would be partly used to launch a flat £1 bus fare for young people under the age of 22.
Addressing disruption to train services, particularly on TPE and Avanti routes, Mr Harper said that the struggling operators must improve and there is “more to do so that passengers don’t face unacceptable levels of disruption that they have over the last nine months” – though he made no commitments on whether TPE would have its contract renewed come May. Gateshead Council leader Martin Gannon earlier joked at the transport summit that it is “quicker to crawl on your hands and knees over broken glass to get to Manchester than go by train”.
TfN chief executive Martin Tugwell admitted that leaders have to “restore people’s confidence in public transport” after the chaos of recent months, saying TransPennine’s regular axeing of services was “not acceptable” – with the company currently on track to cancel 23,000 trains by the end of 2023. He added that projects that have successfully attracted major government investment, including the Northumberland Line and the incoming £362m fleet of Metro trains, had to be used as a “catalyst” to make the case for future schemes like Leamside.
A TransPennine spokesman said the operator was “pulling out all the stops to make things better”. Its problems are partly due to train drivers no longer volunteering to work paid overtime shifts and union Aslef has rejected an offer aimed at restoring rest day working arrangements.
TPE said: “We know the service levels over the past year have not been good enough and we are pulling out all the stops to make things better. Restoring driver overtime is an important part of that process and we urge Aslef to act in the interests of the members, the customers and the communities across our network and accept the offer on the table in order to enable a rapid reduction in train cancellations.”
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