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You may know that part of the Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) submission by government included funding for this plan to be developed, in conjunction with the plans for Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) and HS2 East (connection from Sheffield to Leeds/Bradford). I have created this thread to allow separation out of this discussion from the main HS2 thread.

 

Not much to discuss, beyond speculation, yet, but here is the plan as submitted by West Yorkshire during the summer, which one would guess will now have to be re-visited, substantially, if it is to create capacity at Leeds City station and its approaches, by diverting many local services on to some form of metro system. You will note that, as well being fairly vague about detailed routes at this stage, the plan had not even yet decided on what mode would be selected for each route.

 

https://www.westyorks-ca.gov.uk/improving-transport/connectivity/

 

As a starter for ten, I cannot see any of these proposed routes alleviating any of the existing rail routes, with some minor exceptions. Can you?

 

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Call me cynical, but the experience of NPR shows what is likely. A decade and £Ms can be spent on planning and demonstrating need, demand, RoI etc, then at the final moment HM Treasury refuses to fund because it’s too expensive, wrong time, not a priority, etc. We have been there so many times since WYPTE and in Manchester also.

 

Until there is change in government and real devolution to city-regions it won’t happen. TfN shows why. 
 

Dava

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Not only NPR but Leeds and Bradford City Councils are involved. Neither of them has a stellar reputation when it comes to local transport planning for new infrastructure (as opposed to re-opening stations on existing routes) or planning generally come to that. Leeds spent 40 million quid not developing a Supertram line then Lord knows how much more not building a trolley bus route. The best I can say about them is that they're marginally less inept than Selby and York Councils. 

 

"West Yorkshire devolution deal provides the region with access to the Government’s £4.2bn fund for urban transport"

 

So there's no funding agreed yet. 

 

"... the blend of technologies which are most likely to meet the needs of our region."

 

We'll end up with electric buses and cycle lanes then. 

Edited by Wheatley
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The £40m mentioned above should have left a legacy.  Much of it was spent providing a utility free path through, IIRC the City Square are and the junction compkex at South Accomodation road.  When the South Accom flyover route was put in, a clear path for Supertram was left for about half a mile.   However the cynical me would suspect that more ca les have been laid there now.

 

Jamie

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I suspect time for lots of expensive daydreaming by the councils; re-lay the trams to Middleton and beyond, let's have another look at the trolleybus plans, why not a monorail to Skipton or a Maglev to the airport, and teleporters to Halifax... yes, why that'll be £400 million please for a flashy report, a company car, and some boozy lunches.  And in ten years time, we'll have the same diesel buses because it'll be cheaper than electricity, splash some paint on dangerously crowded roads to keep the cyclists quiet, and bring back pacers as a heritage experience on the Bradford Interchange line...

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On 05/12/2021 at 15:11, Mike Storey said:

 

 

As a starter for ten, I cannot see any of these proposed routes alleviating any of the existing rail routes, with some minor exceptions. Can you?

 

 

How about not being constrained by a vague and badly laid out list of aspirations and instead consider what has gone on in other cities. In the UK we have rail based mass transit which includes:-

 

Trams (Sheffield) or light rail vehicles (Newcastle)Involve sharing tracks with national rail passenger and freight services.

Trams taking over ex national rail routes (Manchester and Croydon)

Trams running alongside national rail routes (Nottingham)

Trams running on self contained alignments (Edinburgh, Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham, Blackpool and Croydon)

Trams with large sections of urban street running away from the city centre (Manchester and Sheffield) 

Trams taking over a section of guided busway (Edinburgh)

 

A mass transit scheme for Leeds could incorporate all of the above techniques including the replacement of selected rail services.

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A quick starter for 10 would be to dust off the original Supertram proposals for which much of the preparatory work, including an Act of Parliament has been done.  The core of that was a city centre loop.  At least one of the 3 park and rides (Stourton) Has already been built and as mentioned above, quite a bit of the complex utility diversion has been done.  That would relieve,the  Headingley  bottleneck and then allow for later expansion such as Leeds Bradford and potentially Leeds Harrogate.

 

Jamie

Edited by jamie92208
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Until someone bites several bullets it won't work.. some examples from Leeds:

 

Trains going out of Leeds towards Neville Hill hit the bottleneck straight away.. so they need to double the Marsh Lane "viaduct"

 

Headingley has a major bottleneck and the tram route planned though it would have helped a little.. but that has gone and is no longer even in the "plan" (there are a lot of other areas in the cities across west yorkshire which have the same problems

 

Remove  the Councillors from the process - they will never agree anything!

 

 Have a centralised Highways department who have to travel though the inner cities to get to work.. certainly gets improvements in place quickly!

 

Stop throwing money at the Consultants and then tell them what the outcome must be...

 

BAz

 

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Where trams have replaced heavy rail before it has generally seen infrequent elderly DMUs calling at uncared for stations replaced by shiny new electric trams calling at nice fresh stations to an increased frequency.

 

Now the Pacers have gone they are going to need really quite nice trams to be better than 158s and I'd like to think the small stations around West Yorkshire today are somewhat nicer than the Greater Manchester stations that swapped trains for trams in the early 90s.

 

Really what I'm saying is dig an underground section under Leeds Central, put 25kv up and run proper trains.

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12 hours ago, Hesperus said:

Where trams have replaced heavy rail before it has generally seen infrequent elderly DMUs calling at uncared for stations replaced by shiny new electric trams calling at nice fresh stations to an increased frequency.

 

Now the Pacers have gone they are going to need really quite nice trams to be better than 158s and I'd like to think the small stations around West Yorkshire today are somewhat nicer than the Greater Manchester stations that swapped trains for trams in the early 90s.

 

Really what I'm saying is dig an underground section under Leeds Central, put 25kv up and run proper trains.

You mean go back to the postwar plans of Leeds City Council???  and will we be building a new Central Station?

 

Baz

Edited by Barry O
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1 hour ago, Barry O said:

You mean go back to the postwar plans of Leeds City Council???  and will we be building a new Central Station?

 

Baz

 

If the money is there it would seem sensible once the local services are out of the way.  That way it could be ready for extra HS2/NPR services when/if they arrive.

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14 hours ago, Hesperus said:

Really what I'm saying is dig an underground section under Leeds Central, put 25kv up and run proper trains.

 

That would not only be extremely expensive, it also rules out being able to serve parts of Leeds which are not on existing rail routes like the swathe of housing in an arc from Cross Gates to Horsforth.

 

19 hours ago, Barry O said:

Until someone bites several bullets it won't work.. some examples from Leeds:

 

Trains going out of Leeds towards Neville Hill hit the bottleneck straight away.. so they need to double the Marsh Lane "viaduct"

 

 

 

One solution to this could be a new link from the Cross Green freight stub to the Castleford line near junction 4 of the M621 and shadowing the A61 allowing trains from York etc to approach Leeds from the West. As this passes through industrial areas a cheaper viaduct solution might be possible rather than tunnelling.

 

That said, an examination of satellite / street view imagery suggests there is scope for widening the marsh lane viaduct on the south side with only one modern office building in the way that would need to be demolished (junction of Crown Street and The Calls) and if they can thread another viaduct over borough market in London I don't see why a similar thing could not be done here.

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Having talked to representatives of Leeds City Council today..their 2030 is God.. even though it makes no sense ..getting anything like doubling Marsh Lane Viaduct (they want the station there reopened)are a major step too far...

 

Baz

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8 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

 

That would not only be extremely expensive, it also rules out being able to serve parts of Leeds which are not on existing rail routes like the swathe of housing in an arc from Cross Gates to Horsforth.

 

 

I realise that the tunnelling would be expensive but it's hardly crossrail.

 

Serving the centre of those housing estates with rail is going to be tricky whichever type you choose.  But it's only a matter of time before they stretch another mile north so what about branching off just north of Horsforth station and serving the university and airport before heading east around the outside of them?

 

You'd have to hope the planning department weren't golfers though as the green fields you'd be running through are mostly golf courses.

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