By John Baron
Campaigners in Leeds have called on new Prime Minister Andy Burnham to make a “cast iron pledge” to deliver trams across the region.
West Yorkshire Needs a Tram campaign yesterday (Monday, 27 July) marked ‘Supertram Day’ by calling on Mr Burnham to fully fund a West Yorkshire mass transit system, 33 years after the last attempt at a city tram was approved.
On 27 July 1993 the Leeds Supertram Act received Royal Assent, but it was scrapped less than a decade later by a Labour government citing rising costs. In the intervening time London’s Elizabeth Line was approved and built, the French city of Lyon has built eight mass transit lines, but Leeds has remained without a tram.
The current mass transit proposals consist of two lines (one serving Elland Road and White Rose and one cutting through West Leeds to link Leeds with Bradford).
Campaigners argue this is much smaller than the aborted Supertram system and the previous tram network which covered Leeds until its closure in 1959. The campaign blames this lack of ambition on the lack of funding provided by the Treasury, and the inability of Mayor Brabin to raise her own funds for the project.
They believe the problem could be solved by a cast iron multi-year funding pledge, and business rates raising powers for the Mayor on Leeds’ largest financial companies.
Tram campaigner Gareth Forest said: “Andy Burnham wants to devolve more power and money to the North. The best thing he could do right now is announce a fully funded tram for West Yorkshire, with all decision making powers resting not in Whitehall but Wellington Street.
“The Treasury has held back West Yorkshire for too long. We want to see Andy call time on Whitehall’s interference in our public transit.”
Leeds remains the largest city in Western Europe without a mass transit system, and after numerous false dawns, plans to build a highly-anticipated mass transit system in West Yorkshire.
The proposed completion date was last December pushed back to the late 2030s after Whitehall told the West Yorkshire Combined Authority to change its process and put together a business case for a bus network as well as trams, before it approves the most cost-effective proposal.
West Yorkshire Needs a Tram, a voluntary campaign, was set up by two campaigners from the Better Buses for West Yorkshire campaign, which successfully won a London-style system of local control It is calling for:
- a mass transit network connecting every major town and city in the region.
- an upfront commitment for the Government to fully fund the entire network, with cash devolved to the mayor.
- spades in the ground within the next two years so the benefits can be seen within this decade.
- People can sign the campaign petition here.
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Absolute madness this west Leeds route. If teams are needed then not to run parallel to a railway where there’s already a good bus service. Build a network where there isn’t any existing rail line. Isn’t that obvious?
There’s two main reasons why this was the chosen route (and I agree with you it’s not the best possible one, I wish we were doing some very different routes).
1. Involving Bradford was a mandatory part of getting the funding. If Leeds wanted to spend money “freed up” from cancelling HS2, the condition was that it had to go to Bradford.
2. It’s not about the Leeds to Bradford bit, which is already quite well served by trains. It’s about the bits in-between Leeds and Bradford in that corridor which aren’t well-connected. Lots of people live in parts of Bradford where, to get to central Leeds, you need to go to central Bradford first, and then go to central Leeds. Trams are great for this kind of thing.