The problem with WYCA's current plans and the case for an alternative
Leeds is the largest city in Europe without a mass transit system and West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) set out its ambition for mass transit in its Vision 2040 document, we take the view that the case for investing in it is settled. The open question is not whether to invest, but how, and we present an alternative plan which incorporates both new-build Tram and upgrades to commuter rail.
Leeds has no mass transit, but it does have railways
The consequences of having no mass transit system are lower connectivity, agglomeration and productivity. That much isn't in dispute, and this proposal doesn't revisit it. What's worth stating plainly is that the region is not starting from nothing.
Rail corridors already connect Bradford, Horsforth, Wakefield, Dewsbury and Garforth to Leeds city centre. Seven corridors run today on existing infrastructure, serving the communities that a metro would serve. They are simply not operated to metro standard: not continuously electrified, not turn-up-and-go, not unified under a single identity, mapping and ticket.
The £2.1bn Transport for City Regions funding envelope for 2027 to 2032 has to be spent, and spent well. The question we're trying to answer is where that money is most at risk of being wasted. The answer, consistently, is new-build urban tram track laid without first using what already exists.
The proposed Tram routes run alongside railways we already have
Set the tram corridors previously developed by West Yorkshire Combined Authority against the existing rail network and the overlap is immediately clear: several proposed alignments run close to, or directly parallel with, heavy-rail corridors that are already in place and already carrying passengers.
Existing WYCA tram plans set against the existing railway. Where a proposed tram route shadows a rail corridor, the cheaper and faster move is to raise the railway to metro standard first, and reserve new track for the places no railway reaches.
Building a tram route that shadows a railway serving the same corridor is the wrong call, for three reasons.
- It's the most expensive way to improve connectivity for these communities. The same corridors can be upgraded and run to a metro standard by electrifying the existing lines, adding selective new stations, and improving onward travel at those stations through better interchange and micro-mobility, at a fraction of the cost of laying new street-level tram track beside a line that is already there. All of this improves the value for money argument needed to secure funding for the whole programme.
- Trains are faster than Trams. A tram at grade, sharing streets with cars stops more often and runs at lower speed than an electric train on the existing alignment. Once the railway is electrified, passengers on that corridor reach the city centre faster by train than a parallel tram could carry them.
- Trains carry more people than Trams. A 4-car configuration of the British Rail Class 331 operated by Northern has capacity for 260 seated passengers. Comparatively, the Bombardier M5000 Trams used on the Manchester Metrolink have a capacity of 206. The trains then have 21% greater passenger capacity, before exploring refitting the trains to accomodate standing sections.
- The opportunity cost is large. Some of these corridors are already due for electrification and spending ~£1.77bn of a fixed £2.1bn envelope on a tram that duplicates a railway already there is money that cannot then build new tram track where there is no railway at all, to communities such as Seacroft, or electrify other commuter lines such as the Harrogate line.
A decade trying to reach the airport
Perhaps unknown to some readers are the efforts WYCA has made at developing a rail connection to the airport. Leeds Bradford Airport is the largest airport in Yorkshire but it has no rail connection, making it reachable only by car, taxi, or an infrequent bus taking forty-five to fifty minutes from the city centre.
West Yorkshire Combined Authority has spent close to a decade developing proposals for a Parkway station on the Harrogate line, roughly a mile short of the terminal and connected to it by shuttle bus. The scheme has an approved Outline Business Case and is classified as very high value for money, at an estimated capital cost of £42m with £5m already secured. It was planned to open in 2024 but it hasn't broken ground, and rising costs have triggered a deliverability review.
The alternative that would actually reach the terminal was priced out, as a direct heavy-rail spur to the terminal building was estimated at £350m to £400m and deemed economically unfeasible because of the tunnelling the gradient up to the terminal would require. So WYCA has been left choosing between a connection it can't afford and a station a mile short of where passengers are going and, a decade on, neither has been built.
If an alernative plan is adopted, there is enough money to secure track suitable for a tram-train which can climb the gradient and secure a direct airport connection. This is one of the opportunities that can be realised.
Close to a decade of work, an approved business case and money in the bank, and still no rail at the terminal. This is what a stalled programme looks like on a single, well-understood connection, and it is the pattern the alternative is designed to break.
A network that was taken apart
West Yorkshire has done integrated public transport before, and then it was dismantled. From 1978 the West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive operated under the Metro brand across buses and trains throughout the region: colour-coded network maps for twelve lines, integrated multimodal MetroCards, and unified fares across bus and rail. It was, in effect, the mass-transit identity the region is now trying to build from scratch.
That integration did not survive the privatisation of the railways. Under British Rail, Metro-branded local trains were part of a single regional network; the Railways Act 1993 then broke passenger services into national franchises and West Yorkshire's local rail services were progressively folded into the succession of operators that became today's Northern franchise, a brand spanning Liverpool to Newcastle which is, by design, neutral across that whole geography. The Metro name lingered on tickets and travel information for years afterwards, but the distinctive regional identity on the trains themselves was given up with privatisation. That integrated identity and the civic recognition that came with it was a real asset and it was lost.
The evidence says that matters, branding is not presentation separable from demand: when Transport for London rebranded the former Silverlink routes as the London Overground in 2007 on unchanged tracks, trains and stations, ridership rose in the first year and doubled within four. A lost identity is a lost asset, one the alternative sets out to restore rather than reinvent.
The Railways Bill brought forward by the current government establishes a framework for devolving authority for local rail to Mayoral Strategic Authorities (MSAs). The timing of this allows WYCA to pursue devolution of local rail, use some of their funds to upgrade local rail and run a combined rail-tram-bus network which connects more people more quickly.
See the alternative
The case for investment is settled. The problem is delivery: a default of expensive new-build tram track, a decade lost reaching for the airport, and an integrated identity given away. The proposal answers each of those directly, using the railways that already exist, building new track only where nothing does, sequencing for early delivery, and presenting the network as one system.