Scrapping the electrification of railway lines in Wales, the Midlands and the North highlights the government’s lack of ambition on infrastructure, argues Christabel Edwards
Last week the government announced the scrapping of most of its ongoing railway electrification projects. Parts of the Great Western mainline had already been delayed due to cost overruns, now the stretch from Cardiff to Swansea has been cancelled altogether. The South Wales Valleys which had previously hoped to join the electrified network on the back of this can, to borrow a phrase, whistle.
Also gone is the Midland Mainline electrification north of Kettering which would have served the perennially infrastructure starved East Midlands. The wiring of the Lakes line to Windermere has also been cut. It seems that the Trans-Pennine scheme from Manchester to Leeds and York, will go as well.
To illustrate the north-south divide, or London-regional divide if you prefer, there are few better ways of doing so than a quick look around our railway system. On the continent virtually every mainline railway has been electrified for decades. In many countries, the secondary lines are largely wired too.
However, here in the United Kingdom, every one-horse town in the south-east feels the benefit of fast, high-frequency electric trains while major regional cities such as Leicester, Plymouth, Nottingham, Sheffield, Hull, Swansea, Middlesbrough, Dundee, and Aberdeen cannot boast a stitch of catenary wire or third rail between them. To get to any of these you are on a diesel train. An electric locomotive heading north from London on either the East Coast, or West Coast Mainline will not be able to cross back to the other until Edinburgh, or Carstairs Junction in Lanarkshire. There is no electrified east-west link in between.
It was not always so. Until 1981 there was an electrified route across the Pennines from Manchester to Sheffield. It used a non-standard, though not uncommon 1.5kV DC system, rather than the standard 25kV AC. However, instead of buying dual-voltage locomotives as commonly used on the Continent, the Thatcher government chose to close it instead.
Almost forty years later, the government justifies its latest round of cost cutting by telling us that they will bring in new bi-mode trains as a solution. These are talked of by some as if they’re a miraculous alternative form of power. They are not. The basic premise behind a bi-mode train is that it is electric, but carries auxiliary diesel engines on board, allowing it to cover short stretches of non-electrified track. For freight engines it is usually termed ‘last mile’ which will allow a freight train to run on diesel power into a yard where electric cables would be a hazard to loading or unloading.
The assumption behind the technology is that a bi-mode train should do the bulk of its mileage on electric power, only using diesel for short bursts. However, under the new plans, a bi-mode train running from London St Pancras to Sheffield would become a diesel train once it travelled north of Kettering, with a corresponding drop in efficiency.
All of this comes on the back of the announcement of contracts for HS2. A positive piece of news, but, as ever, this is a railway designed for London. It does little for inter-urban connectivity in the regions. Once completed there will still be no electrified link across the Pennines. A parkway station at Sandiacre would serve the whole East Midlands. Getting between cities and sizeable town will still be a laborious task with elderly and underpowered diesel units struggling on wet gradients.
The knock on effects too, are rarely reported. The electrification programmes were to have been accompanied by a resulting cascade of rolling stock. Better quality diesel trains released by new electric sets would have served to upgrade other diesel only lines and increase frequency. Not all will be replaced by bi-modes.
As a nation we cannot hope to compete without such necessary infrastructure improvements. Lack of electric trains are an obvious, and highly visible sign of what little importance we place on development. How can a European city hope to be taken seriously on the world stage if visitors cannot see such a basic facility?
To address this glaring inequality the UK needs an effective strategic planning body. One which can oversee continuous improvement programmes, be it on the rail system or elsewhere. The engineering skills base needs to be nurtured and maintained by projects which follow on from one another, rather than being initiated and implemented in isolation. Above all, there needs to be a concerted drive to do all this from regional politicians, and business people exerting real pressure on government.
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Christabel Edwards is a Labour party activist. She tweets at @Christabel321
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The Conservatives have cut money from transport in Wales and the North, which tend not to vote Conservative. I get that. I do not necessarily agree with it, on several grounds. But I do understand it. However, they have diverted that money to London, where there are also not very many Conservative voters these days. Indeed, the Conservatives picked up a few seats in the North this year. A very few, but they did. In London, meanwhile, they managed to lose even Kensington, as small Labour majorities turned by the dozen into thumping great ones. Yet this is how they react. What is going on here?
Living in Bradford in West Yorkshire I am very aware that there is no priority given to rail in the northern English regions. Before HS2 we need an HS3 going east to west which would encourage investment in all the populated areas of the formerly industrial towns. London should concentrate on getting control of its housing and not spending all the national allocation for rail investment.