The Anonymous Widower

The Train Now Arriving Is Fifty Years Late

When I went to Liverpool University in October 1965. According to Wikipedia, electric trains between London and Liverpool and Manchester, started public service in April 1966. I can remember once taking a late train to London from Liverpool and a time of five hours forty minutes stricks in my mind.

The electric service between the North West and London is faster and more frequent now, but in some ways services between London and Blackpool and other places, is worse than it was in the 1960s, when there were direct trains.

In addition Leeds and Newcastle were connected to London by an electrified East Coast Main Line in 1990.

Over the last fifty years, since I first emerged into Lime Street, Liverpool and Leeds have developed local electric railways and Manchester has created a tram network. On the negative side, the electrified railway between Manchester and Sheffield has been ripped out.

The contempt for the North shown by successive Governments under Wilson, Callaghan, Heath, Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown, by not even creating a plan to build a modern electrified railway from Liverpool to Newcastle and Hull, is one of the greatest political disgraces in this country, ranking with the day that Chamberlain thought he’d got a deal with Hitler.

But now, that plan is emerging to create that railway that the French or the Italians would have built before the 1970s. It’s here on the BBC and this is the first two paragraphs.

Plans to overhaul transport across the North of England, including with multi-billion pound rail schemes, have been laid out by the government.

The Northern Transport Strategy report details what George Osborne believes will create a “northern powerhouse”.

It contains a long-term plan to improve road links and speed up train times between major cities.

This plan or at least a simpler one which only used 100 mph trains, should have been created in the 1960s. All those politicians who failed the north should hang their heads in shame.

I blame Harold Wilson in particular, as surely being a Yorkshireman representing a Lancashire constiuency, he should have known the value of good rail links across the country.

I suppose that until recently, trains didn’t get any votes outside London and the South East, but wide and empty new motorways do.

In some ways, I find that all the rail developments in the North are being driven, by that most unlikely champion; the St. Pauls and Oxford-educated Tory Chancellor; George Osborne, who said this about the plans according to the BBC report.

Connecting up the great cities of the North is at the heart of our plan to build a northern powerhouse.

From backing high-speed rail to introducing simpler fares right across the North, our ambitious plans for transport mean we will deliver a truly national recovery where every part of the country will share in Britain’s prosperity.

But then Osborne is someone, who spent a lot of their formative years in London. I suspect as a teenager he roamed all over the city on the Underground and the buses, as I did. It is the sort of experience, that gives you the opinion that good public transport is a necessity for prosperity for all those who live and work in an area.

Sorting out the public transport in the North with electrified fast trains and contactless ticketing at its heart, should be something that anybody standing in the May election should be made to sign up to, before they are allowed to be a candidate.

March 21, 2015 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | George Osborne, Politics, Trains