Yahoo News Transport Secretary sets out how Leeds' long-awaited tram system could be paid for
Louise Haigh was this morning unveiling her vision for a new ‘people-first’ approach to transport that she hopes will join up networks, empower local leaders and drive economic growth.
And the Labour Transport Secretary could hardly have picked a more fitting place than Leeds, a city which thanks to the failings of successive governments, remains the biggest urban area in Europe without a rapid mass transit system.
Speaking at Leeds Civic Hall, Sheffield MP Ms Haigh outlined her plan for a new Integrated National Transport Strategy, to be published next year. The first of its kind in a quarter of a century, officials say it will set out a clear vision for how transport across England can evolve over the next ten years.
There's an example of how this could potentially work over the Pennines in Greater Manchester, where the growing publicly-run Bee Network brings together bus, metro and active travel under one name and allows services to be integrated for passengers' benefit.
Get all the latest and breaking news in Yorkshire by signing up to our newsletter here.
But the Transport Secretary has also looked to Dijon (home of the famous mustard) in France for inspiration. She visited earlier this year to see how a city roughly the size of York, or Chester, is running buses every five minutes in rush hour, the tram every three and has a dial-a-ride service to the outlying villages.
Dijon has also created a single app that brings together every mode of transport – from bus to tram, car hire to bike hire, planning journeys to paying for parking. Bus and tram journeys are said to have increased by 40 per cent as a result.
According to the Transport Secretary, the main difference is that in Dijon the city has the power to make the changes it needs, with a single private sector organisation running the whole system.
It's also paid for with the help of contributions from local taxes and businesses, something that rarely happens in this country.
Dijon's success is a far cry from what passengers experience in Leeds and West Yorkshire, where under a fragmented system bus patronage has been in decline for decades.
Ms Haigh told an audience of mayors and industry experts: "Our integrated strategy will empower local leaders to design and build their own, region-specific networks".
In terms of specifics, the Department for Transport is reforming its appraisal system to give more weight to transport projects that enhance access to jobs, boost productivity, and help businesses grow, particularly in less affluent areas.
This could well mean funding being moved out of the South East and to Yorkshire and the rest of the North of England, ending the regional inequalities that have blighted the region for years.
An internal panel of experts will review its capital spend portfolio, to drive better economic outcomes in our transport system. And a new Integrated Transport Commissioner will be recruited.
Ms Haigh told leaders in Leeds today: “Integrated transport in this country is lagging behind our European counterparts, and for too long our fragmented transport networks have stunted economic growth and made it harder for people to get around."
Saying the every day needs of passengers - rather than the minutiae of transport - were her prime concern, she said: "I don't have a model railway in my attic and despite living in Sheffield I don't own an anorak."
And she said her political inspiration was another former Transport Secretary from Yorkshire, Barbara Castle, who set out her vision for integrated transport in the 1968 Transport Act.
"Here, in West Yorkshire, her ideas were brought to life. The regional Passenger Transport Executive coordinated bus and train, unified fares, and created a consistent brand – people always knew where they were when they saw those cream and green Metro buses."
While a new strategy is all very well, the big question is where the money will come from to make it happen.
Later the Transport Secretary was asked about who is going to stump up the cash needed to pay for West Yorkshire's long awaited tram system, two lines of which connecting Leeds and Bradford were unveiled this year.
West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin, who'll be making the case to government for the project in 2026, says she has "big plans for a world-leading mass transit system that will be fully integrated with railways and a publicly controlled bus network".
But will central government pay for the whole thing itself, or will a contribution be required from local taxpayers and businesses like for Nottingham's tram system or Crossrail in London?
On BBC Radio Leeds this morning Henri Murison of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership suggested possible revenue-raisers like a 'roof tax' levied on developers or allowing mayors to keep a proportion of National Insurance themselves.
He told presenter Rima Ahmed: "One way or another we have to take responsibility and it can't always fall on central government to do all the heavy lifting."
But Ms Haigh - whose government has come under fire for raising taxes in its recent Budget - ruled out new tax-raising powers being handed to leaders at local level.
She told reporters that land value capture - where local government can use the increase in land value that comes from development to pay for vital projects - could leverage money in from the private sector.
"I think, [mayor] Tracy Brabin's vision for mass transit is that enormous housing it can unlock, I think, two new towns, the equivalent of, in Leeds, as well as all the business investment that it could generate.
"So finding creative ways to leverage that private finance into it. We're not looking at new tax raising powers, obviously, at a local level but crucially, consolidating and devolving a lot of the funding that we already have.
"And stopping areas competing against each other in these very inefficient ways, mean that people have the resources, both capital and revenue, to invest in networks based on their actual level of need. And that's already the transformation that we've started to deliver."
David Hawkes, interim associate director of policy at the Institution of Civil Engineers, welcomed "the opportunity for regional decision makers, such as Metro Mayors, and passengers of public transport to engage with the development of the strategy".
He added: "Local knowledge is what makes the difference between transport that makes people’s lives better, and transport that doesn’t.
"An integrated strategy, well planned and executed, could help end the stop/start cycle of blinkered transport investment that is disconnected from wider social, economic, and environmental ambitions."
