Oh I don't doubt that the 3 car services are planned around the Bradford services. But in operational reality we know that they will at some point end up on the busy Leeds peaks.
Never said it won’t happen but you seem to be intimating that this will be a regular thing. I’m sure if the service was just cancelled you’d be fuming that they couldn’t just put a 3 car on instead as it’s better than nothing. As usual, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Honestly, I like a lot of others are sick and tired of hearing about the covid excuses. They've been used for all sorts of reasons that are long out of date. The platform lengthening could have been kept in schedule regardless of the delivery timescales of the 331/0s. But like most things on the rails these days, if something can be kicked down the road it almost certainly will be, even if it subsequently causes more problems.
Is your memory so short that you don’t remember that the country was effectively shut down for the best part of a year including construction projects? I am the last person to drag out Covid as an excuse but if it
is the reason why something (like many things) was deferred then I shall use it. Get over it, it happened and had lingering effects however much you may wish to deny it. Look around you, the world has changed and one of the main things is travel patterns of commuters which you seem to be most concerned about.
Let me allay your fears as you seem to have forgotten what travel was like pre March 2020.
This project was absolutely vital peak infrastructure pre-covid but it is not post covid.
Take the 2H54 1626 Leeds - Skipton that we both caught last night. Pre covid it was absolutely full and standing cab to cab on departure from Leeds. Now (and it is a regular of mine on my weekly post work trip back to see family) it is never close to full as I witnessed yet again last night (I travel on this service on Tues, Weds or Thurs which are the busiest days, and when I do use it on a Friday it is sparsely populated). 6 car operation will make the trains roomier but they are running nowhere near as busy as the 0730-0900 Leeds arrival and 1600-1800 Leeds departure crush loading we saw on the NW triangle of yesteryear.
And why do you think people have these views? Because of what they see in front of them. Just taking the West Yorkshire region as a whole for a moment,
I moved out of Airedale last year to rural North Yorkshire where I drive to a railhead for my hourly service to work. Yes I chose to move there (mainly due to lower crime rates and my retirement plans) but I see the public transport network round here and can tell you that West Yorkshire is doing very well in comparison.
Thanks to the government, not the railway companies.
As it always was due to be.
NPR is a carrot occasionally dangled in front of us,
More government pedalled rubbish to pacify gullible people into voting for them.
TPE has been a running joke and disaster,
Can’t argue with that but it is on a slow road to recovery and is much more reliable than 6 months ago (my commute bears witness to that).
Northern services have been cut between around the region.
If this means service cuts then yes it has but it is also on the road to recovery. Hudds - Wakefield and beyond is back under TPE from December (should have been May for TPE). The few cut triangle services (and it’s nowhere near as many as people seem to intimate, just a few from the quietest time of day on the Bradford services and there’s been no issues with this apart from a few people on here) will be back in December 2024 (as mentioned before).
Peak extras across the network have been cut as we just don’t need them anymore thanks to lower commuter numbers. What else has gone?
LNER's uptick in London services to Bradford haven't emerged,
How much are they actually needed (figures etc). When GNER used to run a lunchtime service it was more or less empty Leeds - Bradford and return which is why it was cut.
GC have been having to cancel many of their KXs too,
Unit issues which the additional units acquired should solve.
there's been over a year of strikes and uncertainty
Nationwide, not unique to West Yorkshire.
, and reliability feels like it gets worse month on month.
Feels? Or actually is (figures etc)
And in a few weeks the triangle route will see less capacity, with a risk of that reduction leaking onto the busiest services. The travelling public won't be aware of it yet, but get ready for lots more upset when it does.
You aren’t listening to what I’ve said on this so absolutely no point trying any further. You’ve decided it’s worse before it’s actually happened. That is exactly what I’ve been getting at.
Think about it, telling them that hopefully 12 months further down the road 6 cars might finally arrive won't cut it with a public sick and tired of an ever-worsening service. And you can take it from me as someone who is a supporter of the principle of railways (if not the current application of), if there was anything like a reliable bus alternative down the Aire valley to Leeds I personally would have switched months ago.
I’m not an apologist for the railways as you may be thinking here. I’m not stupid enough to think that this is ideal. And I’m going to use covid here so please don’t shut off.
Had it not happened and the country hadn’t have locked down and had restrictions for 2 years then this project would have happened back then and you’d have full 6 car trains on the Aire/Wharfe with 4 car trains on the all day half hourly Bradford’s.
But it did happen and the fall out from that has considerably disrupted the world (not just your little bubble). Almost every industry has suffered from the fallout and we are where we are making the best of what scraps we’re being thrown post recovery.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the government is squeezing this industry (and others) for every penny. I’ve worked harder than ever post covid because we’re asked to save money at every stroke of a keyboard. Is it ideal, no, I want to plan for the best railway network possible and I can’t. Is it necessary, sadly yes otherwise I’d be out of a job. So there has to be a compromise to get the best out of the tools we’ve got. I’m sure most people are in the same boat as me in all sorts of industries but when someone doesn’t like one of those workable compromises that is actually short term and leading to something better (in the same way entire routes have to close during electrification works) then they’re ’sick and tired of covid being used as an excuse’ like they forgot just how bloody disruptive it was to life.
No, covid shouldn’t be used as an excuse for things not to happen anymore but it doesn’t change the fact that sadly it is a very common reason why things have changed, been deferred and even cancelled (and lest we forget how many people this ‘excuse’ actually killed which seems to be easily forgotten just 3 years on).
I know you won’t appreciate me taking time to reply to you on each point and giving an explanation on the issues you raise and will no doubt act like you haven’t read it and throw exactly the same things back at me despite the explanation but I’m sure that secretly you’ll get it.
