Tags
I’m writing this whilst travelling on Grand Central’s 06:55 service from Bradford to London Kings Cross. I’m a regular user of their trains as they get me from Halifax to the capital in just over 3 hours. They’re comfortable with very competitive fares and have free wifi throughout the train. The West Riding services first started running in May 2010. In the early days passenger numbers were sparse, nowadays they can be full & standing – even in First Class!
Grand Central’s trains are popular with both business and leisure travellers as they offer the residents of Yorkshire a fast direct service to London that allows you to go there & back in a day if you want to. As an aside, GC regularly top the Passenger Focus poll as Britain’s highest-rated long distance train operator for customer satisfaction.
But, hang on – this is something the opponents of High Speed 2 say is what’s bad for the North. They claim Hs2 will suck all the economic life out of the North & only benefit the capital. This train (and me) are perfect examples of why this is nonsense. You see, for 25 years I lived in London. Now I live in Yorkshire – and the only way I can make that possible is by better rail connections between the two. A lot of my work is centered on London. If I don’t have easy access to it I have to move closer or move back. As it is now, I can command a London wage & transfer that spending power back home to Yorkshire. I’m not alone in this as the growing numbers of business travellers using Grand Central’s trains attest to.
So, next time you hear Hs2 opponents like Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman banging on about how Hs2 would be bad for the North, remind them of the success of Grand Central & how it’s allowed Southerners like me to move away from London – & bring our prosperity with us.
I was expecting you to point out that there are a lot of other towns and cities that don’t have direct services to London at the moment – because there isn’t enough free capacity on the main lines to serve them properly. Grand Central only manages to squeeze four trains a day from Bradford and Halifax to King’s Cross into the busy East Coast Main Line. Take out the trains to Leeds and Newcastle from ECML for HS2, and there’s room for many more towns and cities to be served, and places like Bradford and Halifax to get trains once every hour or two.
Blackpool doesn’t have direct trains to London – because the WCML is too crowded. Wrexham had direct trains to London via the Chilterns to Marylebone, which took so long it killed the service – because the WCML was too crowded to go the fast way. MIddlesbrough doesn’t have direct trains to London, because the ECML is too crowded. If there aren’t three trains every hour to Leeds, three more to Manchester, three more to Birmingham and four more to Glasgow/Edinburgh chewing up capacity on the main routes, then some of those trains could run to other towns and cities, and still leave capacity for commuter trains (to places like Northampton, Milton Keynes, Bedford, Peterborough and Cambridge) and more railfreight as well.
” the success of Grand Central & how it’s allowed Southerners like me to move away from London – & bring our prosperity with us”.
I assume that was written with tongue in cheek