Leeds doesn't need a (value-destroying, loss-making) tram
£200m will disappear into the coffers of consultants, designers, polling companies and planners for a scheme we can’t afford, that isn’t comprehensive and won't fix our transport problems
Leeds - sorry West Yorkshire - Mayor Tracy Brabin has taken to social media and the airwaves with the exciting news that it is all stations go for ‘Our Region’s’ exciting mass transit system. In a gushing little video Brabin tells us that the government has allocated £200m already. Not to actually build anything but to “develop the case and undertake initial consultation” plus the “development of plans…between now and 2027”. It is so exciting to see millions of carefully borrowed government money spent with consultants, polling companies, planners and assorted people with maps and big coloured crayons.
We take a step towards resolving the terrible crime that Leeds - sorry West Yorkshire - is the only city this side of Alpha Centauri without one of those wonderful boondoggles, a mass transit system. Here in the South Pennines of course we don’t get a mention let alone anything that looks like mass transit but we can, of course, bask in the joy of knowing that five miles away at the other end of Airedale there might be a “mass transit interchange”. Wonderful.
Of course, like almost all fixed rail investments this project (with an unspecified cost) will be value-destroying. It is an exceptional mass transit line that proves profitable - perhaps one combining the substitution of existing rail provision with connecting one of the world’s busiest airports to the centre of one of the world’s wealthiest cities - but most of such investments are guaranteed never to recover the investment or, in many cases, even run an operating profit. Yet this wasteful squandering of public funds on a value-destroying rail system is seen by almost everyone - left, right and centre - as the acme of public investment, the very finest way to transform the economy of a place like Leeds. The lack of a multi-billion mass transit network used for 2% of journeys is obviously a complete disaster.
This is the reality. We are expecting to spend more than a billion on the initial programme in West Yorkshire and have almost no expectation that this investment will see a return. Opening up some land (as happened with Phase 2 of the Greater Manchester system) might draw in some private capital in the form of community infrastructure levy or other agreed planning gain payments but this doesn’t alter the fact that this massive investment will destroy value - specifically the billion pounds or so it costs to build. There is an outside chance that the resulting network might ‘wash its face’ operationally but absolutely zero prospect of the scheme generating a return for the kindly public whose taxes are paying.
If we are serious about transport investment then we should concentrate on investments that the private sector is prepared to finance - air travel, taxi systems, roads and work from home initiatives. It may be the case that, as Centre for Cities repeatedly tell us, urban density would make mass transit less loss-making but right now West Yorkshire, other than a small part in Leeds city centre and northwards to the university, is not going to ever meet the sort of densification criteria that might make a mass transit system financially viable. If we want transport investment with a real economic return then better investments would be a fixed rail link between Leeds city station and Leeds Bradford International Airport and a second transpennine motorway north of Leeds and Bradford connecting with the existing M65 at Colne and running through to the A1(M). Plus a serious commitment to maintain the roads better, develop good active travel infrastructure and experiment with new opportunities such as driverless vehicles, improved taxis and bus flexibility systems.
None of this, however, is the sort of sexy proposal that gets you elected so instead we have a very expensive and economically damaging mass transit system that might be built (if we are lucky) by 2040 and which will be more-or-less guaranteed to lose money. There’ll be a great deal of chat about climate change, about transport integration, and about the jobs such a system will provide, but nobody except yours truly will point out that this is just another boondoggle, another waste of other people’s money that the mayor will brag about when she’s up for re-election. Meanwhile the real drags on our local economy remain firmly in place - planning departments, councillors refusing permission for thousands of jobs because a handful of residents moaned, the continued lack of housing, and a tax system designed to penalise entrepreneurship and to demonise business investment.
Mass transit systems (and schemes to fund football stadiums, science parks and new university campuses) are popular ways to waste public money while looking good. Yet if these things were so necessary and so economically valuable then wouldn’t the private sector fund them? We’re told how every little provincial town in Europe has a swanky tram system and that Britain should be doing the same. Yet US cities are wealthier and more economically successful than any in Europe and don’t have swanky tram systems. European cities are not, in the main, more successful than UK cities and even where they are the reasons for their success do not include having a mass transit network. Cities, especially where mayors have borrowing powers, build tram systems because they are rich, they do not build these systems so they can get rich. Indeed, since mass transit is usually value-destroying and often loss-making, they represent a gruesome indulgence by city leaders desperate to look good in citizens eyes.
When you look at the modal shares in Greater Manchester it is clear that the expensively procured (and really nice too) tram system has had almost no effect on the wider transport systems. Metrolink has made an operating profit once in 20 years and its losses have been covered by Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) - to the tune of £39m in the latest financial year. Despite the evidence that mass transit systems destroy value, what we see is the pretence that these networks deliver vaguely specified and usually unquantified social or environmental value. These arguments, which can be summed up as ‘trams are not cars and cars are bad’, lead also to the view that people don’t ride buses and trams for simply financial reasons. So Luxembourg has experimented with free travel on buses and trams, while in Germany and the UK national and local governments have doubled down on bus and tram subsidies by mandating lower fares. Ridership has barely budged.
Meanwhile local governments (especially in England) cannot maintain the roads. In England we have the spectacle of nearly twice as much money being spent on subsidising public transit systems than on looking after roads yet over 9 out of ten journeys involve travel on the highway (indeed if you are a stickler then every journey involves the highway as very few people live at railway or tram stations). A combination of grandstanding, political showboating and financial fiction results in a transport system where most of the money gets spent on the least used parts of the system - rail and light rail - and where the preference for investment is on more of these systems rather than on improving the existing networks of roads, footways and cycleways.
Leeds doesn’t need a tram. The outcome of the consultation and business planning should be to tell the mayor and her sidekicks that West Yorkshire doesn’t need a tram. But it won’t. £200m will disappear into the coffers of consultants, designers, polling companies and planners with the result being a scheme we can’t afford, that isn’t comprehensive and will contribute almost zero to resolving our cities’ and towns’ transport challenges.
I like trams. And trains and buses. They're nice to look at. But trams are wholly unsuitable to mass transit.
If the tram follows the road, that can be handy and help it get closer to where it needs to go. But it's horrendously expensive - the public highway is free for anyone to use, including utility companies to route cables, and public infrastructure such as sewers, water mains, gas pipes. These all need to be relocated, in a process that takes years and costs millions. It's no good having a pothole under a tramtrack, so the road needs digging out and strengthening. The overhead line infrastructure needs installing, sometimes with steel-reinforced concrete piled foundations (as opposed to streetlamps which are literally dug into a hole and filled with post-fix cement of the sort you may use in your garden). Substations need to supply the line power. Tram stops are grossly over-engineered compared with the bus shelter you see in Amsterdam, resembling a mini train station.
And then, if there's a road accident, or bad weather, or a tram breaks down. That section is out of action.
So option b) is to use an existing rail line. As Manchester did in phase one. But all you've achieved is transferring passengers from one rail system to another. Pretty pointless. In the early years you get some new customers because a brand new shiny tram is nicer than a clapped out 40 year ex-Southern Region BR cast off. But after a couple of years when the trams are colonised by the Spice Addicts and crystal-meth pickpockets, the ridership tails off again as a percentage (of course if you are a growing city like much of the UK, you can mask this because even if a fewer percentage use the tram, the absolute numbers will be marginally higher).
And, unlike a train, because of the design and the bespoke nature of the trams, you can't easily just order more carriages and double them up to cope with larger numbers. And, unlike the London Underground / Elizabeth Line, you are looking at a maximum of three of four carriages as opposed to 8 to 10. And unlike both a train and the London Underground, the trams are considerably slower, running at barely above bus speed, with fewer stops than a bus, so less convenient, and more stops than a train, so less quick.
Manchester's original Metrolink largely abstracted passengers from parallel bus routes (and of course the electrified rail lines that it took over). No doubt if the money had been used to boost the rail service, or for some connection between the railway stations and city centre, the same result would have been acheived.
In pure isolation, you make some really good points. However I have to question when you step back and look at the bigger picture, is it a waste of money? The NHS is at crisis point and spends £1.8 trillion every decade. The answer with that according to many is just keep throwing money at the problem. But unhealthy people (the actual problem) never look like they're going away. So something needs to change and getting people moving more is a great way of doing that, rather than just getting in and out of their cars all day.
Another paper over the cracks solution are roads. We're spending billions every year expanding and resurfacing roads. Because there is no other option but getting in a car for most people. The East Leeds orbital road cost a staggering £147 million. Motorways cost £7 million (both sides) for every mile of resurfaced road. The new M621 works - £50 million. A roundabout in Wakefield (yes Wakefield) £7 million! When you start to look beyond the £1 billion pound fee (said in Dr Evils voice), and see what else is being spent elsewhere, money should in no way be considered an issue with this scheme in my opinion.