Leeds transport is still feeling the effects of Covid

New data shows that since 2019, there has been a nearly 6 million passenger drop of people travelling to and from Leeds city train station. With the pandemic meaning more remote working and the ever rising fares, people seem to be dissatisfied with the state of public transport and are instead opting to travel privately via car or taxi.

Commuter Milly Jackson who works in Leeds and often travels between Leeds and Manchester says the current state of public transport “isn’t great” and trains are “late every single day.”

“A lot of the time I don’t get the train that I leave for because it’s never usually there. To be honest I travelled to Manchester and back yesterday, both my train there and my train back were delayed by 50 minutes, so I’ve not got the best opinion of public transport at the minute.”

“I think we can’t rely on it anymore, a lot of the time I will take an uber if I see that they’re even a little bit delayed and obviously a lot of people use it to get to work and to get to uni and you’ve got to be on time.”

When asked how public transport could improve, Milly said “with issues being a consistent problem they really need to just identify their problems and be realistic about them. If they’re scheduling trains that they know full well they can’t run, just be realistic. People will be less mad about dropping a couple of trains than if they’re expecting trains to be there and them not being there.”

Source: Georgia Lee

From a survey recently conducted in Leeds, the majority of participants said that they worked from home or did hybrid working in an office. Similarly, only 5% of people said they mostly travel by trains, with the majority using private transport like cars and taxis. This change in usage has been identified as a result of more people working remotely but conditions such as price, punctuality and convenience seem to be what the general public believes must be improved.

David Butterworth, a route engineer for Network Rail, says that transport usage is on the rise again but “it seems to be switching to more leisure travel rather than commuting.”

He also disagrees with the general opinion of transport quality stating “I think it’s very good, but the consumer just demands more all the time. So we all want everything to be on time, all the time, and we all want it to be cheap but we run a lot of services that are actually cheaper than they used to be so I think the state of public transport is actually a lot better than it might be perceived in the press.”

“Obviously we’ve got a lot of ageing assets, as most of the railways were built in the Victorian times, so we’re squeezing more and more use out of an older and older asset. And I suppose people don’t see that, they just want a train to be on time, they want it to be cheap and that’s all to be understood but I suppose the infrastructure is creaking a little bit, under the pressure.”

Mr Butterworth said “Great British railways is the next big thing! Both Conservatives and Labour, despite having different policies, are both creating great British railways which will bring the train and infrastructure part of the business closer together. And all I can say is, all the time there is this push to be more punctual, to give the best service possible for the consumer so that it will continue to get better over the next few years.”