The Transpennine Route Upgrade is a large-scale project being undertaken by Network Rail to enhance train travel between Manchester and York with benefits such as increase in speeds to cut down travel times and greener travel as the entire route is being electrified to make it sustainable.
The Projected costs are a whopping £11.5 billion which is a surprising amount due to how much upgrades this has to cover over the 70 mile route including upgrades to signalling, track replacement and overhead wires being put in place.
The Projected time for completion is 2041 which is around 17 years from now which is a huge surprise to us as we had no clue it would actually take this long to complete.
The recent works taking place on the Huddersfield to Leeds Railway line has lengthened the time to travel from what normally takes 30 minutes now takes over an hour which caused unwanted delays to people’s journeys as many services between Huddersfield Leeds have had to be sent via Wakefield Kirkgate which ended up making the journeys much longer than passengers were expecting.
The Hope is that these upgrades are for the best but passengers do not think they same as this could lead them to prefer to travel by car as they would not be able to rely on trains being able to get them to the places they want to be in a quick time which could led to passengers missing Events and maybe even missing funerals.
These delays cause more harm than good as people may decide that relying on trains to get them to destinations on time is pointless so will probably be drawn towards using others methods of transport.One passenger has told us how it has affected her and has said that “In order to still attend University I am having to take buses which add an hour extra on to my commute time” which shows that this greatly effects students who have to travel to be able to attend University lectures and unfortunately have to get up much earlier so they are able to attend this on time as it takes them much longer to travel due to this.
The impact on passengers is much larger than network rail may realise as these upgrades can lead to severe delays which ends up with services being cancelled as they may not be able to make it to certain stations such as Dewsbury or Morley who have a much reduced timetable..We approached The Transpennine Route Upgrade Media team for comment but received no comment.