Week in Westminster

It’s Thursday evening and, as usual I’m writing this article on my way back to the constituency. Most weeks I manage to catch the 19.03 from King’s Cross which, with a change at Doncaster, will get me in by ten. Occasionally things don’t go according to plan but on the whole I have few complaints about my weekly commute as even the first or last leg – the Tube between Westminster and King’s Cross despite been hot and crowded is part of an amazing network of people coming together to provide an intricate service that moves hundreds of thousands of people around every day.

I’ve always been fascinated by transport, most especially railways. I guess it all started in my pre-school years when we lived in Fuller Street, only about a hundred yards from where the trains passed under the old footbridge on their way into and out of Cleethorpes station. In those days steam predominated and rail enthusiasts among readers will recognise such classes as K3s, B1s and K2s.

On my journeys to London, as we pass through Retford, I still think back to my schoolboy trainspotting visits. Retford, of course, is on the East Coast main line and trains between London , the North & Scotland use to roar through Retford hauled by A2s, A3s & the streamlined A4s – ‘streaks’ as they were nicknamed.

Despite looking back through rose-coloured spectacles at those days I must acknowledge that the services today are vastly superior. In part this is because of track improvements, but today’s railways provide far more services than was the case, certainly in the 1960s. The oldest timetable I have is from 1963 and although Grimsby & Cleethorpes had a two through trains each day it has to be admitted that the hourly service we now enjoy is, overall better, but O how we could do with a through train. Not just for people like me but because it would be yet another plus point as we try to attract investment and the jobs come with it.

Alliance Railways are currently negotiating with the various authorities with a view providing four trains in each direction daily. It won’t happen until 2014 because the plans include new units that can run on electricity whilst on the main line but switch to diesel for the Doncaster to Cleethorpes section.

I mentioned earlier what a complex operation running a railway is; one glitch in the system can very quickly cascade down. The system must have sufficient slack in it to provide for the signalman who rings in ill or the driver who arrives late. When you get off the train in London even before you have time to walk to the end of the platform the cleaners are on board, the rubbish is being collected, new catering supplies are being loaded and pipes connected to empty the toilets, all aimed at turning the unit round as quickly as possible and getting it back into action.

It’s also been ‘transport day’ at Westminster the day having started with Transport Question Time. It tends to be only Prime Minister’s Question Time that ever hits the headlines but each day at least one set of Departmental ministers face the Commons. Today I and two of my colleagues from the area raised issues connected with the Humber Bridge.

Last week’s announcement that the Inquiry Inspector had recommended that the Board’s application for an increased toll be approved was, I’m afraid, inevitable given the anachronistic legislative framework in which they operate. All our hopes are now centred on the Treasury review that will report later this year. The Board should have waited until the outcome of the Review rather than implement the increase from October. All this is just another reason why irrespective of Review’s finding the Bridge Board must be reconstituted so that the councillors who sit as the peoples’ representatives can truly represent their constituents rather than the interest of the Board.