No trains to Hartlepool?

Green Party news from the Hartlepool by-election:

26 September 2004

No trains to Hartlepool?

Iris Ryder, Green Party candidate for the Hartlepool parliamentary by-elections today criticised national and regional rail services that are keeping Hartlepool a peripheral backwater.

She said:

"People complain that Hartlepool is a hard-to-reach backwater, but in the Durham Coast Line, we have the second most important north-south rail link in the region passing through the town. A little thought and minimal investment in rail services could give Hartlepool the transport access it deserves without generating more road traffic."

She continued: "Regional planners identify the A19-Durham Coast Line as a key strategic transport corridor linking Tyne & Wear with Teesside to the point where they are prepared to invest a fortune in a new Tyne Tunnel - yet they are apparently happy to see train services on the route reduced to less than one an hour. We deserve a 30min local stopping service, or better, between Sunderland and Stockton"

She added: "And we deserve long distance services too. At the moment, we have one - just one - Transpennine Express service running from Sunderland giving Hartlepool a direct service to Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool - and that is under threat. There is absolutely no reason why we should not have a two-hourly Transpennine Express serving Sunderland, Hartlepool and Stockton."

"Pressure is already on to reduce the number of Virgin Cross Country services running from Newcastle through Darlington due to a reported lack of capacity on that section of the East Coast Main Line. It would involve minimal cost to start some of these from Hartlepool instead - giving the town direct rail services to Birmingham and Bristol."

"It is blinkered Government transport policy that refuses to consider rail service provision from a local or regional perspective that is making Hartlepool 'peripheral'. And it doesn't help to describe roads schemes as an 'investment' while rail funding is always a 'subsidy'"

She concluded: "I call on all local and regional politicians to challenge Government on why they are doing so little for regional rail services for Hartlepool and for the North East."

Hartlepool Greens