to ask people in Northern Leave constituencies what changes you would like to see in your area?

[chomalungma]

I really hope there is going to be change in these areas. I live near some of them and I can see some of the issues. But I don't live in them.

What would you like to see done in your area? What advice would you give to the Conservatives when they come and ask for what needs to be done locally?

Transport links?
Encouraging businesses locally
Better local housing?
Improved schools

What would you like to see change in your local area?

@Biancadelrioisback we've got Ian Levy as our new MP. To be fair to him, he has said one if his goals to improve transport for the region but whether that translates into action remains to be seen.

Dream on. They will do nothing for any of these areas. I wonder when the penny will drop with the duped electorate.

@jimmyhill Our previous MP didn't do much either. Played on the jolly old boy, one of the local lads made good, ex-miner trope when it suited him and ignored the region the rest of the time. I saw more of the various candidates vying to replace him as our MP in the last five weeks than I did of him in the entirety of the last twenty years. I didn't vote for him but others did and I can understand why.

I'm not happy with the election result but it can't be changed so we should work with what we've got, we'll achieve far more working together than working against. And yeah, they might turn out to be shit, they probably will and they probably will ignore the region just like our Labour MP. Westminster politics aside, there are good and bad MPs on both sides. Some do lots for their local area, some do nothing at all but considering our new MP has been in the job less than a week I'm willing to give him a chance and to see what happens even if he is a Conservative. He's local to the area at least and has lived and worked here for over 30 years which is more than cn be said for some.

I didn't vote for him but others did and I can understand why.

I mean I didn't vote for our new Conservative MP but others did

Cheaper and more integrated public transport. To go by bus from our town-edge village into the town centre, a bus journey of less than ten minutes, costs a fiver, and drops you ten minutes from the train station at times which don't line up with the commuter services into the local city.

Integrated travel would be a godsend in some places. Back when I lived at home I used to get the first bus out of our fairly rural village (5.34am so not to be sniffed at) and it would be jam packed by the time it got into town and nearly everyone would get off and run, and I mean run, to the train station a good 3-4 mins away to catch the next train into Leeds. It's a sight to behold 50odd people in business attire running through town. I'd say at least twice a week the bus would be late (how the first bus of the morning is late so regularly I'll never know) so youd then be sat waiting 30 minutes for the train. Right pain In the arse. Many an email was sent to the bus company to just put the bus on 10 minutes earlier but no they wouldn't have any of it. The service was stopped altogether last year.

If public transport was available all over the country for £1 a day unlimited
then the country would be in much better shape

and scarily it would be almost cost neutral

London transport is so much more superior than the rest of the U.K.

And it’s nationalised!

But people don’t want nationalised services

If public transport was available all over the country for £1 a day unlimited

When you travel abroad, it's always interesting to see how other countries do such stuff - and the cost of local transport.

I know that the evening bus services to towns around here aren't great - which is why people have to commute in by car - which has its own problems.

Verily
London buses are run by Arriva and First and Stagecoach
BUT
their routes and fares are managed by TFL
its a perfectly workable system that could be rolled out to the whole country
if the government gave a stuff about the regions

London buses are run by Arriva and First and Stagecoach BUT their routes and fares are managed by TFL

A bit like the franchised train operating companies then, who have little say in their routes, little say in their fares and little say in the timetable nor type of trains they run. It's mostly controlled by the govt quango, National Rail and the Dept of Transport. It's psuedo/pretend privatisation, otherwise they'd be free to chose their own routes, stops and fares, which they're not.

Same with local bus services. Yes, they're supposed to be privatised, but need local council approval to change routes or start new routes (i.e. need approval to place new bus stops). In our town, there was a new Asda supermarket which opened. It took 20 YEARS for it to get a bus service - the bus company wanted to run the route, the locals wanted a bus service, but the council just prevaricated and objected to plans to put bus stops on the new route (obviously the back handed to the council officials weren't high enough).

Errr! No it wouldn’t. You need investment in the infrastructure and you cannot get that out of giveaway fares. Overcrowded trains won’t mean more passengers. They simply won’t fit into the trains. There is always a cost to improvements but in the long run they do pay off and benefit business and individuals.

I actually live near the HS2 route but I don’t have a station I can get to, so I could not use it. It will drag people down to London but they won’t necessarily be rich because the first station on the line is Birmingham. The people most likely to use it will be doing so for business, paid by business, due to ticket expense.

I think everyone should make a very loud noise to their new Conservative and Labour MPs that HS2 money could be better spent improving local networks. Even though people commute into London it’s fair to say some of those journeys are dire. However the areas most in need of rail investment should get it first and clearly that’s the North. However it should be to link up the Northern cities and not link a few of them to London. The existing rail links to London are good enough. Platforms could be extended and longer trains provided.

Investment in schools is necessary. Tony Blair invested in the buildings but the quality of leadership is dire in some areas. That needs to change.

There are many rural areas without decent transport all over the country and there needs to be regional development. Houses need to be built but we are short of land. People don’t want fields built on and don’t want houses in their locations so that has to be addressed. Expensive land means small plots! It’s inevitable. If we want 1/4 million houses quickly, where are they going?

I live in a village with no buses, no school, no street lights, no shop and no pub! It’s in the south east. It even has potholes!

The local councils allowed out of town shopping. It wasn’t necessarily central government. Local councils need to think more about what a town centre could be. It’s no longer just about shopping.

I think in 5 years time there will be an almighty calamity if projects have not started in the new Conservative constituencies but the big elephant in the room will be Brexit and how this affects the economy. The bigger tax payers need to keep earning and keep paying those taxes in the uk. Not clearing off elsewhere! We simply cannot afford that or many big ideas go with their money. So stop London bashing and understand the whole country needs London and needs wealth to ensure projects are funded.

A bit like the franchised train operating companies then, who have little say in their routes, little say in their fares and little say in the timetable nor type of trains they run.
Piffle
only certain fares are regulated

Same with local bus services. Yes, they're supposed to be privatised, but need local council approval to change routes or start new routes
More piffle
some routes have one bus (from 7 companies) every two minutes
all charging different fares non exhangeable
and routes are started all the time using existing stops

what is need is coordinated public transport
see the Newcastle case
or the case where it was deemed uncompetitive to taxis for the Southampton bus to meet the ferry from the Isle of Wight

Public TRansport is not a business
it is infrastructure

hence why Vienna charges E1 a day for unlimited public transport
but E40 a day to park in the city centre
and has clean air and no congestion

the UK is so so so far behind

Well i got stranded in a northern city last night because staff shortages caused several trains to be cancelled. One still running involved a change on a remote platform with three minutes gap. Yeah that’s likely! Im used to shit transport links in my small northern town. I expected more reliability from a train leaving a major city. My friend had the same issue with cancelled trains to and from a different major northern town on Friday. It’s ridiculous that anyone, but especially a woman travelling on her own, cannot rely on the train to run. A friend who lives in essex came to visit me a few years ago and said he would just get a taxi from the train station. Yeah, mate, that’s not always possible either.

If my car broke down, it would take me Hours to get to work, a 30 min drive, due to lack of a bus service.

Better transport links from Leigh to Wigan it's a ridiculously long bus ride up to an hour and some longer that go round the houses, only 8 miles. It takes 40 mins in a car.

Investment in town centre, not extending bars cafes and restaurants but shops.

Never in a million years but support against gov manifesto ito ethnic cleansing and racism.
Lobby for Investment in traveller sites and the traveller welcome hear campaign.

Reduce homelessness, which will depend on the above.

I think everyone should make a very loud noise to their new Conservative and Labour MPs that HS2 money could be better spent improving local networks

Yes, including those in southern/metropolitan Libdem voting areas, too. HS2 really isn't needed. Improvement of existing infrastructure is. Whoever is chosen as Transport Secretary in February needs to spend a LOT of time in Denmark and the Netherlands (not just cycling, transport generally).

Transport is utterly utterly key
allowing people to live and work and learn and relax while moving around
will improve mobility, cohesion, productivity, everything

locally coordinated local transport
nationally controlled national transport
no 'offshoring' of "profits"
and the UK will pull through
AND reduce carbon emissions from cars

Im not up North Im in North Essex Our bus has run once every hour since 2011 Before that it was every half hour.

No Sunday service at all in all the 25 years ive lived on this particular estate

People who work in retail/care etc and who have to go in on Boxing Day have to get a cab and in some cases their entire wage will be paying for the taxi there and back again. Ludicrous.

Transport transport transport. Scrap HS2. I agree with this:

'No, the North does not need MASSIVE projects
it needs lots of local scale improvements and service upgrades
managed on a bottom up basis by the cities and towns involved'

I always feel that the really frustrating thing about the inadequacy of services here is that compared to the amount you have to spend to see noticeable improvements in London, you could achieve an awful lot for a fraction of the cost.

We were going to get extra services on the Transpennine Express. They had been promising it for years and after this summer when we had cancellation after cancellation (meaning sardine conditions when after a 90 minute wait a train finally arrived) I was practically counting the days until today, in fact, when they were supposed to start. When they announced we weren't getting them after all I could have wept.

In general the area also needs investment in jobs, but to some extent improved transport will help with this.

@hohohoik I assume you're in the NE. Arriva family day tickets £14, Go North East £12 and network one family explorer £20.60 which covers bus and metro. networkonetickets.co.uk/tickets/explorer/ or a cheaper family rover within the nexus area networkonetickets.co.uk/tickets/day-rover/ so there are cheaper or more versatile options but I agree that prices are prohibitive for many. Down her in Co Durham there are no multi operator tickets for more than a day at a time, which is an inconvenience for people living and working in areas with different main operators. I think the bus services we have are pretty good but the price is the th8ng that puts people off using them enough to make it viable to make it better. We have also lost a lot of supported services. A PP mentioned hartlepool which has areas which are very poorly served. My parents in East Yorkshire lost their thrice daily bus to Hull completely because the (tory) council wouldn't pay enough to make it viable for the operator.

To put the train line back. Will cost a fortune but will reduce car traffic & pollution massively. I’d definitely use it instead of the car.

Retain and invest in our local hospital. We’re out in the sticks and get cut off every year for a day or two. The nearest A&E is miles away and is packed out on a Tuesday afternoon (as I recently found out). Goodness knows how they cope at the weekend.

We don't have GoNorth East near us, only Arriva and we're outside the boundaries of Nexus/Network One. I know about the family tickets but unless you specifically ask the driver, they don't tell you they exist and will just charge for however many people you say are in your group. It's far cheaper for us to go to the city when DH is home as we can go in the car then but when he's away or at work I'm usually reliant on the buses. I learned the hard way too that if you leave the bus with your pushchair to make way for someone in a wheelchair, Arriva don't give you a forwarding ticket! I'd bought a one way ticket as we were going to be coming home by car, got off to make way as the little one was sleeping so I didn't want to fold up, and the driver said they don't do forwarding tickets, was my own fault for getting off, then shut the doors and drove away so I had to pay again when the next bus came along thirty minutes later.

Transport is such a bug bear for so many people and it connects in to other issues like employment, education, opportunities, caring commitments, community ties, etc. Decent, affordable public transport wouldn't fix all of the problems with the region but it would help improve matters and give people the means to get where they need to be which would help to start solving the other issues.

The north absolutely needs HS2. The problem is that the project has been completely missold as being about speed. It's about capacity.

Passenger numbers are going up every year and have already surpassed the predictions used to justify building HS2 in the first place. You can't just run more trains because the tracks are already full. The only way to cope with growing passenger numbers is to build more track - either alongside existing infrastructure or stand alone. All the studies showed that the best thing was to build as a stand alone (linking with mainline stations where possible).

The real benefit of HS2 is that by removing the fast moving trains from the existing network it means you can make the local services more regular, more reliable and faster than they are currently. That is why services not on the HS2 line will improve.

And most don't even know the HS2 trains will run all the way to Scotland!

Once it's built people will wonder how we ever managed without it.

And of course, HS2 will create loads of much needed jobs.

AlecTrevelyan006

According to the hs2 website The work to extend hs2 beyond crewe isnt scheduled to start until 2033. 13 fucking years, and that's if it actually goes as planned and starts on time. That's 20 years after it was initially announced. I know these things take time but fuck me think of all the shit that could have been achieved in that time and with that money.

@HoHoHoik ah you're the next constituency over from me. I'm Wansbeck so we are still (just) Labour but there was only 800 votes in it.

Transport is just a joke and it'll be worse once the CAZ comes into play. Bus prices will go up as older buses will need to pay an extra £50 per day for coming into the city, many are trying to retrofit parts to make them compliant. It has to get worse before it gets better but that doesn't help working parents who are fighting a battle against the clock to get to school/nursery on time. And it's not like if I miss my one bus I can just wait for the next one, I'd have to wait an hour or pay £50 in a taxi. Doesn't help that the bus often is a single decker during peak times and is often early or late

I live in an ex steel/mining town which is now blue after 80 odd years I believe. You can buy a decent two bed house for 60k.

I love living here but it's only when I visit other areas of the country (the South mainly) that I realise how underfunded we are. I'm 40 and our local park has only been slightly upgraded since I was a kid. But we went to Greenwich in the summer and the parks there were amazing and there was a sign saying further improvements are planned! The museums were obviously amazing too.

We walked past lovely new schools and it just felt like money was being spent everywhere.

My kids schools are good but not amazing so I'd love more money put into that and more money for SEN provision as I see kids suffering because of the lack of support which is then disruptive to the whole class.

My eldest almost takes it for granted that he will have to move away to get a decent job too. Why can't we have more investment to create jobs here?
My cousin has to travel to London to work as she would have to accept a huge salary cut to take the same job here.

I just feel like we are forgotten by everyone.

I just feel like we are forgotten by everyone.

Except when it comes to paying taxes or claiming benefits. People are pretty vocal about that no matter where you live or the obstacles (that you aren't allowed to mention because you're making excuses) that living where you do presents to being able to do a decent job that earns you enough to live on.