The planet is in danger. The trouble is that all too often targets and declarations can become ‘sign and forget’ – we need to act now

Leeds was one of many cities that pre-figured what Beeching was to do to the national rail network in the Sixties by trashing their own mass transit system in the fifties.

Since the Williams-Shapps rail plan was published it seems like everybody has been telling their story of rail privatisation. So I’m going to tell mine.

There are clear tensions between the urgent need to de-clutter and de-layer the railway landscape; the influence of the wider ‘save the union’ project; and the facts on the ground around existing devolution of urban and regional rail (and its clear benefits).

In some ways, getting the funding to keep public transport going during the pandemic was the easy bit. During the pandemic it was important for Government to keep the public transport show on the road (and the companies that provide it) to prevent a wider sense of societal and economic breakdown.

For years we have been arguing that passengers in our areas don’t want on-street competition and private companies determining the key public service that they rely on.

The one year 2020 Spending Review, and the multi-year 2021 Spending Review, are more significant for urban transport than the Budget was likely to be – and indeed, proved to be.

Like many others, my daily bus commute came to an abrupt end in March 2020. In the months since, my only real life experience of public transport in a COVID world was a couple of open-top bus trips up and down Great Yarmouth seafront in the brief respite of August 2020.