More Passengers for Yorkshire Coast Rail Lines

Thursday, 6 April 2023 06:00

By Matthew Pells

Transport officers say there are signs of improving usage of some of the Yorkshire Coast's rail lines.

There has been an improvement in passenger numbers on some of the Yorkshire Coast train lines and hopes that further inprovements to services will lead to een more people using the lines.

North Yorkshire Council's Policy Support Officer for Rail, Graham North, says more frequent trains and staycations have both had an impact.

With the increase in staycations and leisure travel there has been increased use of the Scarborough to Bridlington and Hull line and both Filey and Hunmanby are the two stations making the fastest recovery post pandemic. Addng extra seervices to this line is however proving to be difficult, a report to North Yorkshire Councillors says:

"earlier and later services are difficult to provide for as there are a lot of staff crossings and signal boxes making it very expensive to extend the hours of operation"

Meanwhile an ambition to have eight trains a day operating on the Esk Valley rail line from Whitby is still being pursued.

As part of the York Potash Ltd Section 106 planning agreement, North Yorkshire Council are working with the railway industry to develop
improvements to the Esk Valley Line. The first phase saw the addition of an extra daily train service in December 2019 that can run with the current track infrastructure.

The next phase of work will identify options for infrastructure and operational enhancements to enable up to eight trains per day in each direction to be operated.

Track upgrade works have taken place recently to help improve reliability and Graham North, says some timetable improvements could happen later this year.