Bradford District Local Infrastructure Baseline Study - working draft ...

Bradford Interchange
Bradford Interchange is on the Caldervale Line and is one of the two railway stations serving
the city of Bradford. The other station is, as mentioned above, Forster Square, ten minutes'
walk away.
During Monday to Saturday daytimes, services run every 15 minutes between the
Interchange and Leeds, and hourly onwards to York and Selby respectively. On evenings
and Sundays there is a half-hourly service to Leeds and usually hourly to York.
In the other direction there is a train every 15 minutes to Halifax with two trains an hour
continuing to Manchester Victoria (one limited stop, the other serving all stations to
Rochdale), one to Blackpool North and one to Wakefield Westgate via Huddersfield where
customers can change for Sheffield and Manchester Airport.
Sundays there is a half-hourly service to Halifax with an hourly service on to Manchester
Victoria and one train an hour alternates between Blackpool North and Huddersfield.
Due to the geography of Bradford, the station was built as a terminus. Trains have to reverse
out of the station, and drivers have to change to the other end of the train.
Recently it has been announced that direct rail services between Bradford Interchange and
London are set to return for the first time in more than a decade. Grand Central Railway - an
open-access company that operates services between London and Sunderland, have
proposed to run services into Bradford Interchange using the East Coast Main Line from
Kings Cross via Halifax, Brighouse, Wakefield Kirgate, Pontefract Monkhill and Doncaster
under the name the ‘West Riding Service’. The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) has granted
Great Central Railway permission to run three return services a day between the
Interchange and Kings Cross and it is scheduled to start from December 13, 2009 using
125mph streamlined trains.
Bradford Forster Square
Trains from Bradford Forster Square are operated by Northern Rail and National Express
East Coast. Most trains are run by Northern Rail; these are towards Leeds (on the Leeds-
Bradford Line), Skipton (on the Airedale Line) and Ilkley (on the Wharfedale Line). During
Monday to Saturday daytimes, trains operate every 30 minutes on each route. During the
evenings, there are trains every hour to each of Skipton and Ilkley; on Sundays these run
every two hours. At these times there are no trains to Leeds; passengers have to change at
Shipley.
National Express East Coast operates around three services per day via Leeds and the East
Coast Main Line to London Kings Cross.
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