Lighting the touchpaper

Igniting Community Action: The Queensbury Tunnel Campaign

Transport Action Network (TAN) was founded in 2019 to help local communities facing damaging road schemes or wanting better transport solutions. What happened on the 18th January 2026, in a cold, damp and misty disused railway cutting in West Yorkshire, demonstrated perfectly why TAN is needed and how our work can produce such amazing results.

More than 200 people came together, organised by the Queensbury Tunnel Society, to send a clear message to the government and National Highways (perversely the company in charge of the tunnel): 1 – Don’t spend millions of pounds blocking up Queensbury Tunnel. 2- Use that money instead to restore the old railway tunnel and make it ready for a future greenway, to provide a safe and attractive walking and cycling route between Halifax and Keighley and Bradford. It’s a fight they would not need to have if we had sensible and joined-up decision-making in the government.

What might have been (wrongly) considered a small local story actually got the media attention it deserved, with reports in The Mirror, on the BBC website and on regional TV highlighting the importance of the campaign.

So what did TAN do to support this fantastic day? We actually did very little, except lighting the touchpaper to get things going, suggesting to the Queensbury Tunnel Society (QTS) that it would be good to hold a photo opportunity that weekend as one of us was going to be in Shipley visiting friends (and so could bring a few others along). We hoped that would ensure enough people to hold a banner (which we suggested getting and helped procure) in front of the closed off tunnel entrance, to create a good photo for publicity purposes. But that is literally all we did.

The Queensbury Tunnel Society, in particular Graeme and Norah, did everything else. They notified everyone on their mailing lists (which they have built up over time), produced fliers and posters to publicise the event, organised the speakers including one Green and one Labour councillor, the two local Labour MPs: Judith Cummins and Naz Shah, and a local cycling campaigner. They sorted a public address system and contacted the media.

Every campaigner wishes for good weather, but of course that is never guaranteed. The omens hadn’t been looking good for the 18th January. In fact, the weather forecasts were gradually getting worse the closer we got to it. On the actual day we were faced with a cold, damp and misty afternoon, hardly likely to encourage people out! Indeed, many people sent their apologies that morning. There was also a clash with another event (arranged after the 18th had been agreed for the QTS event) as the new Green Party leader, Zak Polanski, was visiting Bradford that afternoon and lots of people were going to see him, some of whom were intending to come to Queensbury.

Yet against all of these odds, what we thought might be a group of 20 – 30 people if we were lucky, turned out to be a crowd of over 200, crammed into the cutting leading up to the northern tunnel portal. Speeches were made, photos taken and interviews held and everyone went away re-energised and ready for the challenge of saving the tunnel. You can get a feel of the event from this video on YouTube.

So you might ask, why was TAN needed, given we did so little? The truth of it is that in one sense we weren’t needed, as Graeme and Norah showed by getting so many people out in support on such a miserable day. Their concern was that the local community had not really been active on the tunnel for some time, after successfully stopping it being filled in 2020/21. They were rightly concerned about taking the local community for granted and nervous that people might not come out in support. It took the nudge from us at TAN for them to take the plunge, and we are so pleased they did. The amazing success of the day is entirely down to them and it has shown that the local community is still right behind their campaign. Now they will hopefully be energised, along with local politicians, to take the fight to the government.

That’s how it should be. TAN isn’t there to take over or run campaigns, but we can provide support, in many different ways, and motivation to do things at critical moments based on our experience.

If you know of a local community faced with a challenging issue to do with walking, cycling or public transport, or facing a damaging new road, then please do share this blog post and encourage them to get in touch. We will do our best to help.

And if you think our work is valuable, then please consider making a donation so that we can continue to keep our services free.