For many people in the north of England, the integrated rail review heralds less of a rail revolution than a rail betrayal.

There will be relief among those whose houses were due to be bulldozed to make way for HS2’s eastern spur, as well as those who always viewed that project as an unforgivable waste of money that would primarily benefit London.

But good luck finding many people who welcome the government’s downgrading of Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), which should have been a new east-west line connecting the north’s key cities.

Perhaps it is due to the planners never getting as far as sending compulsory purchase letters to properties obstructing the route or disturbing Peak District bats. But everyone who has had the misfortune of relying on the northern railways will agree that massive investment is needed to improve reliability and journey times.

And, crucially, there is a need to increase capacity. Even the petrolheads who would happily tarmac the Pennine Way would probably vote for NPR because it would stop the M62 becoming more of a car park than a motorway during the rush hour. Train lines are already full, with demand projected to increase by between 78% and 200% by 2050.

Slow-moving freight trains often hold up passenger services and small local services are severely constrained by sharing track with faster mainline services, which take priority three times an hour.

The government is trying to spin the idea that its latest plans are better than the ones it promised years ago, because they will allow passengers to see quicker improvements. But much of the “new” rail review simply exhumes old schemes from the graveyard of broken pledges. Given that it was the Conservative government that cancelled plans to electrify the Midlands mainline and TransPennine route in 2017, breaking 2015 manifesto commitments, it is difficult to see why the north should be grateful to see both projects back on the table.

The 2019 manifesto said: “We will build Northern Powerhouse Rail between Leeds and Manchester and then focus on Liverpool, Tees Valley, Hull, Sheffield and Newcastle.”

Some may question if ministers can claim to be “building” a new line if all they are doing is constructing a little bit of new track and then carrying out an upgrade that was promised six years ago.

And what about poor old Bradford, a city of missed opportunity? The fifth largest metropolitan authority in England, it has a growing population of 542,100. A total of 26.3% of the population are aged under 18, compared with 21.4% nationally, making it the youngest city in the UK. Yet no trains run through Bradford. They all stop and turn around again, at one of the two tiny stations.

It is a cul-de-sac of more than half a million people. Currently, the 10-mile journey from Bradford to Leeds takes 20 minutes on the fastest service. But you can travel 38 miles to London from Reading (population: 220,000) in 24 minutes.

In fairness, the government never promised Bradford an NPR stop, despite it being a key demand from Transport for the North (TfN), the strategic body set up by the Conservatives to advise the government on the region’s transport needs – and then consistently ignored.

It now says simply electrifying the line to Leeds will cut the journey time to a more sensible 12 minutes.

It is possible party politics could have come into play. Bradford’s three inner-city MPs are Labour, with two Tories in the outer seats of Shipley and Keighley, represented by the backbenchers Philip Davies and the newcomer Robbie Moore. It is worth bearing in mind an article written by the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, in the Yorkshire Post in 2017, when he was still a backbencher, which said: “London has Crossrail, the Midlands is getting HS2, and now we in the north need the government to back Northern Powerhouse Rail.”

Voters should probably know that when the government boasts of investing £360m in smart ticketing, it cancelled Transport for the North’s project to do just that in the north (but for less than half the price) earlier this year. And while it can find no money to fund a modern station in Bradford, it is willing to pay to explore restoring a passenger service to Stocksbridge, a former steel town near Sheffield, which is home to fewer than 10,000 people.

It just so happens Stocksbridge returned its first Tory MP since 1935 in the last general election.