YP Comment: Trolleybus, Cycle Superhighway...what next for gridlocked Leeds?

FIRST the Leeds trolleybus plan hit the buffers because the £250m scheme was botched from the outset.
Trolleybus has exposed major flaws in the transport strategy for Leeds.Trolleybus has exposed major flaws in the transport strategy for Leeds.
Trolleybus has exposed major flaws in the transport strategy for Leeds.

Now consultants have delivered a scathing verdict on City Connect, the £30m “cycle superhighway” from east Leeds to Bradford. Given how poor planning, and weak scrutiny, has beset both schemes, these questions now need reconciling: What is the area’s transport strategy and who is responsible for its delivery?

Flawed decision-making, and mismanagement, appears to be fuelling a transport crisis which has left Leeds gridlocked and derided as one of Europe’s most polluted and congested cities – “get it right in the first place” is the only mantra that matters. Like the rest of the county, Leeds is home to global investors who have contributed much to the area’s resurgence.Their pride in their city remains palpable, but they – and others – are hamstrung by a pre-historic transport infrastructure and the serial failure of council leaders to implement a travel blueprint so Leeds can become a European superpower capable of attracting the next generation of global business talent.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

However it does not inspire confidence that many of the same executives and councillors responsible for the trolleybus fiasco, which saw £72m of taxpayers’ money go to waste, are the same people who have presided over City Connect’s troubled journey alongside counterparts from other bodies.

Leeds Council chief executive Tom Riordan, and senior councillors like James Lewis and Keith Wakefield may not like this, but perhaps they need to ask themselves whether they are the best qualified people to drive transport policy forward – or if they need to headhunt the country’s top civil engineers in order to get their city, and region, moving again.

The response from Leeds Civic Hall’s upper echelons to this point, and also the issue of accountability, is now awaited with interest by all those held up on a daily basis by a dysfunctional transport policy which lacks direction and credibility.