No end in sight to region’s congestion

AS weary regional businesses and residents know all too well, Yorkshire has suffered from decades of under-funding for transport schemes.

Perhaps the most high-profile saga of recent times has been Leeds’s arduous attempts to install a modern transport system to cut city centre congestion.

After many years of local planning, the previous Labour Government finally threw out the city’s Supertram project in 2004, insisting the scheme would not deliver sufficient financial benefits to the wider economy.

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City leaders returned to Whitehall to request a scaled-down trolleybus scheme instead – but a decision has still not been made.

This week, despite yet another revision of the proposals, the Department for Transport (DfT) announced it will need yet more time to consider whether to give the project the green light.

In the meantime, Leeds remains one of the largest cities in western Europe without a modern transport network.

The picture has been replicated right across the region.

Hull is still waiting for an essential upgrade to the A63 Castle Street which will drive investment throughout the city – but it has been told there will be no movement until 2015 at the very earliest.

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An ambitious plan to upgrade the A64 in North Yorkshire has been repeatedly knocked back.

Wakefield’s £8m bid to double capacity at Westgate railway station was turned down flat by the DfT.

Even where schemes have got the go-ahead, the end result has often been dramatically scaled back from what was originally envisaged.

York Council was forced to cut the extent of its park-and-ride scheme earlier this year to win DfT approval, reducing the number of sites from three to two.

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North Yorkshire County Council was told it could finally proceed with the long-awaited Bedale bypass – but only if it stumps up a further £8m itself.

Some success has come – most recently approval for the electrification of the Transpennine rail link, and new link roads in South Yorkshire.

But these pale into insignificance compared to the spending in London and the South East.