Tracy Brabin has had four and half years to sort West Yorkshire buses and she has failed - Yorkshire Post Letters

From: Christopher Webb, Grosvenor Terrace, Headingley, Leeds.

I take a less charitable view than your editorial team of the “mess on the buses” headlined in The Yorkshire Post (December 2, 2024). ‘Transport failings strangle Yorkshire’ might be a better summary.

If memory serves, Tracy Brabin was elected four and a half years ago promising to sort out transport in West Yorkshire, and was quick to take the credit for £2 fares when they arrived, yet the situation has got worse during her tenure.

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We all understand that Covid and the antics of the incorrigible Johnson and Truss governments represented headwinds for everybody, but other regional administrations have progressed faster; furthermore, elsewhere in Europe, places like Thessaloniki

Tracy Brabin, Mayor of West Yorkshire, announcing West Yorkshire bus reform earlier this year. PIC: James HardistyTracy Brabin, Mayor of West Yorkshire, announcing West Yorkshire bus reform earlier this year. PIC: James Hardisty
Tracy Brabin, Mayor of West Yorkshire, announcing West Yorkshire bus reform earlier this year. PIC: James Hardisty

have installed whole tube train networks while we talk about a tram to connect just two of the five metropolitan areas for which Mayor Brabin is responsible, and arrange a consultation to confirm the very obvious advantages of franchising.

Ms Brabin’s supporters will no doubt claim that there have been successes in other areas, but as a cyclist I’d like to ask what use an incomplete cycle route is? And what hope is there of getting commuters and shoppers out of cars if after their first perilous cycle journey in, there is nowhere safe and secure to leave a bike in the city centre?

The exception is of course the Beryl bikes, which can be locked into the recharging points, but these are as expensive as the buses are becoming.

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Shamelessly, the Beryl bikes have the Mayor’s name on them, so she can take some responsibility for them when they fail to live up to expectations.

I live in the wrong part of the region to be directly affected by the bus routes your article mentions, but they are not the only ones; one evening last week my wife was in central Leeds, and returning home at around 8.30pm, four A660 buses in succession disappeared between the bus station and the Merrion Centre; the striking thing being that none of the passengers waiting seemed surprised to be delayed half an hour in the dark and wet.

Trains remain a mess too, as the ongoing saga at White Rose Station, the endless Northern Rail delays, and the overcrowding of routes coming via Kirkstall Forge remind us; assuming of course that in the absence of safe cycle storage, an underground, a tram, or reliable buses, that a car or taxi can actually get passengers to Leeds central station, where the whole parking and drop-off mess log-jams the business district for hours every day.

Louise Haigh delivered more in five months than Tracy Brabin has achieved in ten times that long; in my view Mayor Brabin should face up to her inadequacies, follow Ms Haigh’s example, get on one of her many bikes, and start looking for another job.

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