Yorkshire and Leeds to take centre stage in First's electric bus revolution as first vehicles arrive in city

John Dowie, Director of Strategy at First Bus, said the region was ahead of the pack in the race to deliver clean public transport, with hundreds of vehicles already 'retrofitted' to produce less harmful carbon emissions.

The first electric buses are being introduced in Leeds this week, making it one of only three cities in the UK with York and Glasgow where First is currently using the vehicles.

The nine Yutong E10 electric vehicles are supplied by Pelican Coach & Bus, a family-owned engineering company based in Castleford which is the exclusive distributor in the UK for the Chinese-made buses.

And Mr Dowie described efforts to make Leeds more bus-friendly by introducing bus priority lanes as part of the Connecting Leeds scheme "extraordinary".

The project includes £60m of bus infrastructure work such as extra park and ride spaces, improvements to key bus corridors and new real-time display screens in bus shelters.

He said: "I don't think the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and Leeds City Council have had the credit they deserve. No other city in the UK is investing in bus at this scale and pace. That's why we're reciprocating."

First, the main bus operator in Leeds and one of the big five nationwide, has pledged to operate a zero-emission bus fleet in the UK by 2035. As part of that, it does not plan to purchase any new diesel buses after December 2022.

Mr Dowie said Yorkshire would be "centre stage" in delivering on this promise in the early years.

And he said that 450 of its existing buses in Yorkshire had been "retrofitted" with new technology to reduce their carbon emissions, a total representing almost half of the firm's total.

He said that if York was successful in its bid to government to become the first "all-electric bus town", meaning every single bus in the city was powered by electricity.

A bid was submitted earlier this year, and City of York Council have developed plans to help the small operators in York to convert to all electric as well if it is successful.

Currently 33 electric buses built by Yorkshire firm Optare are being introduced in York, but if the funding bid was successful a further 80 would be brought in.Mr Dowie said: "That would be phenomenal. No other city in Britain will be all electric. So that is absolutely leading."