YP Letters: Park and ride sites are keeping congestion down in Leeds

IN his article about driving into the city centre and parking for his daily commute, your correspondent Chris Bond asks what impact further park and ride sites might have on transport in Leeds (The Yorkshire Post, January 8).

Based upon the performance of the Elland Road and Temple Green park and ride sites, developed by West Yorkshire Combined Authority, Leeds City Council and bus operator First, the answer is ‘a significant one.’

The 1,000-space Temple Green and 800-space Elland Road sites, along with the smaller King Lane facility to the north of the city centre are now removing over 6,000 car journeys from Leeds city centre’s roads each week.This is helping to relieve the cost of congestion and the pollution it causes as well as reducing the demand on city centre parking for those people who do need to drive right into the centre.

And for Elland Road and Temple Green’s users, parking out of town and completing their journey on modern, low-emission buses is costing them from just £2.70 per day.

Such has been the popularity of park and ride that, along with Leeds City Council, we are proposing more sites, including a 1,000-space facility at Stourton.

From: Elisabeth Baker, Leeds.

CHRIS Bond is quite correct about the problems of travelling into Leeds. He points out that there are two park and ride schemes south of the river but he says that there are none for the commuters who live north of the city centre.

There is, in fact, one on King Lane, north of the A6120 Ring Road, although I concede that there are none for those coming from due north and none for those coming from the north east.

From: Tony Young, Cross Bank, Skipton.

IN his excellent piece on the strategic transport plan for the North (The Yorkshire Post, January 6), Rob Parsons refers to John Cridland quoting the example of the Randstad in Holland, which has such good transport links.

It is indeed a very good example of connectivity between the four largest cities in the Netherlands but they started developing their urban and inter-city rail links 50 years ago.

West Yorkshire only has 
buses. It will take several generations to catch up; there is no provision for urban rail in the strategy.