YP Letters: More sticking plaster for Leeds transport system

Transport policy in Leeds remains mired in controversy after the Trolleybus scheme was blocked because of poor planning.

IT isn’t too much of a surprise to learn that the outcome of Councillor Richard Lewis’s latest transport talking shop is ‘more of the same’ (The Yorkshire Post, November 15). Despite having been in need of major surgery for years, Leeds is to be subjected to yet more layers of sticking plaster. Historically, the parlous state of the city’s transport lies with Coun Lewis’s 1950s forebears. They heeded the advice of what they described as “experts in modern transport”.

This ensured the city’s progression from bad to worse, with nothing more imaginative than buses. Could it be that these same “experts”, now seriously demented, still have the ear of the Civic Hall?

More distressing is the failure of seven of the city’s eight MPs to utter a single word on this. They or their predecessors, have repeatedly said nothing more than “yes Minister” as successive Tory and Labour governments have denied or short-changed Leeds. Perhaps they are feeling embarrassed or ashamed? The time for this self-indulgence is over. Time to get behind Greg Mulholland and get stuck in to Westminster, just as Manchester did.

The economic population of Leeds stretches well beyond the city boundaries. Failure to bring its infrastructure out of the 1960s affects two million or more of us.