Are new tram network plans on right track? The chief executive of Leeds City Council insisted that its latest infrastructure investment plans would cover the whole city region and be delivered in the 2020s. Speaking at the Leeds launch of the Deloitte Regional Crane Survey 2016 , Tom Riordan said the council’s latest plan, which includes a new tram network, would not just be confined to Leeds. Here are our readers’ views on Facebook of the proposals. Nigel Pogson Why don’t they send Leeds residents a survey and ask us how, why and where we travel and what kind of transport system we would like to use? There’s no point in building mass transport systems if we won’t use them. Would we really leave the cars elsewhere to get on a tram, train or bus for that matter? Shaun Smith I would ban traffic from the city centre altogether. Have a park and ride in North/East/South/West of Leeds city centre with a £2 return ticket! It doesn’t take much to gridlock Leeds though. Robin Phelan How many times have we been here? Leeds City Council have dangled the carrot for 30 years. I agree we should ban traffic and single drivers from a mile radius of the town hall. I use public transport and it’s still impacted by all the cars. The city keeps building more shops without enhancing the infrastructure, and it should be the other way round. Clueless. Steve Speight I will believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, commuters continue to suffer. I’ve been to many cities in Europe of similar size that have far superior transport systems than Leeds. It needed sorting out 20, 30 or even 40 years ago. I don’t hold out any hope for it happening any time soon. Lee Brady For all you moaning about traffic problems in Leeds, try getting through Manchester! I live in Garforth and it’s quicker to get to Leeds today than it was in 1995. Jo Hodgkinson Bring on the trams/trolley bus/monorail! Whichever solves the gridlock. I recently went to Manchester and the tram system was great for getting around. We should ban cars from the city centre. It’s the only way. Richard Bruce I remember buying a house in 1995 where the solicitor’s search highlighted it was going to be next to the tramline! 22 years on, here we are again. Leeds City Councillors should go on a work experience course with their Manchester counterparts. Joe Hirst I agree with the comment that real cities need an underground, but given they wouldn’t give us money for a tram, that isn’t gonna happen. The NGT was a disaster waiting to happen though. Whoever drew the map clearly had a ruler and pen, drew a straight line from Stourton to Holt Park and went “that’ll do”. Before we try to get anything like this considered we should actually put some thought into it. Although, I realise thinking is not LCC’s strong point. Philip Hallas i may be way off the mark here but why not run the tramlines where the bus lanes are and make it a bus and tram lane? A bit like what Edinburgh have on Princess Street. Or, even better, stop wasting money on a project that will never happen and pump the money into something worthwhile. Stephen Brook Here we go again. Right, so we lay tracks and lines, exactly where buses go. Stop punishing people in a city who have to work in the city, by making transport costs so high in the first place. Unless you create brand new roads for the trams, not using existing roads, or narrowing existing road for the trams then wasting half a billion pounds is a scandal. Kirkstall Road partly gets gridlocked now because of the wonderful bus lane. I don’t think Leeds City Council has enough roadworks, or close the same roads off every spring and summer for enough events either. I think LCC is trying to get the award for the most incompetent local council in the country and I’m surprised it’s not achieved it. Especially with that wonderful building that wasn’t wind tunnel tested enough in the planning stages. Is Leeds the only council in the country that has to keep shutting road off by a building when the wind threatens to blow? David Watson LCC want to cause traffic chaos. They want as much justification as possible for their solution. Bus and cycle lanes on every major route reduce capacity and flow. Every junction they have altered in the last decade has got worse after their tinkering. They’ve allowed increases in housing and massive retail development, yet added hardly any parking provision. Most people on buses would rather be in a car. Most people in cars don’t want to be on a bus. But the council are adamant that they want everyone on those 12-tonne behemoths that average 1-2mpg, pumping out diesel fumes. Any scheme could work if it were implemented to complement the existing road network, but LCC want it as an alternative, and will stop at nothing to deter car use, making it harder, more expensive, more frustrating and more wasteful deliberately, regardless of public opinion, cost, or the environmental impact. They need to remember who they serve. William Kubat In Minnesota they built a rail from inner city Minneapolis to the Mall of America. Crime sky-rocketed.Next they built a rail again from inner city Minneapolis to St Cloud (A city north-west). You guessed it, crime went up. Make sure where they build these things and why. Yaki Kadafi The council ate up the budget on meetings and fake contractor tenders last time they said that trams were a good idea. Leeds’ road networks are not large and wide enough to accommodate trams compared to other even smaller cities. Everything in Leeds is built too close together.Streets and roads are far too narrow. Martin Walker Leeds needs a better road infrastructure or a new mass transit system. Monorail? Underground? The gridlock from last night proved its need once again. Antoine Finn Leeds used to have them. Why they went, I don’t know. Probably because people started using cars more. Now there’s too many cars so back to square one. I can just remember going up to Roundhay Park on one and what is now a small car park just off the main road used to be the terminus. Reinventing the wheel! Roberto Dickinson We should look at European cities like Prague for a transport system that runs like clockwork.There’s never a bus that turns up late. Alastair Barrie It has failed in every city except one. They use the same roads as cars and if anyone else drives around Sheffield they know about the queues they sit in with them. Michael Page Thirty years of being a laughing stock. We should have started in the 1980s.
