SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

There is a report on pages 10 and 11 of today's YEP (April 15 2013) about a £1bn plus package of transport schemes for Leeds and West Yorkshire. This is a link to the shorter online report:- http://tinyurl.com/d4wcjdzOne thing that caught my eye in the YEP print report is that a plan is being looked at to extend the trolley-bus network to such as Bradford, Wakefield and York.    

They really are pushing this trolley bus aren't they despite overwhelming and very vocal opposition?I think it's high time an investigation was set up to find out just who is behind this deal, what incentives, bonuses, bribes and back handers are going on.Something smells very very bad here.     

This trolleybus idea is bloody stupid! Why is it that Leeds always gets shafted? Maybe it's time to start the Secret Leeds political party!

Non of the above

I wonder if the famed Kirkstall Abbey tunnel would make a good trolley-bus route? Oh dear, I fear I may have given the Leeds Council a good excuse to now spend loads of money on a feasibility study on what to do with the Kirkstall Abbey tunnel should it be found!

I read this report in the YEP... Seems like a load of pie in the sky again. A rail link to LBA. That will cost more than £1.4bn in itself! And 2 new roads, where? Across the moors. The folleybus isn't going to expand, it's already a dead duck, white elephant, you name it, it's it. How about money to repair the awful state of the roads at the present time. Getting rid of bus lanes that 23 hours a day are empty! And watch out because that money will be spent with "consultants." All fancy computer generated pictures with no relevance to Leeds in Winter or when it rains or just normal lousy weather. I could rant on but I am still laughing at the time it's taking to refurbish "Dortmund Square." Rant over.

"A package of measures to improve Leeds’s city centre road network"oh god....or perhaps they just mean refurbishment of the inner ring road.

What a load of rubbish. And yes, there is an election in a couple of weeks funnily enough.The cities roads are collapsing through lack of maintenance and the inhabitants of the Civic Hall think that spending £300 million+ on 1920's technology to link empty student halls with a windblown car park miles from anywhere, whilst deliberately engineering more congestion into the road network is the solution.Much of what is contained within that press release has already been "announced" - some of it several times over, in typical political spin. Other items are simply wishful thinking.Why is there any need at all to extend the still not actually built folly-bus to York, Bradford or Wakefield at massive expense, when these places are already linked to Leeds by heavy rail? Surely any money would be better spent improving the existing rail service, rather than introducing a duplicate service?And a third line for the folly-bus? the current plan is for one line, North - South, so where how have we jumped to line 3 already?Where are the new roads to the airport and the Aire Valley Enterprise Zone going to go from? The Aire Valley already has a virtually brand new dual carriageway linking it with the city centre / M621 at one end and the M1 at the other (with a ridiculous 30mph limit on much of it...), so what would be gained from the huge expense of another duplicate road, other than to shift traffic onto the local roads? Will passenger numbers at the airport ever warrant the expense of a new road, let along a rail / tram / folly-bus link? lets not forget that the airport is now privately owned, so how much will they be putting in for these costs?No-one in East Leeds wants the ELOR (aka Outer Outer Ring Road).In fact, from all this pie in the sky, only the Park and Ride adjacent to the A1 / M1 interchange near Micklefield makes any sense - and then only if the capacity can be found on the rail network to service it.

Dont get me started!!

Well with that sort of money, that's no doubt not real money but PPI style they could throw up a few nice projects...Otley gets a railway, and at a pinch so could Ripon, but unlikely.The 72 could get trollied, but as they mention York, you mean that Yorkshire Coastliner could be running them along the A64?....it's just a plan. They'll spend millions on planning and then after the next election it all get cancelled again. The only way we could do this is to rename the A66 the M25 and then maybe they'd consider it.