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Slideshow: Leeds Festival traffic jams cause Cross Gates chaos
Motorists were trapped in traffic jams of up to SEVEN HOURS in Cross Gates as revellers made their way to the Leeds Festival.
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Cross Gates and neighbouring Colton came to a grinding halt yesterday as tens of thousands of music fans descended on the city for the three-day event which starts in earnest today.
Local residents and commuters were reporting logjams as early as 9am with many people turning up late for work.
As the morning went on, the traffic got progressively worse with some queuing several hours after setting off on short journeys – the worse traffic delays the festival has seen since it moved from Temple Newsam.
Many people turned around and went home after it became clear that they were making little headway.
Bus schedules also had to be scrapped as drivers struggled to get through the chaos. Lorry drivers also ran into problems when the delays caused them to overrun their legally-allowed motoring hours.
The worst affected areas were east of the city, around junction 46 of the M1 at Colton. Drivers had been trying to make their way
from there along the A6120 Leeds Outer Ring Road towards Seacroft roundabout and then onto the A64 towards Bramham Park, where the event is being staged.
According to local residents, bored festivalgoers stuck in the queues began to make their own "entertainment" - including staging makeshift games of football across dual carriageways and throwing beer cans.
Others, desperate for the toilet, urinated in local gardens and hedgerows.
Road safety campaigner and Cross Gates resident Gordon Bonner said the entire area was in meltdown.
He and his wife had planned to go supermarket shopping but traffic was so bad they could not get out of their street and had to abandon their plans.
Mr Bonner, chairman of the Crossgates Avenue Road Safety Committee, told the YEP: "It was absolutely bedlam. It is always bad during festival time but I have never seen it as bad as this.
"There were beer cans all over the side of the road, they were playing football over the cars and people were urinating in residents' gardens because they couldn't get to use a toilet.
"It was literally taking hours to get anywhere. We were trapped in our street so I spoke to a lot of the drivers who were extremely fed up to say the least.
"Something clearly went wrong with the traffic planning system somewhere along the way."
He said the drivers he had spoken to had been stuck in queues for anything between four and seven hours.
A Highways Agency spokeswoman said traffic plans were in place but that delays were "inevitable because of the sheer volume of traffic."
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Weather for Leeds
Wednesday 08 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -5 C to 2 C
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Wind direction: North
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