YEP Says: The roads to nowhere costing Yorkshire £90bn

Leeds is a commuter city; its burgeoning economy dependent on the tens of thousands who make their way into the city every morning and home again every night.
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And we’d reckon a significant percentage of them spend more time they need to – or want to – to get to and from their place of work.

How many hours wasted? How much creativity spent? How much energy drained by the gruelling snail’s pace crawl, especially in the dark mornings and darker nights?

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How many commuters are honestly exhausted by the stress of it all before they’ve even started the working day?

The problems of our bus and rail services and our gridlocked roads are well documented.

And yet little changes while the approach of our politicians is pedestrian, to say the least.

With poorly planned roadworks exacerbating delays – and the powers-that-be not able to prioritise the timing of traffic lights in peak periods – it’s little wonder that tailbacks in Leeds, Hull, Sheffield and Bradford now cost the Yorkshire economy £90m a year.

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Even though there needs to be a change of mindset so construction projects are speeded up, the plain fact of the matter is this lost productivity will only get worse, unless the Government accepts that this region’s infrastructure is not fit for purpose and going to pot.

And while some say HS2 is an unnecessary folly, the failure of successive generations to invest in new roads, railways, cycleways and public transport is the major reason why Leeds – and the rest of Yorkshire – is in a jam and may remain stuck there for many years to come.