Why transport chiefs must unlock this traffic gridlock now in Leeds - the YEP says

Your Yorkshire Evening Post is simply exasperated of reporting on the chaotic backlog of queues that our city’s drivers are languishing in week in, week out.

Earlier this week we reported on the frustrating delays drivers and bus passengers faced due to a traffic light failure in the city centre.The main arterial routes in and out of Leeds were quite frankly clogged.

Last week the city centre’s roads were gridlocked due to a number of incidents and the previous week the YEP was handed shocking footage of an ambulance stuck in standstill traffic in the city centre.Enough is enough - especially when people’s lives are on the line.

The Yorkshire Evening Post is today calling on the city’s transport leaders to get around the table and tell this title - and our readers - how this long-term issue can be addressed.

The much-heralded £270m Connecting Leeds scheme promises to transform travel for people who live, work and visit in the city.

We need big investment but transport chiefs also want travellers to look at the alternatives to jumping in their cars for a shorter journey. Yet as Leeds continues to remain the biggest city in Western Europe without a mass transit system, what are the alternatives?

Delayed trains and buses that are also marooned in the snarling queues of traffic.

Yet this car-centric approach continues to be a lasting legacy - and it is you, our readers, who are paying the price when it comes to languishing in queues as you try to get from one side of the city to another.

One commuter, Richard Wilkinson, summed it up perfectly. It takes the Space Station just over 90 minutes to orbit the earth. Yet for some drivers that is just how long it takes to get from one side of Leeds to another.

Surely it wouldn’t take a genius to deliver a not-so out of this world solution to finally put an end to the city’s travel woes?