YEP Letters: January 9

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Slow moving traffic in LeedsSlow moving traffic in Leeds
Slow moving traffic in Leeds

Leeds failing to meet needs of motorists?

Miles of traffic jams and a bun fight to get a parking space... assistant features editor Chris Bond’s column in yesterday’s Yorkshire Evening Post about the frustration of driving to Leeds every day has prompted strong views from many YEP readers on social media. Here are a few of their comments..

Terence Hollingworth

Chris, there are too many cars. It is impossible to expect to be able to cram more and more of them into a finite space. Even if you were able to build extensive car parks, your traffic stream would just be longer and slower; only a finite number of access roads is possible.

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I understand that you consider cycling too dangerous, but if you ran or cycled your four miles, the journey would take you around 15 minutes. You could also consider living over the shop, during the working week for instance. Public transport may be expensive, but running a car which is parked 20 hours or more a day is even more expensive.

Leeds would do far better if it was realised that cars and towns is a dead duck. Towns are for people. The sooner this is understood and action taken accordingly, the better.

Richard Wilson

Several decades of road expansion and prioritising private vehicles is the result we see today, how is building more car parks going to solve that problem? Even if we can wean ourselves off polluting vehicles onto electric that’s not going to solve the issue of congestion is it? We need better public transport and more cycling provision to address that problem and be taken seriously as an international city.

Michael John Booth

1500 people where I work, earliest shifts start at 6.30, latest finish at 11, unlimited public transport for £100 a month is less than average cost of parking.

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Only a tiny minority of people live in rural areas that only have one bus an hour, trains from Bradford, Shipley, Pudsey etc are every 15 minutes ditto buses, yet thousands drive. If they used public transport which would cost them less than parking and driving then roads would be clear for people who genuinely live in areas with only one bus an hour to drive (not people who say ‘there’s only one bus an hour’ because they choose to drive and haven’t actually got a clue about how many buses there are). Plus there’s only about three trains on a morning and on an evening that are really full and that’s only for first couple of stops. If people hung on for ten minutes instead of forcing their way onto 17:26 to Skipton they could have four seats each on the 17:40.

Dave Fawcett

As a co owner of a small recovery company in Leeds when this emission zone comes into effect we will have to fold the business and join the ranks of the unemployed. The upgrades to our current vehicles are expensive unlike our prices, so when a broken down van or car is blocking a road that’s one less number you could call.

Cliff Owen

LCC are useless at improving anything that is car related, just look at the ring road improvements at Horsforth and Rodley, loads of money spent to make matters worse.

Matthew Stringer

There are a few pinch points that clog it all up and when someone does break down (probably because they’ve run out of fuel) rather than push their car out of the way they just sit there blocking the road and wait for an AA van.

Hilary Gardner

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Get more people out of cars and into public transport....Leeds, the city that shelved both tram and superhighways for buses. Yes the road system needs addressing too but this article should be about an integrated transport system not just cars. Follow the examples of Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield.

Elizabeth Wren

Maybe the council should sort out the public transport problems and some people might not need to drive to work every day?

Richard Edwards

Failing to meet the needs of anyone - I’m a bus user who is fed up of paying through the nose and waiting an hour for an ‘every 10 minutes’ service. But yes, most people I know hate driving into Leeds because of the one-way loop system where if you miss your turn (easy when it seems to constantly force you to change lanes) you’re faced with a miserable 30-min crawl back around the entire thing. And it’s not even pedestrian friendly - outside the traffic free area, the only way to cross busy roads is via crossings which seem to favour traffic flow and leave pedestrians waiting. The whole thing needs a rethink IMHO.

Richard Lodge

Chris Bond - did you just forget the A65 widening, the M1 link, the Inner Ring reconstruction, the M62 widening, the Loop construction, the planned East Leeds orbital, etc.

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Leeds is one of the most motorist driven cities in the country - despite a desperate need for public transport investment which had been ignored for years. If you want to see a city that does nothing for motorists, I suggest you try driving through Sheffield or worse, Manchester, at rush hour.

Chris Hankinson

I have COPD and had to move out of Leeds. Every time I come back for a visit my breathing gets worse and the pollution makes me ill, and you all want more cars/parking spots, good grief.

Mandi Harrison-white

I feel punished for having a job in Leeds city centre.

John Grogan

Undeground car parks around the city perimeter are the solution to parking as demonstrated onthe continent with squares and green pastures / trees above, but the roads mustbe improved also with undergroung tunnels at junctions to maintain flow.

Oliver Corbett

Cars take priority everywhere. Try being a pedestrian or taking public transport and see how much priority vehicles take, trying to cross the inner ring road or the Loop. Or even better try cycling and take your chances with barely any cycle lanes or safety. If more car users made an effort not to drive into Leeds the situation would be better for everyone.

Linda Chadwick

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Let’s get transport sorted - oh no that’s London and the South isn’t it?

Free parking only for fast

Brian Greenhough, Hemsworth.

I VISITED Pinderfields Hospital, arriving at 8.45am for a 9am appointment.

After my doctor had seen me and I got to the ticket machine at 9.20am, the cost was £2.

Parking is free for the first 20 minutes, but it is impossible to get from the car park to the hospital to see who you are seeing in 20 minutes – and then back. I would like to meet the person who came up with the 20-minute time limit to see how old they are.

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I’m 73 and even a lot younger person could not do it. The car parks are a fair way from the hospital.

Concern over lack of discipline

Bob Watson, Baildon

MANY of us have been concerned for years at the lack of respect and discipline within our society.

There is no doubt that 
this has significantly deteriorated over the last 30 years or so.

We now read that whilst 84 per cent of Conservatives believe that schools should teach children to obey authority, only a mere 31 per cent of Labour members backed such a move.

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No wonder things have always got steadily worse 
under any Labour government when so many of its members hold such depressing views.

This really is a hugely concerning statistic.

No wonder society continues to go “down the nick”.

Clegg honour is a scandal

Shaun Kavanagh, Leeds.

THE awarding of a knighthood to Nick Clegg is nothing short of scandalous.

To draw a comparison, the Brownlee brothers in Leeds have become British ambassadors thanks to their endeavours in the triathlon.

A while ago, Alistair received an MBE – but nothing at all for Jonathan. Yet Nick Clegg receives a knighthood for achieving absolutely nothing, and certainly not for being an ambassador for his country.

Standing room only in Lords

Tarquin Holman, Farsley.

NO new “Lords” in the New Year honours?

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Reason: No vacancies! It’s fully occupied by ex-Labour MPs, with “standing room only” for many who were elected to get rid of that unelected place!

Post-EU rural gains must include access

Janet Cochrane, Director, Ride Yorkshire.

MICHAEL Gove’s announcement of a post-Brexit emphasis on encouraging farmers to create more ‘public goods’ in return for subsidies is to be welcomed.

However, although enhancing biodiversity through the new policy has grabbed the headlines, there was also mention of creating better access to the countryside.

Let’s hope this will cover not just walkers but also horse riders, currently constrained to using the limited number of bridleways for off-road recreational riding (even though many tracks designated as public footpaths are sufficiently robust to take horses). Much of the existing public rights-of-way network is not fit for purpose because so many bridleways lead to busy roads and are therefore unusable, and in many places even rural roads are too fast and dangerous for safe riding.

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Riders are therefore constrained to using schooling arenas or small areas around the stable yards where their horses live. What is needed are off-road circuits of five to 15 miles where riders can enjoy pleasant hacking from safe parking places.

Riders are happy to put money into the rural economy – but the infrastructure has to exist to make this possible.