Road, Rail & Access Issues

[scousefowler]

got stuck in that jam at 2000 yesterday it stretched back past coney park. turned round and went via carlton avoid if you can!

 

[Aviador]

From the airport I have been using Scotland Land followed by a right turn onto Brownberrie Lane leading to Rawdon then onto Yeadon via Bayton Lane etc etc. It takes about seven minutes, I don't know if it's been any quicker or not because I haven't taken a chance with the main road way yet.

Does anyone know what time the work finishes during the night? Does anyone know if it effects people going to the airport during the early part of the morning around 4-5am?

 

[backtrack]

I was there this morning, starting work at 5am, and there was no sign of any works at that time of the morning.

 

[backtrack]

Looks like the rounabaout outside the airport is pretty much done now! I have to admit, its a lot better now and very smooth, although may be slippery in wet conditions, time will tell. Some council gardeneres were planting some flowers etc today at around midday and mowing the lawns.

I wonder whats next on their list of jobs...

 

[Aviador]

They haven't made a very good job of the road towards Murgatroyds. In a letter we received it made it seem like they were going to resurface the whole road between the airport and the traffic lights.

Next on their list of jobs? Perhaps I'm being cynical now but their next job is probably to put those silly stone chippings down that leaves scratches and tar all over your car.

 

[Aviador]

[textarea]Leeds-Bradford Airport: Locals 'raw deal from sale cash'

Leeds City Council has been accused in Parliament over its use of the £60m from the sale of Leeds-Bradford International Airport.

Labour MP Paul Truswell said locals had been "badly let down" by the failure to spend the cash on measures which would ease the impact of the airport on its surrounding communities.

Existing transport links were "extremely poor" and expansion would have "enormous implications" on air quality, road safety and efforts to combat climate change, he told MPs in a debate in Westminster Hall.

LBIA was sold for £145m in May 2007 to private equity group Bridgepoint Capital. Leeds and Bradford councils had each owned 40 per cent of the airport with the rest split equally between Wakefield, Kirklees and Calderdale.

Mr Truswell, the MP for Pudsey, told MPs: "My constituents have been badly let down by the council's having earmarked little or none of its £60m share of the proceeds from the privatisation for any measures to mitigate the impact of the airport's operation."

Bridgepoint has a £70m plan to expand the terminal and handle 5.1 million passengers a year by 2016. Mr Truswell warned the impact on local communities would be "substantial", unless there was major investment in public transport to the airport, allowing passengers to leave cars at home.

He warned that surrounding roads "cannot absorb present traffic levels, let alone the projected ones".

Mr Truswell used his half-hour debate to seek more investment in West Yorkshire transport, particularly rail links to Leeds.

He said that in the morning rush 90 per cent of trains arriving into Leeds have standing passengers, with some trains carrying up to 200 per cent of seated capacity.

He called for more carriages to be made available for Northern Rail, having to make do with "substantially fewer" carriages than the 182 extra promised by Government two years ago.

He said he hoped a decision would be made by the end of this year on proposals for a 14-mile trolleybus network in Leeds.

Source[/textarea]

 

[Aviador]

Whilst largely speaking I agree with what Mr Truswell MP has said, he himself has been in a position to lobby the government over the last eight years at least. Where's he been all this time?

 

[Bigman]

In his hidey hole with all the other MP's who have just appeared out of nowhere (election next year by any chance??).

I agree with him that the airport money would have been better spent on a rail link and new road links. They had ample private sector offers to build and run the arena, so there was no need for them to fund it directly.

 

[White Heather]

I never thought I would see the day when I agree with Paul Truswell, but I do on this one. Much as I fully support the Arena (we should have had one years ago), I object to the council strategy of keeping all the money for the Arena and other plans, whilst spending diddly squat on the infrastructure around the airport, (but why change a 50 year policy now???), and then having the cheek to delay the terminal expansion and force Bridgepoint to spend their profits on doing what the council never bothered to do.

 

[Aviador]

[textarea]West Yorkshire: Flagship transport projects vulnerable to cost cutting

Flagship transport projects in West Yorkshire including the Leeds trolleybus scheme are vulnerable to government cost cutting, a leading expert has warned.

Prof David Begg, chairman of the Northern Way's transport committee, told MPs that any major transport scheme that has not been "nailed down" with contractual commitments from the government is at risk.

This would mean that a string of long-awaited schemes in West Yorkshire are in jeopardy, including: the £260m Leeds Next Generation Transport trolleybus project, a tram-train connection between Harrogate and Leeds/Bradford Airport, a £14m scheme to provide southern access to Leeds Station and £11m plans for a major new train station to be built near Micklefield.

In a gloomy prediction, Prof Begg also voiced fears that work to upgrade the East Coast Mainline will not be carried out and that train services will be reduced when future rail franchises are awarded.

Prof Begg speaks on transport issues for the Northern Way, which is a partnership of the three northern Regional Development Agencies - Yorkshire Forward, One North East and the North West Regional Development Agency.

He made his comments after being asked by MPs on the influential Commons transport select committee to name projects which he believes are vulnerable in the current economic climate.

He replied: "I think there is so much that is not contractually committed that must be vulnerable, and if you look at how the Department for Transport spends the money it is anything which is not contractually committed which I would argue is probably vulnerable.

"If you look at what Network Rail are spending - £3.5 billion a year for Network Rail - if they have not got things really contractually nailed down then going into the spending round after the next election they might find it difficult to deliver on everything they have said they are going to deliver on."

He added: "Keep your eye on what is going to happen in the next ten years to the East Coast Main Line, because there are plans to upgrade the East Coast Main Line and create more capacity, and I just have some worries when the spending freeze comes just how much of that work is actually carried out."

But controversially, when asked which one transport scheme he would safeguard from cuts, he pinpointed the so-called Manchester Hub - a scheme to overhaul Manchester's rail links with other towns and cities in the north.

Supporters of that project, which is being drawn up by Network Rail, say it would generate between up to £16bn for the northern economy and increase the number of trains between Leeds and Manchester from four to six an hour.

However, opponents fear that it will lead to Manchester swallowing up a huge proportion of the north's transport spending.

Prof Begg admitted that the scheme will have to be rebranded following the rising tide of opposition from elsewhere in the north.
He said: "We need to change the name of the Manchester Hub.

"Crossrail for the north of England is a better term, otherwise people will view it as a Greater Manchester project and will miss out on exactly what it is actually going to do."

Source[/textarea]
It just gets better doesn't it

 

[White Heather]

Well at least if we end up with less trains, it should safeguard the LGW route. We might even get the E195. I am of course just trying to look on the bright side of life.

Somehow I expect that if cuts happen up North, they will all be over this side of the hills and Manchester will get all it needs. Prof Begg is more or less confirming that above. :nea:

 

[ls27]

Manchester projects itself as a very large city and must have everything to combat it's conjestion. It has 1.6 billion pounds in its transport chest. There was a further injection of 200 million pounds to extend the tram after the rejection of the conjestion charge, something the government said would not happen. Remember Manchester's population is less than that of Bradford and only some 2/3s that of Leeds. It gets away with the population figures be using those of the former county of Greater Manchester ie 10 Metropolitan Boroughs which is app 2.5 million. To use the same comparison ie the former West Yorkshire County ie five Metropolitan Boroughs the population is app 2.1 million.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Because so many cities now extend beyond their defined municipal boundaries the EU has come up with the concept of Larger Urban Zones (LUZ) for measuring population sizes of city areas. An LUZ will include satellite towns as well as outer suburbs.

Manchester is no 16 in the EU in population size using this measure with 2.539 million residents.

Leeds-Bradford is no 22 at 2.393 million, larger than Birmingham (no 23) at 2.357 million.

London is the largest LUZ in the EU at 11.917 million.

The UK has 15 LUZs in the top hundred in the EU and the following are the rankings in descending order in the European top hundred.. The figures are in millions or part thereof of population, with the European ranking given before each city name.

1. London 11.917
16. Manchester 2.539
22. Leeds-Bradford 2.393*
23. Birmingham 2.357
32. Glasgow 1.747
41. Liverpool 1.365
45. Sheffield 1.277
58. Newcastle 1.055
63. Bristol 1.006
77. Cardiff 0.841
78. Nottingham 0.825
81. Edinburgh 0.787
84. Leicester 0.772
98. Coventry 0.651
100. Belfast 0.641

* Nothing to do with the airport – this is how the city area is shown in the EU LUZ list.

Shows where the major conurbations are very clearly. Apart from London only Bristol and Cardiff are in the south of the UK.

These are the latest figures I could find.

 

[White Heather]

Thanks for that Local Yokel - interesting and I had not heard of these LUZ's before.

If we in Leeds-Bradford were to compare ourselves with the Manchester LUZ, we would also include Huddersfield, Halifax, Keighley, Dewsbury, Harrogate, Wakefield, Castleford and Pontefract. I am not sure how many of these have been included. I do recall though that the population of the Leeds Metropolitan Borough was somewhere in the region of 750,000 putting it 3rd in England, with Manchester itself only 425,000. Both Sheffield and Liverpool had larger populations. However, everyone tends to think of Manchester as covering the city itself, plus Salford, Oldham, Bolton, Bury and the Cheshire towns of Altrincham, Macclesfield,Sale, Hale etc. which are of course in a completely different county. Even Manchester Airport itself is located in Cheshire and outside the Manchester boundaries

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I think that the LUZ concept is more realistic than municiapal boundaries.

Some cities, such as Bristol, have not had their municipal boundaries extended since the early 60s whereas the contiguous urban area has grown and grown.

The only snag with the LUZ idea apparently is that different countries use different criteria. Whilst all the UK LUZ areas are calculated from a basic premise those in other countries might use other calculations.

What it does show is that either side of the Pennines is a huge urban triangle of over 5 million people (Manchester, Leeds-Bradford and Sheffield) with many many more living in towns within the hinterland.

It's a bigger version of the Amsterdam/Hague/Rotterdam urban triangle.

If LBA had the physical attributes of MAN it would surely be on a par (say around 12mppa each).

 

[ls27]

I agree about the physical attributes of LBA. The former County council ( I can't remember which one WRCC or WYMCC ) did produce a plan, of which I have a plan somewhere, for a new airport on Thorne Waste,just off the M62 and north of Robin Hood Airport.

 

[rmac]

I noticed that the Telegraph and Argus said that the Heathrow link from LBA was being considered if slots were available. It is a shame that the Gov't did not ring fence some slots to allow at least a few extra flights into Heathrow from the regions and when you look at the EU LUZ list there are several large areas such as Leeds and Liverpool with over a million that would benefit from a twice daily LHR connection. Even areas such as EMA and BHX could do with some connection to LHR although closer in distance. In the US there are connecting flights of about 100 miles in distance. It is a pity that BA seem to be abandoning the regions. Would they not benefit from extra passengers coming to and from places such as Leeds and Liverpool, especially as they hope to tie up with Iberia and maybe AA. A benefit of the merger they say is all the cities now served.

 

[White Heather]

I agree about the physical attributes of LBA. The former County council ( I can't remember which one WRCC or WYMCC ) did produce a plan, of which I have a plan somewhere, for a new airport on Thorne Waste,just off the M62 and north of Robin Hood Airport.

Thorne Waste was the proposed site of an alternative airport for Yorkshire at the time when LBA could not get its runway extension. So was RAF Church Fenton. Both were rejected as being too far from the cities of Leeds, and particularly Bradford. Given that Thorne Waste is also in South Yorkshire and not too far from DSA, it would have been a rather odd and unfortunate location for an airport to serve the Leeds Region. Common Sense prevailed, fortunately, although it took several more years to get the runway extension, and then too many years to get the 24 hour licence back. I fear that had they built an airport at Thorne, it would have been the same resounding success that DSA has been. (Not!)

On the subject of the BA merger with Iberia, wouldn't it be nice of Iberia commenced flights from LBA to their MAD hub, to link with intercontinental flights, particularly to South America, which is their speciality. It could also provide an alternative way to fly transatlantic, whilst providing a re-instatement of what was a reasonably succesful route pioneered by Jet2 in 2008. Can't see it happening of course, but a nice thought nonetheless

 

[Aviador]

[textarea]Airport bus links under review

A review is to take place of bus services operated by Metro to and from Leeds-Bradford Airport.

As part of the review, Metro will be holding drop-in sessions in Otley and Yeadon to find out people’s views.

The sessions will take place at Otley Civic Centre, on Tuesday from 2pm to 7.30pm, and Yeadon Town Hall on Thursday, December 3, from 2pm to 7.30pm.

John Henkel, Metro’s director of passenger services, said: “Our aim is to provide a bus network in the area that represents better services for local people and better value for taxpayers.

“It is important that as part of this review we reflect the views and wishes of local people which is why we have arranged these sessions where people can call and discuss the plans.”

Source[/textarea]

 

[White Heather]

We are supposed to be getting more bus services, and it seems quite possible that this 'review' could lead to less. Why ask people in Otley and Yeadon about bus services to the airport? They are a service that people from far and wide require. Odds on that the people at Otley will want the 757 re-routed to avoid going in and out of the airport so that they get to their destination quicker!! Then, when the service or frequency is reduced, First Bus will tell us it was what the people wanted!