SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

We have commented on this site in the past about the lack of any form of mass transit system in Leeds and the various abortive attempts to provide one. Years ago I compared Leeds and its twin city , Lille, which has about 5 lines to the suburbs and of course the Eurostar terminal which has regenerated an area of the city now called Euralille, which really puts Lille on the map.
Anyway for the first time I saw a reference to this in one of our natioanl newspapers( The Daily Telegraph)


" London’s critical mass acts as a magnet for talent and investment from the rest of the country, sucking the lifeblood from all around. It is obviously outrageous that a city as big as Leeds should still have no mass transit system – the only city of comparable size in Europe without one – while London enjoys the massive investment bonus of Crossrail, but also entirely excusable. "



I think the original prewar plan was to build an underground for Leeds , and some work may have started but was obviously abandoned due to the war. Since then there have been various schemes including supertrams and guided bus lanes.
IF (big if) the money and political will were ever found to provide Leeds with a mass transit system what would you go for- underground railway, trams , light rail , monorail....??

There could be changes on the way. Richard Lewis lost his seat in the local elections and the same weekend an article appeared in the YEP about some new tram-based mass transit system. I did some research into the Leeds transport strategy and found that it consisted mainly of giving large amounts of money to First Leeds while deliberately increasing congestion to try to encourage people to use buses. I think a lot of people have been waiting for him to move on so they can do something other than buses.

While a new broom at the Combined Authority (subsumed the WYPTE/Metro) may make some difference the CA is not going to have sufficient money to introduce a joined up mass transit system until we have an elected regional mayor and that is not lilely to happen until their is a rethink in local democracy at Westminster. There is a current stalemate in that the local politicians want a city region that covers most of Yorkshire and even potentilally in to Derbyshire (Chesterfield) and Notts (Worksop). I think Westmisneter sees that as too big a threat to London and want much smaller chunks.