anti-pacer
Established Member
Personally I would like to see trams running in Leeds, but what do you think the city needs in addition to buses?
A Premiership football club...
It needs something like an S-Bahn. It's population suits that well.
To be fair on the Met, it does quite well for the people of Manchester in creating a unified service into the city. Something that Leeda fails upon.All our big cities need a heavy-rail S-bahn *plus* either trams or a proper light-rail U-bahn depending on size. Manchester, say, has the trams, but really fails on a proper local rail service.
And buses should have limited city centre penetration and be used, with a unified fares system, to plug the gaps, not to compete.
A Premiership football club...
More frequent services, particularly on some hourly services that always seem to be rammed.
More connectivity between the hospitals, failing that, a larger centralised hospital where all the specialities are based on one site instead of over two sites. If anyone believes comorbidities only happen in the aged, they're wrong.
Later and more frequent late services. I'm always surprised whenever I visit Manchester that there are trams running every ten minutes to hours I'm rarely awake for.
To be fair on the Met, it does quite well for the people of Manchester in creating a unified service into the city. Something that Leeda fails upon.
I agree that modern Metrolink is very good - it's rather like a German "U-bahn-lite" Stadtbahn that some German cities have and light years ahead of the cheap-and-nasty half-job it was when first built - it just is only one piece in the puzzle of a proper transport network for Greater Manchester.
It's certainly better than what Leeds has!
More frequent services, particularly on some hourly services that always seem to be rammed.
Later and more frequent late services. I'm always surprised whenever I visit Manchester that there are trams running every ten minutes to hours I'm rarely awake for.
Leeds needs to have control of its transport before anything happens. PTE'S have been almost aspirational bodies since it lost control of buses. Some have been more adept at exacting considerable capital from Governments to further increase their tram systems such as GM and Nottingham/Nottinghamshire , West Midlands whilst others have not had the clout. Leeds always comes across to me as not being politically astute as GM. A bit like Merseytravel.
It doesn't help that First, as the dominant operator across Leeds, are completely inept. Dozens of journeys are cancelled on a daily basis due to a very long term staffing shortage so even though it looks like many routes have a good service in reality they don't.
Timetable connections that work would be a starting point.
A Premiership football club...
Come on Paul, I'm talking real possibilities not pipe dreams!
More frequent services, particularly on some hourly services that always seem to be rammed
Are there many hourly bus services in Leeds? Most areas seem to do well on frequency I think
Something to serve the North East of the city for a start
What Greater Manchester has had, and some other PTE areas haven't, is unity of purpose. The GM authorities have largely supported Metrolink despite differing political control and some benefitting from it more than others.
Didn't First do a great PR job when the trolleybus route was still in the balance by insisting they could do something comparable (with Borismasters, for godsake) for a fraction of the cost and without the disruption : all self-serving of course, as it was their buses that would have suffered the hit. Then we had First with buses attempting to look like trams in Sheffield, just because they weren't selected to run the actual trams there! Leeds, like Bristol, is years behind in public transport provision because of one dominant operator, in both cases First.
Better frequencies on existing local rail services wouldn't be a terrible idea either. The Harrogate line services could definitely do with being every 15 mins.
One or two people have mentioned later services. Earlier this year. Transdev started running some late '36' buses to Harrogate on Friday and Saturday nights. The Friday ones have since been dropped, apparently owing to lack of custom.
What Greater Manchester has had, and some other PTE areas haven't, is unity of purpose. The GM authorities have largely supported Metrolink despite differing political control and some benefitting from it more than others.
I'm often struck by the poor service and low ridership on many of the GM train routes. A number of stations have just one train every two hours. I'm not sure of the economics involved in conversion of some of these routes to Metrolink, but I fear the alternative may be closure of some stations or even entire routes.