The first I knew about Connecting Leeds was an email I received on the 19th June 2018 inviting me to attend the launch of a “bus consultation” called Connecting Leeds. It sounded harmless and so I decided not to attend as I was busy. I next heard Connecting Leeds mentioned several weeks later at a community group meeting where someone said they’d seen on the Connecting Leeds website that the scheme involved banning right turns at Hyde Park Corner. This didn’t sound like a bus consultation. When I got home I took a look at the Connecting Leeds website. I found I could only access the details of the scheme by clicking on “Have Your Say.” When I did this, I found that Connecting Leeds isn’t a bus consultation at all. It’s about widening the A660 from Adel to Leeds by taking away grass verges and pavements. The scheme contains many of the proposals that were part of the trolleybus scheme. And like the trolleybus scheme, Connecting Leeds is sponsored by Leeds City Council and Metro.

The Adel to Leeds section includes the following proposals:

• Removing 7 metres from the grass verge on the other side of Otley Old Road from the YMCA.
  Placing lights at the junction of Otley Road and Otley Old Road. Otley Old Road is a quiet road and only one bus service uses it. So signalising the junction would delay lots of traffic including buses on Otley Road for very little gain.
• Floating bus stops. These are bus stops set forward into the road that have a cycle lane behind them. Some consider them very dangerous as someone waiting for a bus could absent-mindedly step backwards into the path of a cyclist. Their advantage for cyclists is that they can cycle past buses stopped at one of these bus stops – on the inside.
• Converting the junction of the A660 with the Ring Road from a roundabout to a signalised crossroads.
• Removal of an unspecified amount of the grass verge at St Chad’s.
  Closing the entrance to Weetwood Lane and creating a large plaza there with tables for users of the adjacent pub.
• Pushing back the 170 year old stone wall on Headingley Lane an unspecified distance into the fields on Headingley Hill. The wall would be pushed into the fields by an amount sufficient to create a bus lane.
• “Altering” the junction of Headingley Lane with Victoria Road (presumably “altering” means demolishing shops. Metro owns the shops).
• Banning the right turn from Woodhouse Street onto Headingley Lane, and the right turn from Hyde Park Road onto Woodhouse Lane, and diverting all this traffic onto Cliff Road. This would turn the elegant parade of shops called “The Crescent” into a traffic roundabout.
• Removal of an unspecified amount of the grass verge adjacent to the inbound lane of the A660 across Woodhouse Moor to create a wider road.
• Removal of all the York stone pavement adjacent to the outbound lane across Woodhouse Moor to create a wider road.
• Extending the bus lay-by at Raglan Road backwards by an un-specified amount to create a “bus only” lane. This was first attempted by Highways in 2008 but the scheme was dropped following strong local opposition. It re-surfaced in 2012 as one of two possible routes for the trolleybus. The other route was across Monument Moor.

Many of these proposals, or very similar proposals, were included in the trolleybus scheme. This was rejected in May 2016 following a 6 month long public inquiry costing £2.6 million

On the 5th June 2013, at a public meeting at Heart in Headingley, a lady said that the council could solve congestion on the A660 by introducing congestion charging. The head of the Highways Department, Councillor Richard Lewis, asked those in favour of congestion charging to raise their hands. Almost every hand in the room was raised. Councillor Lewis then said he doesn’t see congestion charging coming in for another ten years. To which the lady responded that people would rather wait 10 years than have so many trees cut down needlessly now.

Councillor Richard Lewis is the head of the Highways Department. He is also a Pudsey councillor. In 2005, Councillor Lewis was responsible for saving an avenue of trees in a Pudsey park, which, but for his action, would have been cut down, as this Yorkshire Evening Post article from the time attests.

On the 5th June 2013, at a public meeting at Heart in Headingley, when someone complained about all the trees that would be cut down in Headingley because of the trolleybus scheme, Councillor Lewis said “You’ll lose more than that number to ash die-back.” Surely if we’re going to lose lots of trees to ash die-back, that’s all the more reason to hold on to all our other trees.

Now, five years later, Councillor Lewis is responsible for another scheme which would result in mature trees being cut down along the A660. The intention is to dismantle the 170 year old wall which separates the fields on Headingley Hill from Headingley Lane, and widen the road at the expense of the fields and the trees which border the fields.

Leeds City Council’s Highways Department appears to be fixated on the A660. Since 1937, the department has come up with numerous schemes to improve traffic flow along the road. The most recent of these was the trolleybus scheme.The regurgitation of many of the trolleybus proposals in the form of Connecting Leeds, proves that the trolleybus inspector was correct when he said at paragraph 9.60 of his 12 May 2016 report:

“I can understand that, given the level of expenditure, time and resources that have already been spent on the existing northern corridor, particularly with respect to the Supertram, and the use of trolley vehicles, the Applicants would be reluctant to commit themselves to other corridors or forms of public transport.”

Whilst Leeds tried unsuccessfully to get governmental permission and funding for a tram and then a trolleybus scheme, cities like Manchester, Sheffield and Nottingham were forging ahead with mass transit systems which are now well established.

Leeds could have had an underground system by now if the city’s leaders of the last two decades had shared the ambition of former council leader George Mudie who wanted Leeds to have an underground system. Unlike George Mudie, they didn’t know what they wanted. First they chased after a tram system. Then it was a trolleybus system. Now it’s Connecting Leeds. How unambitious can you get?

In September 2017, Insider Media published an article which stated that Leeds City Council had appointed consultants WSP as the development partner for Connecting Leeds. The article quotes Adrian Hames, director at WSP, as saying: “This is a significant win for WSP as it brings together public and private sector clients to deliver a major infrastructure project.” The article also states that the £173.5 million allocated by the government towards the project, is likely to be supplemented by about £100 million in private investment. The company provides a page on its website for anyone interested in its history.

We were told by Metro and Leeds City Council that the trolleybus scheme would cost £250 million. That scheme allocated £32 million towards the cost of consultants. The Insider Media article does not mention how much money WSP are charging the council and Metro for their services.