Road, Rail & Access Issues

[leedslad]

Few media mentions for the MIPIM Nice delegates flying from Leeds today.
I wonder how many took the 747 bus to reach the airport. I wonder how many will take a train and then a minibus once the parkway built...

 

[Aviador]

That all depends on whether you're talking about tram access to the airport or a fixed rail link. Yes a parkway would almost certainly end any future chance of the airport having a fixed direct rail link but it won't mean a future tram train won't be possible.

I for one am more than happy with that. The idea of spending money on a direct rail link that only serves LBA bothers me. There is no way it would be viable solely reliant on airport passengers without significant provision for local towns and surrounding areas. The airport is a private company, if it were to come forward with a decent amount of private money to pay for a direct rail link then I would support that but Bridgepoint have not done that because they know it isn't viable.

 

[Bigman]

If the railway line is there, and a station is there, then why are tram trains needed? Do you really want one of those trundling down the line in front of a Virgin East Coast Azuma? Having normal trains gives you far more scope to operate through trains to such places as Selby, Castleford, and Sheffield. Wakefield and Doncaster would get a 2 hourly service in any case c/o Virgin.

 

[Tarn Spotter]

Aviador: Electric driverless vehicles is the future , not ancient tram technology. In 20 years time impossible to say where this technology will be, but it may have the solution to this short journay. Not sure we want to plan 20/40 years from now on todays methods.
With air pollution as high as it is, crazy in my eyes for Leeds to spend £71m on new Euro V1 buses, reducing we are told NOx by 87% but no details on CO2 reduction.
Electric buses will reduce NOx to nil and CO2 by 40%. These figures based on the two bus routes in London now fully electric, buses running 16 hour shifts without charge.
In addition as disclosed this weekend emission tests are done when the bus unloaded and stationery, when loaded and running the emissions are far higher.

 

[rangieowner]

So, a further option would be to extend the spur to Guiesley and link to Bradford that way, then a Leeds to Bradford Via Airport service could be achieved but then a spur from Harrogate would be needed and would there be a need for a Harrogate to Bradford via Airport service?

 

[lbaspotter]

With air pollution as high as it is, crazy in my eyes for Leeds to spend £71m on new Euro V1 buses, reducing we are told NOx by 87% but no details on CO2 reduction.
Electric buses will reduce NOx to nil and CO2 by 40%.

Know this might be off subject a little regards LBA but thought the need to reply with the following info!

Electric buses are no good for the hilly routes we have in this area hence Firstbus in Leeds current plan to spend there share of the £71 millon on either replacement and rebuild of Leeds bus fleet by 2020.

• 284 new buses of a type still under discussion will be announce soon!,
• Euro 6 are problematic due to been poor hill climbers, but the current fleet of Euro 6 buses will remain in Leeds
• Gas? Only built by Scania, depots will need high pressure gas supply, This is only possible at one Leeds Depot Hunslet, the other Bramley would require an expensive pipeline.
• Electric, flash charge induction or plug in, lot's of issues.
• Current fleet of Hybrids buses will to get a full Euro 6 diesel conversion as batteries will need replacing soon.
• Also of interest the retired FTR Streetcars are heading for the scrapyard, As nobody will supply an engine suitable to repower them.

If the railway line is there, and a station is there, then why are tram trains needed? Do you really want one of those trundling down the line in front of a Virgin East Coast Azuma? Having normal trains gives you far more scope to operate through trains to such places as Selby, Castleford, and Sheffield. Wakefield and Doncaster would get a 2 hourly service in any case c/o Virgin.

I think Bigman has it right. We don't need trams getting in the way of 4 hourly Leeds - Harrogate Trains along with the fast London to Harrogate expresses. It i'll just clog up the line. Don't forget it will also open up quicker and more direct service to York.

In Theory you'll have a 5min bus ride from the airport terminal to the new Parkway/Park & Ride station. then have short wait and a 15 min train ride into Leeds central. Now that's a lot quicker than the current 1 hour journey you get on the current "flying tiger" 757 bus service during the daytime or using you own car along the A658 & A65..

 

[cmj]

Cars are a woefully inefficient use of road space. Think of the space taken by say 60 cars with just one person in them, compared to a bus. If they are all driverless then they can be more efficient, but you would need every vehicle to be driverless. Personally I don't think that driverless cars are the great solution some hail them to be.

 

[Aviador]

If the railway line is there, and a station is there, then why are tram trains needed? Do you really want one of those trundling down the line in front of a Virgin East Coast Azuma? Having normal trains gives you far more scope to operate through trains to such places as Selby, Castleford, and Sheffield. Wakefield and Doncaster would get a 2 hourly service in any case c/o Virgin.

Using some old figures from 2010-11 as an example a total of 961,852 passengers used Guiseley railway station. 961,432 passengers used Horsforth railway station on local services. 1,369,154 passengers used Harrogate railway station. Leeds City Station handled 25,020,032.

Interactive map: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/may/19/train-stations-listed-rail#map

The point I am getting at is although Harrogate is an important regional centre the addition of Virgin rail links to the town is insignificant on the grand scale of things. It's importance to the regional economy is a drop in the ocean in comparison to what a tram train service would be serving the airport and the local commuter belt of Horsforth, Yeadon, Rawdon and Guiseley. Choosing Virgin trains over tram trains serving the airport and one of Leeds' major commuter belts is like choosing 1 flight a week to New York instead of 25 flights a week to Alicante.

 

[leedslad]

The idea of spending money on a direct rail link that only serves LBA bothers me. There is no way it would be viable solely reliant on airport passengers without significant provision for local towns and surrounding areas. The airport is a private company, if it were to come forward with a decent amount of private money to pay for a direct rail link then I would support that but Bridgepoint have not done that because they know it isn't viable.

This is exactly where all the analysis, opinion and work by Leeds council falls down.

The station serving LBA alone of course wouldn't be as viable as the proposed parkway. BUT it has several intangible factors that cannot be measured. Ultimately though these would contribute far more to the economy of the city region...

Look at the business case for HS2... It puts huge economic weight on door to door journey times. This value can't be underestimated.

Leeds council lobbied to hard to move the HS2 station a couple hundred yards closer to the main train station for exactly this reason.

As we head in to Brexit we need to be making journeys connecting to Europe as seamless as possible.

Let's say a company from Europe wants a UK office. It chooses Leeds or Manchester as cheaper than London but both with an airport. A factor in choosing location will be this transport link.

I will tell you now that no business users will choose to use train plus bus.

 

[leedslad]

The 71m figure from first is a red herring.. Surely they'd have to replace and update their fleet no matter what was happening with Leeds transport. They've spun this as PR

 

[cmj]

HS2 won't do much for the door-to-door times to London for most of Leeds. By the time it gets here it will take as long to get from Headingley to the station in rush hour traffic as from the station to London on HS2. To keep us on topic.. hopefully we will still have the BA shuttle

Business users will probably get a taxi anyway. They will be more swayed by the routes from MAN vs LBA than how they get there.

 

[lbaspotter]

Really you’ve got to ask would spending £100m on a rail link to the airport be cost effective? Rail travel only accounts for a small proportion of the passengers. Manchester Airport rail station handles around 3m passengers a year and that's an airport that connected with flights all over the world handling 55 million passengers last year 2016. Seriously could the Government really justify that cost for maybe 300,000 rail passengers a year to a new purpose station built station at Leeds/Bradford Airport, when it only handles 3.6 million passengers a year?

Either an expensive heavy rail link or Tram Train to an airport serving 3.6 million passengers a year is highly unlikely to pass any government spending tests at this present time, they have said they want to see a breakdown of the proposed use of the £170M before signing it off.

By going ahead with the current proposed Park & Ride / Airport Parkway station and linking it up with the new A65-A658 airport link road (which already has funding in place) surely will work in everyone’s favours and most likely get the government cash to start building. I agree some kind of Electric or Hybrid bus would be ideal to to connect the link between the airport and the station as well.
Remember it’s not just airport users that will benefit as has already been said but also local commuters whom already face major congested routes into Leeds along the A660 & A65 corridors on a daily basis. The Park and Ride facility will make trips so much easier for those people.

Let’s not forget as Bigman mentioned that Northern Rail are set to increase the frequency of service between Leeds and Harrogate from the current 2 trains an hour to 4 services an hour later in this year. Some of these train services also link up with York, so the no need to go funding a new bus service to there.
Virgin East coast will also eventually be adding more daily London to Harrogate trains which could all potentially stop at the new station opening up links far and wide.

After all that its still a well known fact that most people want to get to the airport using the own means. So what ever happens its not going to stop people using the own car, And so it will remain the most convenient way for most people..

 

[Aviador]

Just to be clear, I would only support a tram-train option as part of a city wide transport initiative. Although this is an LBA related topic I didn't want to drift too far away from the subject but a tram-train is still possible using the Horsforth line at a future date. Similarly I think Leeds needs a proper transport interchange linking the entire bus network with the train network and where you can get off a train onto a bus with one ticket and so on but that's for another thread.

 

[leedslad]

The value of a direct rail link isn't in the number of passengers it's the type of passengers. Typically they're going to be business users and tourists. Imagine if a direct rail link made it so much more convenient to get to the airport that a company was lured to locate in Leeds creating jobs and boasting the economy.

How many businesses can we woo with 'locate in Leeds. It's just a short train and minibus ride to the airport '

 

[lbaspotter]

Good news. The Conservative Government has given Leeds City Council the green light for the £173.5 million in public transport funding. Some of this money will go towards developing proposals for a new parkway station on the Leeds to Harrogate line to serve Leeds Bradford Airport and also act as a park and ride in both directions. The funds will need to be allocated to schemes before the end of 2021.

http://www.thebusinessdesk.com/yorkshire/news/2002854-2002854

 

[Aviador]

Some early electioneering LBAspotter?

It's money what should have already come to Leeds as part of the canned Trolleybus project. In fact it's money that Leeds is long overdue.

It's amazing how offers of money come out of the hat for all kinds of projects when a general election comes around.

 

[lbaspotter]

Some early electioneering LBAspotter?

Possibly/Maybe! But I guess if Mrs May and the Con's get voted back in after the General Election, at least then Leeds City Council (whomever its run by then) will be able to hold them to their pre-election promise. Saying that we've not heard anything from the opposition parties yet and the is still 6 weeks to go.
Oh and before that we have the local elections to get though next month first.

 

[White Heather]

I understood that the money is already allocated but it was on condition that the Government had to approve how the money was spent. They perhaps don't trust our Council's and Transport Authority to use it wisely! Now they are happy we should be able to just get on with it. They can't spend it on anything else so there is no point in trying to re-direct it. I would be surprised if Option A is not now confirmed as the chosen option for the link road. I suspect they were not confirming it pending this decision today. The proposed park and ride cannot work without Option A.

 

[Aviador]

Only option A is shown in the updated masterplan so I would fully expect option A to be formally announced shortly. I'll be very surprised if it turns out to be one of the other options.

 

[ls27]

I thought the link road was out of another pot.