Fix public transport to cut car use

From: ME Wright, Harrogate.

LIKE Paul Kirby, inadequate and non-existent bus services ensure that I use my car far more than I would wish (The Yorkshire Post, November 12).

Following a visit to Nottingham, Paul mentions “a stark contrast between their infrastructure and ours”. Though not mentioned, the true starkness is that they, along with Manchester, Birmingham etc, have a proper Metro system; in Leeds – city and region – the M word remains a rather imaginative term for ‘bus stop’. How can an otherwise eminently progressive city hope to carry on with public transport still essentially 1960s plus wifi?

There is another big difference: in July 2018, The Yorkshire Post announced that the Nottingham bus and tram networks were now “publicly owned”. Leeds and West Yorkshire continue to bumble along, doing the best they can with the distant promises and discredited outcomes of ‘deregulation’ – better services lower fares, I seem to recall!

Thirty years on, their ‘best efforts’ at bringing the city into the 21st century continue to languish in the diesel doldrums. For how much longer?

From: Dave Ellis, Magdalen Lane, Hedon.

CAN the Transport Secretary explain why rail users, mainly in northern England, are still being transported about on the old Pacer trains when there are over 50 new trains parked up in sidings in West London, awaiting the completion of Crossrail?

Crossrail in London’s opening date has been further delayed to March 2021 (The Yorkshire Post, November 9) and is way over budget.

The Government also needs to ask the question if can we afford HS2 with all the disruption it is causing to families (demolishing new homes in Mexborough) and communities?

A cheaper option would be to upgrade the railway line between London and Sheffield.

The savings could be put to much better use by transferring the money to flood defence projects in Yorkshire and Derbyshire.