Bus company ‘used intensive lobbying’ to scupper Supertram, scrutiny board told

THE MAIN bus operator in Leeds used “intensive lobbying” more than 10 years ago to “scupper” chances of rapid transport options and has used the city as a “cash cow”, a meeting was told.

Former joint leader of Leeds City Council, Coun Andrew Carter, and ex-Metro chairman, Coun Ryk Downes, yesterday spoke at the cross-party Scrutiny Board for City Development.

Members are conducting an inquiry into why successive bids to create Supertram and trolleybus (NGT) schemes in Leeds have failed over nearly 30 years and what lessons can be learned from the saga.

The separate projects each spent 10 years in development limbo before different governments scrapped them.

The council’s Conservative leader Coun Carter said that there was “intensive lobbying by First Bus against Supertram” during Alistair Darling’s time as the Labour Government’s Transport Secretary.

Coun Downes told the Civic Hall meeting that the company, which runs the majority of bus journeys in Leeds, held a private meeting with ministers in 2005.

Coun Downes, a Liberal Democrat, said: “First Bus met with the Department for Transport, where they said at the time they could deliver a bus-based system for a fraction of the price.”

He added: “It’s my belief that discussion, initially behind closed doors, caused the cancellation of Supertram.”

First makes big profits in Leeds which can be used to boost the company’s interests in North America, he told the meeting.

Coun Downes said this is “profitable, without any risk of any major development.

“They can keep getting money from the cash cow that Leeds is.”

Coun Carter added: “It’s a shame First Bus can’t put into bus services what they have put into scuppering Supertram and then NGT.”

The council’s leader Judith Blake requested the inquiry into the failed bids – which drained £72m of taxpayers’ cash – after some scathing criticism of the authority’s response to the dumping of NGT early last year.

Evidence the board has examined includes records dating back to 1993, when Supertram first gained parliamentary approval.