The long road to get ‘Motorway City’ on track with trams

Could the latest proposal be the last roll of the dice?

Mass Transit stands out from its predecessors because it reaches beyond Leeds.

Sketched out as a region-wide scheme stretching from Halifax in the west to Pontefract in the east, Mass Transit was distilled down to just two lines costing GBP2.5bn.

One would serve Leeds, linking the city's two hospitals, the railway station, Elland Road Stadium and the White Rose Shopping Centre.

A second route would head west, taking trams back into Bradford and connecting the city's Interchange and Forster Square railway stations.

Further routes could be added in the future, but initially a balance between long-term ambition and short-term deliverability appear to have influenced the planning.

Tom Forth, an expert in transport data at Open Innovations in Leeds, says that trams work because "they deliver faster and more importantly reliable journey times, so if the tram says it's going to take 28 minutes, and it's separated from the road traffic, it takes 28 minutes, and that's just not the case with buses".

West Yorkshire's Mayor Tracy Brabin says this time it will "absolutely be delivered", vowing that spades will be in the ground in 2028.

But as Supertram showed, even the appearance of workers in high-vis and hard hats doesn't guarantee the arrival of the ever-elusive Leeds tram.