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The Leeds super tram idea started in 1991.
Stretching from Tingley in the South to Adel in the North and Whinmoor in
the East. The super tram was to fill the missing link in Leeds transport
network. When completed the system would carry 19million passengers annually
over a network of 21km of rail. Three huge car parks at the end of each line
would remove thousands of cars from Leeds roads each day.
However the
scheme was rejected by central government in the mid 90's and the project
was put on ice. This was possibly due to the high costs of other tram
systems which had completed vastly over budget. One of these being the
Sheffield Super tram.
In 2001 the government provisionally
approved three new light rail schemes for the country. Leeds was one of
them. Work soon restarted on developing the system. To reduce the risk
of the project cost spiralling out of control the government imposed a
£500million limit on the project.
2004 saw the government call for a complete
rethink on the project after it was revealed that the total cost of the
scheme could be almost double the £500million limit.
Recently Tony
Blair stated that the government would be concentrating on the existing
transport network. This is bad news for Leeds super tram which may now have
to be either scaled down, shelved or scrapped altogether. |
