To be clear, this video isn’t meant to propose an actionable plan for Leeds, just to highlight the obvious need for *something* and some of the key considerations to make - like the regions dispersed nature!

This video has given transport in the North more thought in 8 minutes than the current UK government has in over a year, like you said a West Yorkshire transit system has been considered in the past but realistically the 'Network North' proposals are unlikely to ever happen unfortunately.

As a Leeds resident, it's great to see you covering Leeds, cities outside London in this country rarely get any attention given to their urban transport needs

The busses are stuck in traffic, the trains don't run and the tram system was never built. History of UK northern cities

For those not already aware, Leeds had a serious, workable and costed plan for light rail but this was pulled in the 2000s. Even a watered-down trolleybus system was approved and then cancelled in the 2010s. On a different scale, and affecting not only Leeds of course, HS2 was cancelled this year (though watch this space). This country is simply not committed to any serious investment in transport infrastructure.

Massive respect for covering this, UK cities outside London don't get this kind of informed and detailed coverage normally

Leeds is the perfect example of just how huge the investment and power imbalance in this country is, it once prided itself as the motorway city of the 70s. There is a lot of regional inequality in Britain. London will always get investment but for every crossrail or DLR we get, the rest of the country needs twice as much to catch up. Even the home counties are underfunded and suffer from poor regional public transport. I spent a few days in the west of england this week and forgot how bad the trains could be, they were often delayed from junction bottlenecks/poor track layouts, old and worn out trains and at times overcrowded as nearly everywhere was a 2 coach train. In a lot of towns in the west, the bus is weirdly more convenient to use than a train but they rarely have priority so get delayed and stuck in traffic and also not integrated with rail at all. I don't see why a system like the DLR couldn't be built in places like Leeds, Newcastle's Tyne and Wear Metro is pretty successful and shows what can be done with the right people in charge. Coventry is a building a light rail system now but I am not sure how good they will be as the vehicles are tiny and not that fast!

Being born and raised in Leeds I can’t tell you how excited I got for something as simple as a tram when I moved to Manchester for Uni or even when I visited my mates in cities smaller than Leeds like Sheffield, Newcastle or Nottingham which all have tram/metro systems. Hope we get a new government soon that actually cares about improving the cities internal transport infrastructure!! 🤞

Pretty much all the northern cities have been forgotten about when it comes to investment and infrastructure

You should definitely do one on Dublin, Ireland. Worst public transport of any European capital I visited! Urban population of almost 1.5 million inhabitants, with 2.1 million in the metro area, it has NO metro, only 2 tram lines that weren't even connecting until a few years ago, only 3 major commuter lines, over reliance on buses (it has NO rail connection to the airport!), and its expensive!

What I've always found interesting is the stretch of Northern England, starting from Merseyside, all the way to Leeds, down to sheffield, with Manchester Warrington Wakefield Huddersfield etc etc in between is *almost* a super conurbation made of multiple conurbations. I recently returned from Osaka, where the rapid transit area also includes the cities of Kobe, Kyoto, Nara, Himeji, Akashi, Wakayama and all of the towns in between. There is more similarity in the fact a mountain range splits the area down the middle. (The Kongo Range vs the Peak district). It was really convenient and I was suprised at the distances I covered with ease. I was on a metro train through tunnels, then suburbs then countryside and a mountain range and then suburbs and city again all within 45 minutes. Distances and local stations are balanced with local, semi rapid and rapid services with each city having its own metro whilst being connected by a larger, more express-like regional metro. or multiple Elizabeth Lines if that makes any sense. This whole area in England has a similar total population to London being slightly over 8 million, only the green belt has stopped an entire built up area, seeing as the multiple cities inside of it are also conurbations (Leeds-Huddersfield-Wakefield-Bradford, or Manchester's built up area for example). I do wonder if it would be a good idea to have all of these cities in the West of Yorkshire and the South of NW England to be put into one giant transit system? Also, if you compare country sizes, its clear the built up area in and around Osaka is a similar size to the area of England I speak of, so its not implausable.

Interesting tidbit, Leeds originally planned in the 1930s to turn its Victorian tramway into a stadhbahn with tunnels underneath Leeds city centre. Leeds’ trams were often on seperate rights of way and this can be seen on York road and Selby rd.

I live in the North of England and I really appreciate the attention you have brought to public transport here recently- especially Leeds, which urgently requires a rapid transit system as you discussed here. One city that is also in the North that you could focus on is Newcastle. It would be really cool to see the Tyne and Wear metro or bus services covered. Very detailed video- thank you again. 😃

Leeds Supertram was cancelled when the government pulled the funding in favour of London. One route was planned to go to the new Stourton Park and Ride which has ended up with electric buses adding into the congestion on the road. Many of the roads still have wide central reservations from when the old trams were scrapped forming ideal segregated routes. I have heard comments that Manchester made a big mistake in having high floor stock as they are unable to buy replacements off the shelf.

I’ve lived in Leeds city centre for 27 years. There have now been three failed proposals. I blame the city council for just not wanting to do it! I went to a city council transport meeting where a senior councillor said, ‘we want to invest in a transport system that doesn’t exist yet’. They then made reference to Google style cars running across the city as a public transport system!! I’d rather they just went with something they know that works, as suggested in this video!!

As a Bradfordian its great to see you cover West Yorkshire! After years of failed projects there does seem to be political consensus around building some form of rail transit system for Leeds/W Yorks, that said the best we can hope for is probably a Sheffield/Nottingham/Birmingham style tram system. Leeds absolutely deserves an automated light metro but I just can't see the funding being available for that sadly.

As someone who used to commute to Leeds but has the option of working from home 20 miles away, I don't get to the office (right by the station, usefully) very much because the transport _by any mode_ is terrible. (I use the park & ride.) I'll have retired before anything changes. Everything you've said makes sense, but here's the crux of it, in West Yorkshire or anywhere else outside of London: • Do we have the demand? Yes • Do we have the technology? Yes • Do we have the expertise? Yes • Do we have the money? Yes • But do we have the political will? Hell, no

As a Leeds resident who has done some commuting to Manchester and plenty of travelling around Yorkshire, I definitely agree with your suggestions. In a dream world, the main things I'd want are: A true Transpennine upgrade, electrifying the line with high speed right of way and continuous 200km/h running. It currently takes 45 mins on the fastest Leeds to Manchester service, which may not sound too bad, but there are services that do London to Leeds in just over 2 hours. Additionally, this train gets delayed very frequently by ~15 mins, because it gets stuck behind a slower service. Similarly, electrifying Leeds to Sheffield route would improve the service a lot in that corridor too. The rail operator CrossCountry operates the only high speed intercity service between the two cities, with frankly completely unfit rolling stock resulting in absolutely packed trains. I was just shocked how much nicer the route from Doncaster to Leeds was on an electric train, even on a relatively slower service. In general, I think Leeds is quite underserved by rail, with routes to a lot of places only available on slow services and drawing the short straw on an awful combination of unreliable operators. (Getting to Leeds from London is no problem with LNER being one of the most reliable operators, but the LNER services to Leeds terminate there, so going any further north quickly requires TPE or CrossCountry). However, I imagine it's even worse in the likes of Halifax, which basically requires travelling via Leeds or Bradford, despite not even being that close to the former. Some kind of West Yorkshire S-Bahn style system would be amazing and truly integrate the region together. Finally, an inner city Leeds tram or light rail system would also be fantastic. Currently, buses frequently get completely full during the morning rush-hour making commuting even quite short distances unreasonably difficult. Thankfully, Leeds inner city centre is small and very walkable, but getting there from somewhere fairly far in the suburbs quickly becomes a chore. Being able to hop on a frequent tram from, say Headingley, to the city centre or another suburban area would really improve quality of life.

UK really lags behind the continent. Quite a shame. I don't think the uk will be building anything like this any time soon.

Wasn't expecting this! 😄 I used to live in Leeds and something I always found annoying was the lack of service between suburbs. Most bus services would just go from one end of the city to the other via the city centre, so my commute would often involve at least two buses (and that's if they do turn up!) Sadly I don't see any of these proposals happening imho.

Really great analysis. I live here in Leeds and one of the most depressing things I learned when I got more interested in transit and urbanism was that, until 1959, Leeds used to have an extensive tram system that was deemed "one of largest and most advanced urban transport systems in the UK" before its closure. Right now, we do have trains that connect some areas of Leeds, but the majority of the connections are by buses, which are infrequent, slow (largely due to traffic), and largely unreliable. A lot of people are therefore more convinced by their cars which only makes the situation worse. The city desperately needs funding and some government that actually cares about doing this right, and not just talking about it.

The Tyne and Wear Metro is another local and relatively recent example of a rapid transit project. I would start by looking at the existing bus network, and think about how adding rail to the mix could improve it.

I'm so mortified that this video exists, but knew you were talking about Leeds the second I saw the title. Thank you for covering us!

Thank you!!! Lived in WY my whole life & the lack of connectivity around Leeds is insane. The best thing about Leeds transport is there's a 2h15min train to London every 30 minutes. Too bad no one cares about getting half decent public transport in the actual leeds area itself

Leeds is cool. I was there last year, and I thought it was fascinating how consistent the architecture is: lots of beautiful buildings, all with a similar aesthetic. Transit would have been nice while I was exploring the city, for sure!

Leeds has had so many plans for a contemporary transit system cancled over the past 40 years. I remember working on the station design for one back in 2004. The whole of West Yorkshire deserves better.

Step 1: Elect a government that actually cares about anything north of Greater London

Excellent thanks. I was in Leeds a couple of weeks ago and have family from the area. You're absolutely right about the inter-urban connectivity in the region. Probably worth mentioning connections to York as well - because of history it has much better UK connectivity (it's on the London - Edinburgh line) and gets a lot of tourists. Leeds to York is fairly well served by traditional rail however so maybe it's not relevant to a Leeds centred system but still quite important for the local economy. More widely Leeds - Manchester needs to get much better to really power the north.

You should do a video on the massive challenges Rome has when building public transport: massive surface area, lots of nearby towns, the archeologistic nightmare that is building a metro line (ex. the Piazza Venezia Metro C stop project). I think it would be really interesting.

Can you do a video about Nuernberg, a city with a population 500.000 and it has the only automated metro in Germany.

The irony is that Leeds was the first city in the UK to introduce electric trams, all the way back in 1891.

Oh my goodness! Thank you so much for raising awareness about Leeds! I've left a few Leeds comments on your videos in the past so I'm going to be deranged and believe this video was down to my comments 😅 Jokes aside, yes Leeds needs heavy investment in the infrastructure! The Leeds council are already reshaping the city to be pedestrianised, more walkable and fewer cars. This has led to access to Leeds to be even more challenging. The national rail lines are constantly cancelled or delayed, you can't rely on them to get you to the city. The busses are stuck behind all the car traffic which is now worse because of reduced road access and trains being cancelled. It's a situation that gets worse and worse. I just hope we get Leeds transit sometime in my lifetime 😅

There are a lot of comments about lack of investment outside of London and central government not caring, but other cities in the UK have managed to do something. Manchester is the obvious example, but there is Sheffield to the south of Leeds, along with Nottingham, Newcastle, Edinburgh (although badly in that case) and Birmingham. Leeds has a a history of differing proposals that get cancelled before gettign anywhere, so this is a local government issue in Leeds. Yes, more central funding would help, but Leeds needs to get its act together and follow many other cities, rather than playing the "It's not fair" card all the time.

while we're at it, we likely need to sort out the main railway station in Leeds and the approaches on either side of it, because at the moment there are lines on the national network (including the Settle-Carlisle route) whose frequency is unfairly reduced by the lack of access to platforms at Leeds

May I recommend Nottingham as an example of an absolutely fantastic bus/tram network in spite of a severe lack of good (or even electrified) rail in the city. The branding of the numerous bus companies in Nottingham is second to none. Makes up for the fact that it will NEVER see major investment in any large rapid transit system (or anything for that matter) by virtue of how the council is organised. Worth a visit if you are based in the UK at the moment

Mersey rail which is Liverpool’s and ‘surrounding region is a rapid transit solution, however it is only in select areas and tends to want to get people from A-Z instead of making more local stops. Like going from the outskirts to the city centre instead of suburbs to other suburbs, meaning bus is the only option to getting to school etc… and due to bus lanes being removed, they take so much longer than what’s needed. A series of tram infrastructure would be much better suited.

What you have said about linear infrastructure is right in a lot of respects, because there are grass reservations, in suburbs of Middleton and Seacroft, that were left over from the original network that closed in 1959. Also, I would run a domenstrator shuttle on the disused railway between Bradford and Dewsbury, to guage opinion.

Leeds has a lot of very wide roads and not a lot of existing rail right of way. A tram-train system seems to be the best option, having just got back from Cologne something like their system would be perfect. Some cut&cover underground sections in the very centre of the city, some exclusive right-of-way on larger roads around the centre, and then new/existing train-like alignments outside of the city.

i have lived in Leeds for 7 years. it’s a great city, and i’ve definitely found my community here. but it doesn’t feel like it’s a serious city. car dependency and the severe lack of infrastructure continually pushes me to ask myself what’s stopping me from moving to mainland Europe. I’d be far less likely to be knocked off my bike there.

You seem to have overlooked Bristol which is if anything in even more dire straits than Leeds which at least has some electrified suburban rail routes. Especially if you just look across the river to its neighbour Cardiff with it's South Wales metro which couldn't make the comparison between the two more stark.

I know the Leeds case inside out and lived in Leeds for many years. The ultimate problem in Leeds, no matter how much people may try to unpackage why the council did or didn't do something, or why different proposals failed, is that there was never a Government truly committed to Leeds. The blame lies squarely at Westminster's door. Even with the recent quasi-devolution, West Yorkshire (note, not Leeds City Region that wasn't allowed a devolution deal by Westminster) still has to strike a funding deal with central Government - it is not able to raise tax locally. Sadly, things have only got worse - Leeds has had its new airport terminal canned by Robert Jenrick under Boris Johnson, while now both HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail have been cancelled. The Government has no real intention of funding the robust rapid transit network that a city the size of Leeds would have in any other developed country.

As a brit I guessed this would be about leeds lol, the situation is pretty bad. I do think though that the existing rail lines are an incredibly valuable asset, especially the wharfedale lines. I think the budget of any new system could be greatly reduced by utilising the existing lines and simply upgrading track and signals crossrail style for a more frequent service.

I would love to hear your thoughts on Dublin. There’s an issue with urban sprawl because Ireland doesn’t build up; you have people commuting from Dundalk, Greystones, Maynooth, and Navan, and other further out towns to Dublin City for work.

Great video! The situation in Leeds reminds me of what we have in Vilnius. It has a population of more than half a million and it doesn't have any trams or metro. Although it has an extensive bus and trolleybus network, they get overcrowded during rush hour and constantly get stuck in traffic. Maybe it is a good city to discuss in future video

I thought this was going to be about Dublin and their possible plans for a metro, which should be needed to supplement the tram and commuter rail system.

No offence but only a foreigner could be as optimistic about Britain actually doing something like this. Even if a project like this got off the ground it would end up being another over-budget under-performer, probably only one line. Your suggestion of a 24 hour service is laughable, there's no way that would happen. I think your channel is great, and your enthusiasm is wonderful. But every day I wake up in the United Kingdom... [crying]

Unfortunately the current UK government couldn't care less about investing outside of London. All other UK cities are so far behind compared to other Western European counterparts

Thank you for another great video. Channels like this have gotten me really interested in public transport and urban planning.

You should make a video of Thessaloniki, Greece. A city which builds a couple kilometers of metro for many years and it's still far from public usage. Yet the only means of transport in this city is public buses, with very bad quality of service running through congestions.

Ooh, near me. Can we have one on Hull next as it's awful with transit. It only has 288,000 or so living but there are a number of bus routes that are frequently full (packed in rush hour) and sometimes run upto every 5 minutes both inbound and outbound.

I'd recommend a video about the Lagos Rail Mass Transit system that opened this September. It really shows how quickly African countries are developing and what they're learning from us about transit.

I saw the title for this video and had my finger crosses - "Please be Leeds", then I noticed Bridgewater Place in the thumbnail and knew it was. I grew up in a carless household in a little town just outside Dewsbury and lived there until I was 30 except for 4 years at University in Manchester. Living in West Yorkshire actually gives you a very poisoned understanding of distances that despite having moved away 15 years ago, is still engrained in my head. Where I lived wasn't far from being the middle point of West Yorkshire, almost pretty much 7-9 miles away from each of Leeds, Huddersfield, Wakefield, Bradford or Halifax. But they were all over an hour away by bus. I lived in the middle of the 4th densest populated part of the country and going to one of the 5 biggest towns around us was considered a day out. That was my childhood. We got a "Family Day Rover" (Those that know will know ;) every few Saturdays and go out for a full day just for my mum to go to C&A. Everywhere was just so far away! Manchester, York and Sheffield were all about 30-35 miles away and these were for really special occasions we would probably do one a year as they involved going to one of the bigger towns then changing again for another 45 min to an hour journey so could easily involve a 4 hour round trip. It wasn't until I moved to Manchester for University in 1998 and I subsequently bought a car that a I realised just how poisoned my view of distances was. I could get from my flat in Salford to my parent's house in less time than the 212 bus got from Staincliffe to Wakefield. 30 miles vs 7 miles. I also started to realise I had a completely distorted sense of Geography. I moved back to West Yorkshire in 2022 and met my future wife. She grew up in a little village called Whitley. I had heard of it, but had never been, it just seemed so far away, it was about an hour on the bus. But now i have a car and I could leave my house and be at hers to pick her up in less than 10 mins. I have long since moved on and now live in the south in a town the same size as Batley that has 3 railway stations where I am just used to jumping on a train and being in the city 7 miles and 20 mins later, but my sisters are still in the Dewsbury/Batley areas and despite both being in the 40s now and having cars for over 20 years, they still have quite a distorted view of distances and geography and there are places that they just never consider going to because they seem so far away, because for the first 20 years of our life, every trip on public transport took about ano hour......

Four out of 10 residents of Leeds can reach the city’s centre in under half an hour, while in like-sized Marseille the figure is nine out of 10. I stole this fact from a new government white paper.

"Is it Leeds? Its gotta be Leeds" *click* *wait* "Yes. Yes it is"

I'm from a small town near Leeds, within the conurbation. One thing you're missing is that the whole area is SERIOUSLY hilly, far more so than Manchester or London. That, and Leeds doesn't really act like a central hub -- I went there maybe two or three times a year growing up.

Thank you for this! Such a good video and really touching as someone living in Manchester who sometimes visits Leeds and cares about the lack of investment in the North.

Totally agreed, the UK is extremely poor at doing public infrastructure. Leeds also needs a better airport.

Leeds and Bradford were historically the home of trolleybuses as they were good with the hills. The last system was in Bradford. Rail is poor locally - there are still lines that are not electrified. Bradford is a post-industrial town which would benefit greatly from better public transport and connections to Leeds.

One of the prospective Labour candidates for West Yorkshire Mayor actually thought the solution to the region's transport nightmare was a Hyperloop from Leeds to Manchester 🤣🤣

As a leeds resident, i find your proposed maps quite interesting although missing some key routes that could do with light rail. For example, from the city centre to university campuses, and then onto headingley would be one location that i think would benefit. The buses on that route are routinely dangerously overcrowded despite being double deckers running every 10 min or so, sometimes more! A route running down york rd and up belle isle along existing tram tracks would probably be a good idea as well. I also question the choice with the ALM design to not include a direct link between Leeds and Wakefield (another city in the area), this is another route where the bus runs every 10 minutes and still attracts queues halfway down the bus station at peak times! Obviously, a lot of this is just stuff you wouldnt know without experiencing, so no hate. Very nice to see this finally get mentioned in transit communities. My biggest gripe was seeing an old photo of the tram system on the leodis archives, and seeing that the bus stop i used nearly every day used to be a tram stop!

There have been so many projects proposed, and then canceled. Even rails and infrastructure were installed and put in the ground, before digging them up again later. Such a waste of time and money...

Quite common here unfortunately. In my city (Bristol) there are about half a million people with no Tram, metro and only one commuter rail line with 2 trains an hour. The mainline services are good, but most people use the buses which are expensive and slow. It also like many cities used to have an extensive Tram network

Ironically, the times I've been to Leeds, I've always been able to get to where I was going - city centre or not - by rail.

Being from Leeds I LOVE that you’ve made this video. You should do some research on the bus guideways on Scotthall Road and York Road - basically a failed attempt at a BRT system where buses are often forced to travel at slower speeds than other traffic. It is certainly frustrating to see London’s transport get invested in time and time again when my train home from work is cancelled and I have to sit on an old bus for an hour!

Cute idea but absolutely 0% chance of happening in the UK political climate. Affordable housing along transit? Serving underserved communities? Spread the wealth? Yeah, no, not in the UK.

I live in West Yorkshire but not in Leeds itself. A Manchester style system isn't viable for Leeds as there aren’t any suitable disused or under-used rail routes extant in the city's immediate surroundings. The only possible one would be Ilkley, but as this is currently a high quality electrified suburban line which shares part of the route with long distance services. With my crayons out and an unlimited budget I'd go for a Prague-style street-running tramway for the immediate surroundings and inner suburbs of Leeds and Bradford, with electrified heavy-rail for the outlying towns- including reopened or new routes for radial journeys such as Wakefield to Bradford.

As a Londoner, I agree that Leeds/West Yorkshire is poorly served by the lack of high quality frequent mass transportation. Having travelled all of the major conurbations in Britain, West Yorkshire is one of the top three areas that I feel needs urgent investment in public transport as it is harming the local population and economy. The othe two biggest areas IMO are Bristol and The Potteries.

So great to see you covering Leeds! I actually just graduated from Leeds University writing a dissertation on this very topic! Shame you didn’t post the video earlier I could’ve used you as one of my sources.

Population of Leeds isn't 500k, it was 812k in 2021

Merseyrail in the Liverpool City Region was created in the 1970s from separate rail lines terminating at separate terminal stations in the centre. One line was underground in central Liverpool & Birkenhead. These were joined in the centre using tunnels creating a hybrid commuter rail/metro. It also enabled four terminal stations to be eliminated, making matters cheaper to run. One third was cancelled when Thatcher came to power. The city has miles of tunnel and trackbed awaiting trains. Leeds needs to use the Merseyrail model for a metro covering a wide area. Use what is already there as the base. It is a disgrace what has happened to Leeds and Liverpool.

Great video and really well considered options. Years before COVID I used to live in Rawdon in North West Leeds and work in Stourton in South East Leeds. I had to move house after a couple of years as the journey would take up to 1 1/2 hours each way during rush hour. All main routes were simply gridlocked every morning. It could take half an hour to get from Rawdon to Horsforth. The lack of ability to deliver a mass transit system in Leeds, let alone the West Yorkshire area is like some kind of bad joke demonstrating the absolute ineptitude of both the government but also Leeds City Council who have not once, but twice had committed funding. I’m now 44 and working from home, I strongly suspect I’ll be retired before anything substantial ever sees the light of day!

Excellent video. West Yorkshire needs a proper NETWORK of rail services. And it needs REGULATED bus services feeding into that network.

It's always been the issue though that the old Urban West Riding which includes Sheffield, Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley in the Post 1974 South Yorkshire has hills and dales (steep U shaped valley's) that topographically get in the way. Leeds did have a fairly modern tramway until November 1959 with central reservation European style running. The main issue why it went was the pro car politics of both Post War Conservatives and Labour majority governments. The first British Motorway the M1 ran from London to Leeds (since expanded further north) and Leeds City Council and later the Transport Executive WYPTE took a pro car and bus based transport system linking up dales (those aforementioned U shaped valleys) with buses going up and over hills and existing rail lines linking cities [US definition] across the region. Thus MetroBus and MetroTrain were created in 1974 out of the various Corporation owned Buses and British Rail's local lines. Intially local rail was tatty and many stations run down and neglected. WYPTE invested heavily in building small halts and two car rail buses to improve (or at least run) a rail service and encouraged intergrated tickets between bus and rail. Sadly with bus privatisation starting in 1986 and rail privatisation in the mid 1990's the network didn't get to how it was envisaged 49 years ago. WYPTE has tried to keep rail and bus investment up as much as the current legislation allows and the regional Mayor [Tracey Brabin, Labour] has expressed an interest in getting the same level of control and subsidy that Manchester has attained. Meanwhile The Leeds - York/Doncaster/Sheffield/Huddersfield/Halifax/Manchester regional rail service functions frequently but does suffer with congestion and overcrowding due to station platform lengths at smaller stations and the age of some of the rolling stock.

As a Brit, your closing thoughts are bang on the money. Appreciate this informed and sensible consideration of a major city that too ogten goes unnoticed

The most frustrating thing I found living in Leeds was the existing heavy rail infrastructure wasn’t even being used to its full potential to make up for the lack of a metro system. Every morning you’d have totally packed, two carriage trains arriving just twice an hour and barely on time. Hourly trains on Sunday too which again were always packed. Such an easy fix with existing infrastructure but there was never any money or inclination to do it.

Well it's a perfect time to do an episode on Vilnius, Lithuania :D You would be surprised how a mid-size city became a haven for cars (modal split for cars went from 20 to 40% in 30 years). And previous ambitious plans for tram were scrapped for the sake of 'BRT'... and then noone really knows what 'BRT' is, so there's no BRT. So basically there's no strategic thinking in transit policy; some trolleybuses are 35 years old and they are reaaaallly aged and have to be replaced BUT at the same time the transit authority claims customer satisfaction is 9/10 or smth :D BTW, I lived in Toronto for 3 months and Vancouver for 9 months - I just LOVED them both in terms of the transit system!! I could have never imagined that North America has anything good in terms of public transit and I was sooo wrong. And Vilnius would be great for Skytrain! or tram... :)

Your comment about this country having just one city is exactly how it seems to those of us who do not live within the M25 orbital motorway. London gets far more investment per resident than anywhere else in Britain, and most of it coming from Central Government, i.e.. our taxes. Several schemes for Leeds have been proposed, but each time the Government pulled the plug- well, they had Crossrail in London to support, plus further financial handouts to Transport for London. It is ironic that Leeds once had an extensive tram system.

If you think Leeds transport is bad, come and visit Bradford! They keep on changing their mind about NPR and a new station for Bradford more times than ive had hot dinners this month!

Thank you for this video. It has been fascinating and fun to watch.

thank you for covering leeds! i found myself walking to the city centre (2 miles) yesterday because i dislike the bus system so much

Leeds City Council is anti car, they just forgot to create an alternative I.e. rapid transit etc. There is no reason to go there. The transport system is starting to creak, the local paper highlights the bus system which has planned in delay to timetables.

Other cities in Europe that need urban rail are Namur Belgium. Larnaca, Limssol, and Nicosia in Cyprus. Reikjavik Iceland. Galway and Cork in Ireland. Livorno, Palermo, and Pisa Italy. Bodoe, Kristensand, and Stavanger in Norway. Lublin Poland. Gerona, Lerida, Oviedo, Pamplona, Santiago de Campostela, Salamanca, Tarragona Teruel, Toledo, Valladolid and Vigo in Spain, Jonkoping, Kalmar, Ludvika, Sundsvall, and Upsala in Sweden, Belfast Northern Ireland, Aberdeen, Cambridge, Cardiff, Exeter, Hull, Oxford, Portsmouth and Southampton in the UK.

So glad you featured my home City and I've travelled the world and Yes Leeds is seriously lacking a decent Metro System, Not for lack of trying. But the government only really like spending all the Money in London.

Love that you've started doing videos for UK cities, was just wondering if you'd plan on doing a video on the transit systems in the west midlands as there's been a big push towards tram networks in the past decade. Would be nice to see you overlook it and say ways it could be improved.

Love this! can you do Birmingham UK next please!

Interesting. An alternative thought may be to look at the northern corridor as a whole. The existing regional rail Liverpool-Manchester-Huddersfield-Leeds-Hull is not bad and could be beefed up in speed, frequency and connectivity with electrification and better integration between trains and local transport to become the bones of a Randstad-style network.

I was recently in Belgrade (Serbia). That city has an extensive network of trams, buses and trolley-buses, but no metro or similar. Even the main train station has very few trains (it's not possible to reach by train from other countries). The bus to the airport runs every 35-36 minutes.

I lived in Yorkshire for 9 years (Leeds, Sheffield, Huddersfield) and my overriding memory is of how difficult it was to get anywhere without a car. Going from Huddersfield to Sheffield on the slow train would take half the day. On a map its such a short distance. The train winds through every little village on the way. The problem is, you only have the 2 options. Very, very slow train or drive. If your young, old or poor you might not have a car, so it limits where people can get to for work, college, shops etc. It made going to see my gf in Huddersfield such a long journey. We both now live in London and it is so easy to get around on the Tube, train, bus etc.

Guessed it straight away. Leeds is a great city, and really does deserve better.

The current UK government (conservatives) will never build rapid transit for Leeds/ Bradford because they won’t get any votes there. So annoying when politicians put their own needs infront of the country’s

How has this title not been given to Malta? 😂 Your videos are great! Keep it up!!

Whenever i see a video like this i look up the population of the city in question and cry when its less than winnipeg

Not just Leeds, Liverpool also. Also in the South, Bristol has no rapid transit. Birmingham has trams but for a city of its size, it's woefully inadequate, and frankly I didn't know it even existed until recently. Let's not forget Glasgow also in Scotland. UK is a complete shambles when it comes to infrastructure.

Absolutely spot on, much of Northern England has very poor transport links. Leeds's lack of a proper rail system and Sheffield's lack of tram expansion is criminal. Not just West Yorkshire but the Yorkshire region as a whole needs a proper integrated transport policy. Sadly every time something gets announced it gets pulled again a few months or years later. I think Leeds also has a particular problem in that its station is very large. Commuter Rail does exist to an extent but the size and number of people using Leeds station means it can take a long time to get to and from the platform and get through the ticket barriers. If your journey time is 15 minutes by train or 30 minutes by bus but it takes you 10 minutes to get out of the station and another 10 minutes to walk where you're going then you might as well have taken the bus (which it seems Leeds does pretty well). Sadly the UK isn't good at infrastructure projects, and London is the only place where huge projects seem to get the go ahead is in London and then they cost double what they were meant to and it's just accepted.

Love your vids

Having lived there for 17 years, I couldn't agree more about the need for better rapid connections between Leeds and the cities around it. Despite its transit problems, Leeds is a fairly well-off place, and when you visit one of the neighbouring towns like Bradford or Wakefield the contrast in how run down and depressed those places are is shocking. I have many friends there who face daily 60' commutes just to travel 15-20km from the outskirts of Bradford into Leeds, and a fast and frequent MRT system would not only reduce their commute, but also improve life for everyone travelling within Leeds by taking hundreds of cars off the road.

Would love to see a video on Dublin too, quite similar to the UK's Northern cities, fairly terrible heavy rail too

I'm unfortunately a bit more pessimistic; I'm sceptical there *is* much latent demand. I don't live in Leeds but the next major city to its north/east, and the levels of car snobbery are genuinely astonishing. If you don't drive, you will be mocked. The issues aren't just related to infrastructure (though fixing it will help) but culture too - people are utterly wedded to their cars in a way that they aren't in London...

I would be interested to see your thoughts on the South Wales Metro which’ll serve Cardiff and the South Wales valleys - it’s sort of an amalgamation of the existing rail services with some reopenings of old lines and extending some of the services as trams around the city centre and the bay

So proud to see Lausanne in the intro