Leeds Trolleybus Public
Enquiry
Day 59
Wednesday 8th October 2014
Recordings of all sessions from
Day 59 are linked here, and I add some commentary below.
In the first morning session of Day 59 of the Leeds
Trolleybus Public Enquiry, Wednesday 8th Oct 2014, Dawn Carey Jones on behalf of the South Headingley Community
Association and herself gives the cases against the NGT trolleybus scheme. Sue Buckle of the SHCA also supports this
case.
In the late morning session of
Day 59 of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry, Wednesday 8th Oct 2014, Dawn
Carey Jones on behalf of the South Headingley Community Association and herself
completes their cases against the NGT trolleybus scheme. Sue Buckle of the SHCA
also supports this case.
In the afternoon session of Day
59 of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry, Wednesday 8th Oct 2014, Mr Walton for the Applicant NGT and the
Inspector cross examine Dawn Carey Jones and Sue Buckle on their cases for
themselves and the South Headingley Community Association against the
trolleybus scheme.
The Enquiry is now wearing away
into the final month, or so we are all hoping.
Even at this late stage the programme is suffering change and
reorganisation. I don’t envy the task
of Mr Graham Groom the Programme Officer or his second in command Mrs Joanna
Vincent in arranging this.
The loss of Ms Katie Lightbody from
this week’s schedule yesterday was something of a blow to the smooth running of
the proceedings, but fortunately we were back on track today with the
presentation of evidence from Dawn Carey Jones of the South Headingley
Community Association, assisted by local resident of some fifty years, Sue
Buckle.
My good friend Dawn has appeared
on a number of occasions for cross examination of the NGT witnesses, but today
she gave her own case.
I always learn something new when
she speaks about the area she loves, and indeed which I lived in myself for
about a decade before I moved up to West Headingley.
Her case covered a wide range of
aspects of the trolleybus scheme, from practical points which the roads
engineers and traffic modellers had neglected to pay attention to or had
detailed poorly, to the monstrous affront of the consultations which had been
almost farcically carried out.
The point of the consultation
responses was raised again and we found out that only 45 responses out of some
340 or so were actually supportive of the trolleybus scheme. Amongst these were general comments that
indicated the writer didn’t really know much about it, but just thought that an
improvement in public transport would be a good thing. The majority of the remainder were opposed,
and there were many concerned complaints about the consultation process, or
about misinformation and the inadequate website etc etc.
This is not only an important
point in respect of how it is certainly perceived by objectors that the
consultations were biased and highly flawed ~ for instance the appearance of
the landscape designs the day after the Plans Panel day in Council last
year ~ but indicates that while some people were in favour of the idea in the
most general principle, that they didn’t really understand what it was that
they were actually supporting.
This is a common and widespread
tale. Former trolleybus supporters are
like ex-smokers, more vigorous in their opposition than those who have never
been seduced by its lures. I saw Dr Maurice
King, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, local Hyde Park
resident and deep green environmentalist, in the audience today. I recall that when he first heard about the
scheme in 2012 he was gung ho for it, but a few weeks later when the subject
was mentioned again he didn’t have a good word to say for it.
You
can’t blame people for this reaction when they find out any of the many
downsides to the trolleybus scheme.
The
destruction of the fancy dress shop, the former garage, and the row of shops in
the angle of Headingley Lane and Victoria Road is a troubling matter for the
small businesses and the local residents who shop there. I particularly admire Dawn in the way she
has stood up to the misrepresentation of these buildings by Metro and the
Council.
They
are perpetually portrayed as run down, ramshackle, in need of repair, little
more than lean tos thrown up and of no importance.
If they
have been allowed to become run down, which is a much exaggerated statement (as
are so many that NGT makes) it cannot be unrelated to the fact that Metro are
the owners of them and through a mixture of their own neglect and the planning
blight associated with their uncertain future, there is demonstration of a
clear desire if not actual intent to get rid of these buildings.
And yet
there are rarely any of them left empty for long. Low rent premises in such a convenient place for passing trade
are hard to come by. I used to commonly
drop into several of these shops when I was around that area.
The
aesthetic value of the shops is also falsely derided by the NGT assessors, who
said that the frontages were cheap modern ones, when actually they still have
the original Victorian features. And
the description in the Heritage documents says they are early 20th
C, when actually documentary evidence exists that they are clearly from at
least the 1890s. These are not the only
buildings which have been wrongly dated as 20th C. Their continued occupancy and use for some
120 years is a testament to their value to the community over the generations.
Leeds
City Council and Metro, now WYCA, have no interest or concern for the needs or
aspirations of local people. If they
did they would not seek to overwrite their very lives with their own grand
designs which will obliterate the history and identity which is an integral
part of the genius loci of the place.
Certainly over the last couple of years since I have started to imagine
what it was like when the young Professor Tolkien would walk these streets
ninety years ago I have been able to see greater value in the surviving legacy
of past generations. A legacy which
would be all too casually swept away for the ‘bold initiatives’ and ‘exciting
design opportunities’ of people whose only interest seems to be in making their
own marks rather than really thinking about the effects they might have on
people and place.
The
road designs that go with all this are often not even safe. Ms Jones identified that the loss of
railings in front of the LS6 Café for a trolleybus stop would tempt pedestrians
to take short cuts across this busy road.
While at the same time putting the trolleybus shelter in front of the
café where people sit outside the south facing frontage, and so which would
have disbenefits to the business and cause obstruction for people queuing for
the trolleybus. Both would be adversely
affected. If you know this frontage you
will know that it is not an appropriate place to be putting a stop for an
articulated vehicle, too near by far as it is to the Hyde Park Corner traffic
lights and opposite the open end of Victoria Road.
The
litany of disregard for heritage and people is added to with their shoddy and
inadequate planning and design. The
trouble for NGT is that they have so little to work with and would have to do
so much more damage than they already purpose to in order to really make it
work, that they are continually faced with having to squeeze through narrow
bottlenecks in our Victorian streets, or to simply destroy them and have done.
Mr
Walton in his cross examination took the now familiar line trying to suggest
that simply getting a witness to agree that some sort of improvement to public
transport arrangements on the Headingley Lane would be beneficial is enough to
justify the trolleybus. He tried to pin
down Dawn Jones demanding that she offer alternate solutions, but she quite
rightly said that she was not an expert and could not make recommendations
other than perhaps a tube, but that her view was that the entire concept of the
trolleybus was flawed and a bad idea and that it was one idea which should be
rejected.
This is
what many people have said, not just long term residents who get accused of
being ‘nimbys’ (although what is wrong with valuing your community heritage and
trying to protect it is not clear to me).
The trolleybus is pretty much the worst of all solutions that might be
applied to Leeds traffic issues.
For the issues go far
beyond the A660, and we must see our problems in the broader context of the
entire city. Eviscerating the string of
pearls that are the Conservation areas along the A660 is only one more of the
political agendas behind the trolleybus, in which community is to be trampled
under foot in the stampede for endless economic development which serves none but
the large corporate empires. Meanwhile
the slaves are to be trolleybussed into the work pens in the city, standing
like cattle, seven to a square meter, through the bulldozed remnants of our
communities.
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