Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 6
Thursday, 8 May 2014
Wednesday, 7 May 2014
Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 5
Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 5
May 7 2014
On the fifth day of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry, Gregory Jones QC continued to cross examine Dave Haskins, Project Director for NGT, the Applicant for the Transport Works Order to build the trolleybus system from Holt Park in the north of Leeds to Stourton in the south by the M1.
Audio recordings of today's and last week's sessions are available for streaming on my mixcloud
site, www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire
Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry Day 5: May 7 2014 First Morning Session.
Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry Day 5: May 7 2014 Early Afternoon Session.
Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry Day 5: May 7 2014 Late Afternoon Session.
Mr Jones’ examination ranged over many diverse matters of importance to the planning of such a project. He appeared to have a far more encyclopaedic knowledge of trolleybus systems than Mr Haskins himself, citing problems in locations as diverse as the Ukraine, Clermont-Ferrand and San Francisco, deriving from local peculiarities. One issue that has come up more than once is the problem of supply of spare parts over a projected sixty year period when it would be the only trolley system in the UK. There is a background thrust to the NGT argument that they think trolleybuses are the transport technology of the future and that they desire to implement further lines around Leeds, possibly a link to Bradford in time and systems in other West Yorkshire cities, again with the suggestion of linking routes between them. This is a projected view of a future which many of us find untenable.
The subject of consultation came up in the contexts of public consultation and consultation with the bus company. In the former case Mr Haskins went to some length to justify and excuse withholding the feedback from the 2012/3 public consultation events suggesting that the feedback from consultation five years ago which had been published was sufficient, not allowing for any development in awareness by the community on such issues as this. This matter has now moved on, since at the end of today’s sitting of the Enquiry photocopies of the feedback with the personal identifying data blocked out were finally surrendered to Objectors from the A660 Joint Council and North West Leeds Transport Forum.
Mr Jones pressed Mr Haskins quite strongly on the matter of why he and his team had not engaged actively with First about developing public transport. Again Mr Haskins was evasive, saying at one point that he had no way of knowing what might happen to existing bus services if trolleybus was implemented, and seemed genuinely surprised when Mr Jones put it to him that he might have approached First about this, as well as engaging with them before the decision to go for a trolleybus in the first place. He suggested that the aim of a transport strategy should be to maintain and enhance services, not put them into unknown and speculative situations.
The number of people required to stand on the trolleybus was dealt with in some detail this afternoon. Exact figures are not available, but it is clear that well over half of passengers would be expected to stand for the length of their journeys. A brief sense of farce possessed the Enquiry room and its occupants when Mr Haskins insisted, quite poker faced, that he thought it quite normal that people wouldn’t mind standing. The association between a quality public transport service and being able to travel in comfort seemed beyond his grasp. This has certainly been one subject that has come up strongly amongst the local objectors I know and have met.
I would say that there does seem to be a disconnect between NGT and Leeds City Council in relation to the citizens and communities of Leeds when it comes to this project of theirs. They have attempted to withhold the public feedback, have neglected to talk to the bus company, have not properly examined the pros and cons of both the Supertram and other trolley systems, they are promoting a scheme which would be unique in the UK, while battery and hybrid technology is making advances by the month, senior administrators behind the trolleybus cannot even bring to mind the single largest environmental site along the route that would be lost, and the project director has complete confidence in his own ability to have projected the costs correctly, and that future implementation of the scheme would be held within that projection without problems.
This is looking more and more to me like a vanity project. My research has shown me that there are a small number of locations where trolleybuses have worked, but Wellington, which is shortly to give them up, while probably being the most successful, also demonstrates the reasons why that was so. Implemented 90 years ago when there was far less road traffic than today, the city developed around the structure of the trolley lines, with wide roads, rather than what is being proposed for Leeds, both north and south, which is to carve its way along the route utterly changing the character of everywhere it touches.
We need to find solutions that fit the city, not refit the city around some new solution. And it should not be done simply because central government is trying to hold a gun to our heads and say ‘This or nothing else’. When it is such a bad idea as the one we have here it would be far better to stop and think further about what a public transport system is for. It is to serve the city and its population, not the other way round. What are we to do when our communities are expected to become no more than passageways for others to pass through as quickly as possible? We must fit the transport around the people and the landscape.
One last point I should like to draw attention to concerning the trolleybus is the tweeting by Cllr Neil Walshaw at the weekend to cast doubt on the sincerity of First Bus in their stated intention to develop an improved system of transport. I would suggest that this is the classic political tactic of ‘look over there’. The purpose and function of the Public Enquiry is to examine the NGT trolleybus system, and the lawyers for First, along with numerous community and private objectors, are doing an excellent job of that. It is literally being tested to destruction as the saying goes. Should we then go ahead with such a flimsy and speculative scheme as the trolleybus because the party which is exposing its total inadequacy would also suffer in its own way like the rest of us if it actually happened? It is the suitability of the implementation of the radical and speculative trolleybus which is being examined, not that of the bus company which already operates some of the best services in Leeds along that route and Cllr Walshaw should bear that in mind, not try to slip the trolley folly past us while he hopes we look elsewhere.
The Public Enquiry continues.
Saturday, 3 May 2014
Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 4
Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 4
May 2 2014
Friday May 2 2014 was the last day of the first week of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry and the witness in the hot seat was Dave Haskins, Project Director for NGT.
The morning was spent with his own statement, followed by a cross examination from Neil Cameron QC for the Applicant (NGT).
Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry Day 4: May 2 2014 First Morning Session.
Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry Day 4: May 2 2014 Late Morning Session.
The cross examination from Objectors began after lunch with Gregory Jones QC for First West Yorkshire.
Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry Day 4: May 2 2014 Afternoon Session.
A major part of Mr Jones cross examination is focussing on the relation to the Supertram project which was cancelled some years ago. My own memory of this is a bit hazy, so it is extremely helpful for me, and doubtless many of those following this enquiry, to have some very detailed examination of it. (I used to watch Look North in those days, and I really don’t recall much coverage if any of that very important matter other than someone occasionally sounding excited about it.)
A major fact which emerged was that the costs of
Supertram were underpredicted by a massive 40% in the opinion of the then
Secretary of State. However Mr Haskins
would not agree, even after being repeatedly asked the same question, that
extreme caution had to be exercised in managing the predicted costs of such an
infrastructure project and claimed that he believed that he had effectively
done so. He referred to a letter which
his team had apparently written to the then Secretary of State in November 2005
contesting the suggestion that the costs had been underpredicted. This assessment of underprediction was based
on the bids that were made for the project, which were in the region of almost
40% higher than the cost claims made by the then promoters. The letter in response to the Secretary of
State has not been included in the evidence as yet, and will be produced later,
probably when the questioning resumes on Wednesday 7th May. There does not appear to have been a reply
from the Secretary of State to Metro at the time.
This was quite a complex cross examination to follow
and I was really glad of being able to listen back to my audio recording to be
able to properly understand it in order to write this blog. (It can be found from about five minutes
onwards on the audio from the afternoon session linked above.)
Two matters from this immediately come to mind. Firstly the obvious one that while Mr
Haskins does at least appear to have some knowledge of the Supertram, unlike
his boss Mr Farrington who had made no review of it, he seems complacently
overconfident that he can bring this £250 million pound infrastructure project
in on budget, and will not make a concession to humility and acknowledge that
extreme caution must be applied on budgets of such an immense size. (I’m looking into when this figure dates
from, as it may be some years old.)
The second is that this is a debate which it seems
Leeds City Council and Metro would rather was not made in public, since they
have refused to put in place any audio or video recording or streaming
facilities, despite that request being made by Cllr John Illingworth (Lab,
Kirkstall), amongst others.
The BBC too have almost entirely ignored the Leeds
Public Enquiry into the Transport and Works Act Order for the NGT
Trolleybus. Clearly the tragic incident
which occurred at a Leeds College at the beginning of the week has had a lot to
do with this. While that is a major
occurrence for the City, the trolleybus scheme is the largest potential infrastructure
project since the late sixties and would have an immense impact on the lives of
hundreds of thousands of people.
One can’t help being reminded of that assistant in
the Labour Party who suggested in an email on September 11, 2001, that it might
be a good day to bury some bad news.
Even the Yorkshire Evening Post, which has given more
coverage to this than the BBC, has not to our knowledge had a reporter down to
the Enquiry.
When I began making recording of the Public Enquiry
it was just as a kind of personal project, but it is now emerging as an
important document which is in the public domain. Council members may well have their own stealth recording going
on as I have heard rumour that the project management team are taking a feed
from the microphone system. I don’t
object to this for the management team, as it would primarily be for the
Inspector’s use I should imagine, and I think it essential that he should have
such a copy. But there should be
multiple sources, and one of those should be from the Council as the drivers
for this exercise and responsible to the citizens of Leeds for openness of
information. I am most grateful to the
Inspector, Mr Martin Whitehead for not standing in the way of objectors picking
up this responsibility.
The cross examination continued in much detail,
raising issues such as the massive overrun on the costs of Edinburgh tram and
the Atkins report. I am presently
somewhat impressed by the encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject which Gregory
Jones QC is demonstrating of the subject and his ability to take apart the
pretensions of the NGT project. I shall
have to write a piece on the way the Enquiry is working at some point, as it is
a fascinating experience to see such skill at work.
The Enquiry continues on Wed 7th May at
10am in the Regus Suite at Wellington Place in the city centre.
Thursday, 1 May 2014
Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 3
Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 3
May 1 2014
On the third day of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry we
found out more about Mr Martin Farrington’s value systems, and how little
research he has put into the areas which would be affected by the proposed
trolley system. I would urge you to
listen to some of the audio recordings of the Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry that I have been making with the
assistance of the gentlemen of the North West Leeds Transport Forum.
Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry Day 3: May 1 2014 First Morning Session.
Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry Day 3: May 1 2014 Late Morning Session.
Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry Day 3: May 1 2014 Early Afternoon Session.
Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry Day 3: May 1 2014 Late Afternoon Session.
The most extraordinary moment of the day for me was when
Mr Farrington said that he couldn’t bring the fields of Headingley Hill to his
mind. The largest and most complex
green site that would be lost, of the entire route, and he can’t bring it into
his mind. As if it was some little
detail that is beneath his consideration.
Well, he does see himself as a big
picture man, and he does like to delegate to his subordinates, like
getting them to write parts of his statement, for instance.
Rather than detail a list of things that Mr Farrington
doesn’t know or hasn’t looked into, I’d like to examine the psychology of
someone who would promote a plan which involves destroying green areas of great
character, in an area that he is forced to acknowledge is very short on green
space, and not even be able to bring to mind the places which he intends to
destroy. This is arrogance and
complacency of a fairly extreme kind.
It is fascinating to see the deadpan way in which he explains his
beliefs that the local community has been weighed in the balance of his
judgement and found wanting compared to the big businesses and shopping malls
of the city centre which he seeks to promote.
He was unmoved by the introduction of ideas by Chris Foren
(Chair of the A660 Joint Council) in his cross examination about how there is
an emerging view that in already developed countries such as the UK, further
perpetual economic development beyond a certain level fails to serve the
benefit of the people. Indeed it is
becoming clear to many that such over development serves only the limitless
appetites of corporate expansion and domination of our culture. Which, incidentally, many now recognise as
being the source of the ecological catastrophe we are currently facing on out
planet.
At its best, Utilitarianism devalues the individual human
being in its insistence that the happiness of the greater number is the basis
of good, and that therefore those who do not conform to this should be subject
to the influence and domination of that great number. But the present scenario goes well beyond even this travesty of
ethics. Entire communities and
landscapes are to be engineered for the benefit of those who see themselves as
the elites and worthy of directing the path of social development.
Just as Africa and the Middle East were carved up both
before and after the Great War (WW I) by Whitehall mandarins with rulers on
maps of places that they would never even consider visiting, we see our modern
Leeds City Council mandarins such as Mr Farrington carving up the map of Leeds
without any actual reference to the landscape or communities which have evolved
there over centuries. They are simply
to be deleted and overwritten like some memory card whose files are no longer
required.
I would suggest that this it is actually a pathological
state of mind that the steersmen behind Leeds City Council are in and are
attempting to inflict on its citizens.
They see themselves as knowing what is best for us and ignore the
citizens responses as I discussed on the blog for the first day of the
Enquiry. It is quite fascinating to me
to listen to how people like Farrington and Cllr Richard Lewis dismiss the
opposition to the trolleybus by saying that they expect to only hear the
activists and that really this is only a small part of the population. The absurdity of this position is exposed by
Chris Foren when he suggests that you can only count those who vote or express
an opinion and that you cannot attribute anything to those who express
none. I have already discussed the
immense obstacles, both practical and psychological, to be overcome in the
process of negotiating the bureaucratic assault course of participating in the
Public Enquiry on my blog for Day 1.
These people will do anything to ignore or deny the voices
of those who speak against them. And we
must remember that Mr Farrington is an appointed civil servant, not an elected
representative. He is a servant of the
city and its citizens, that is what the words ‘civil servant’ mean. And yet he takes the view that he can
exercise complete influence and domination of the citizenry without even
knowing those parts of the city which he wants to change. It is a form of sociopathy to have the
desire and intention of doing things to people and the way they live their
lives without any concern or feeling about how they would be affected by one’s
actions.
Some may feel that I couch my analysis in strong terms ~
pathological states of mind, sociopathy and the like. But what terms are available to us when these people seek to
exercise a condition of complete influence or domination upon us?
Such conditions can only be imposed through
immoral disregard of human rights.
Fortunately there is still some backbone of liberty left in our nation
and it has been heartwarming to meet others who are motivated to stand against
this tyranny, and to hear the denunciations of this sham. I am beginning to feel that the Public
Enquiry may not only roundly see off this trolleybus nonsense (which as Cllr
Richard Lewis said last year, is ‘more of a highways scheme than one of public
transport’) but that in the process we may gain a closer awareness of the dark
underbelly of Leeds City Council and the network of those who seem to have
hijacked the administration of our beautiful city and have been steering it
into troubled waters with their grandiose schemes and petty ambitions.
Please share the links to the recordings of the Public Enquiry with your friends
on social media. If you don’t have the
time to follow the audios in full and you just want to hear one which
will give you a good understanding of what is going on, listen to this,
starting about eight or nine minutes in.
Gregory Jones QC working on Mr Farrington and exposing the whole
nonsense as a house built on sand. It’s
also a jolly good laugh. I posted it to
a friend last night and said ‘If you start listening to this you won’t be able
to stop until it’s over’ and he tried to listen to only ten minutes before going
to bed, but he couldn’t tear himself away from it and listened to the whole
thing just short of an hour and a half.
The session following is almost as good!
Wednesday, 30 April 2014
Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 2
Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 2
April 30 2014
Today felt like a good day for the Stop The Trolleybus
campaign. The Enquiry got down to
business with the cross examination of the first witness, Mr Martin Farrington,
Chief Development Officer for Leeds City Council who has taken a major role in
the development and promotion of the Applicant’s scheme, New Generation
Transport trolleybuses.
Gregory Jones QC for First West
Yorkshire tore into Mr Farrington and elicited such extraordinary pieces of
information as that when he took up his current post and began to promote a
trolleybus scheme, he had never actually reviewed the pros and cons of the
Supertram which had been cancelled a few years before, or that he had only
found out yesterday about the 1999 Liverpool Public Enquiry into what had been a proposal
of a trolleybus development there, but which had been rejected by the Inspector
and the then Secretary of State. (I had heard about that perhaps a year ago.)
The Cross examination went on for most of the day but the first session was the most impressive. It can be heard on this recording which a colleague kindly made on my Zoom H2 audio recorder.
http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-day-2-april-30-2014-first-morning-session/
Exposed and highlighted were the
facts that this would be the only trolleybus scheme in the England and the only
right hand drive one in the world, suggesting major problems for future supply
of parts and vehicles, and that it was projected as having a lifetime of at
least sixty years, or more.
Mr Farrington was forced to admit
that he didn’t know how much Leeds City Council had spent already on the
development costs ~ I have heard the figure of five millions more than once in
the media.
Again and again he was obliged to
acknowledge that he hadn’t read documents relating to the case and that he
hadn’t even written all of his own statement himself.
It is quite staggering to
consider that this man is a civil servant responsible to the citizens of Leeds,
and yet holds immense power in planning decisions, being behind many shopping
malls and similar developments. This is
the face of the unaccountable bureaucrat, and it is good to see it exposed to
the light of day.
One has to wonder how we got into
such a position, but it has to be acknowledged that the public has paid too
little attention for too long to what bureaucracy and government get up to
while we are getting on with our lives.
To discover that this kind of fiasco has been planned behind our backs
is a rude awakening.
But the good news is that
residents and institutions all along the proposed route have stood up and said
NO to this thing that would be inefficient, expensive and destructive to our
beautiful city.
The next step after the Enquiry
has been won must be to scrutinise the decision making of the networks of
people in the Council who have been running things for the last few years. How a scheme as inappropriate and outdated
as a trolleybus could even come up on the agenda is a question that needs to be
asked.
Tuesday, 29 April 2014
Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Begins 29 April 2014
Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Begins
29 April 2014
The long expected Leeds
Trolleybus Enquiry began today. I shan't be giving a blow by blow account
of what was said as you can listen to my audio recordings of the three sessions
on my Mixcloud site.
But some lay commentary may give an impression about it.
I dare say that this kind of thing can seem rather impenetrable to many people with all the formalities. There have been so many stages of comments and objections that one can feel lost in the detail.
An
important entry point for some will be the fact that the first opportunity to
feedback on what they thought of this proposed trolleybus scheme came with the
‘Consultation Events’ of which there were about 18, held from late 2012 through
to the late summer of 2013 at community centres and church halls along the
route of the proposed trolleybus from Holt Park to Stourton.
A great deal of concern has
been generated by the refusal of NGT and Leeds City Council to release
transcripts of the several hundred comments and emails which these generated,
on what many believe are spurious grounds, as detailed by Chris Foren of the
A660 Joint Council of community associations along the northern part of the
route, to be heard at the beginning of the second recording linked above.
One rather throwaway remark
that was made to this was that those people who filled in feedback forms at
consultation events could have made formal objections if they had wanted to.
This is to almost entirely
ignore the immense and complex nature of the task involved in entering a formal
complaint into a process such as this.
One’s objection has needed to be entered a total of three times. Firstly a formal objection had to be entered
by a certain date beyond which it would be rejected. Then a detailed Statement of Case had to be returned, again by a
fixed date, this time with documents of supporting evidence for one’s
objection. Finally, a ‘Proofs of
Evidence’ case had to be returned condensing the entire case into 1,500 words,
and including printouts of all documents, each requiring four copies. Oh, and I forgot to mention that at each
stage the Secretary of State for Transport as well as the solicitors for the
Applicant (NGT) have had to be copied in.
I have run through two
printer cartridges and at least half a block of printer paper in this process,
not to mention that each bundle of documents has cost several pounds to send in
the post.
Four of my friends have
asked me to represent their cases for them because they have felt that they
didn’t have the time or expertise to engage with such a lengthy and detailed
process which required such sustained attention.
I myself have been fortunate
enough to receive a higher education at Leeds University, and yet still find
myself feeling quite overawed by the magnitude of the task of sustaining an
objection through this level of complexity.
It is no surprise to me that
many people feel hopelessly bewildered and disempowered by such a process, and
may feel that they system is institutionally geared to a form of discourse which
is impenetrable to all but a few.
My own personal feeling is
that Leeds City Council has played this game in a cynical attempt to dominate
the people of Leeds. The withholding of
the public responses is a first step to disempower the people by attempting to
silence their voice.
The refusal to allow the
Leeds City Council online streaming facilities to be used for the Public
Enquiry is a disgrace. The equipment is
hardly used in the Council Chamber even ~ there have been several occasions that
I have been aware of when planned webcasts of debates have failed to go out due
to ‘technical issues’.
When something like the
Public Enquiry comes along which really merits a webcast the bigwigs of Leeds
City Council are to be imagined sitting on their hands whistling. They don’t want the Public Consultation
responses to be in the public domain, and they don’t want the proceedings of
the Public Enquiry into the proposed NGT Trolleybus scheme to be in the public
domain either.
Excuses are made by Leeds
City Council that the documents are available in the City Library and online,
but there is no substitute for actually listening to people explain and debate
the issues. And many people find this a
much more accessible way to engage with what is quite complex material.
In the digital age audio or
even video documentation and broadcasting of events in the public domain is so
inexpensive and simple that anyone can do it.
And so we have. If Leeds City
Council and Metro will not act with honour and make the proceedings widely
available in at least an audio webcast format, then we, the Objectors will, and
already have begun to, as evidenced by the recordings of today’s sessions
linked to above. I also appreciate the
assistance of other objectors in performing the technical duties involved in
making these recordings.
The arrogant disdain with
which Leeds City Council, or at least the Executive Board and the top Civil
Servants, treat the public and the City at large is no longer to be
tolerated. We must remember that these
people are Public Servants, and they should not act as if they were our masters
who own the City. They only hold it in
trust for the people. The party whip
scandal is a further example of the way that a few have attempted to impose
their will on the entire city, even when it is known that many Councillors, of
all parties, are against the proposals.
I shan’t here go into the
moral decrepitude of Councillors who don’t have the backbone to vote on their
conscience over the largest issue of infrastructure and planning issue for
Leeds since the early seventies.
A few at the top would
impose this insane folly and attempt to get away with it by withholding
information and misleading the public as to the truth of the strength of
feeling. Divide and conquer.
A united front to these
vandals who want to destroy our beautiful city is the only way forward, and
disseminating information about it as widely as possible, which we shall
hopefully be able to continue to do in making these audiocasts of the Public
Enquiry.
Thursday, 13 February 2014
The Poor Standard of Leeds Highways Roadworks 2014
I've uploaded this video because
I am sick to death of the shoddy work carried out by Leeds Highways
Department.
This is the full text of what I wrote to go with the video I uploaded to YouTube, but was too long for it all to be included. There is a lot more I would like to say and this is only the beginning as I am most unhappy with the poor standard of surveying and engineering execution carried out by Leeds Highways.
This video is of a corner at the
end of the street where I live, but it could probably be any number of places
in Leeds, or elsewhere in the UK.
This corner had been all broken
down and in need of work for several years, so after I had mentioned it to my local
Councillors and the people in Highways it was eventually done (probably no
connection) in late 2012.
I was very disappointed to see
that the level of the drain had been raised by two inches or more so that the
rainwater in the gutter would flow away from it, and on either side, huge
puddles developed. I drew this to the
attention of my local Councillors again, as well as the Highways people. I had apologies for the standard of work
from the Councillors (not their fault) but heard nothing from Highways. In the early summer of 2013 a new drain was
sunk in the gutter on the far side of the black and white posts you can see in
the video only a few feet from the existing drain, relieving that sink, but not
the side shown here. The level issue,
the primary cause, was not addressed.
Late in 2013 a third set of works
were carried out here when the entire area of the bus 'circus' ~ the wide area
with laybys for buses to turn round ~ up to the crossroad junction was
resurfaced, including the drain by the black and white post again.
For anyone who gives a fig about
standards of road building or accountability for public works, this is not an
acceptable way to carry out these kind of works.
The supervising engineers for
works such as this should properly survey the levels and plan for the camber to
drain towards gutters which then feed into drains. All this requires careful attention to the use of spirit levels
and surveying equipment. Not seriously
difficult, but something which just takes proper attention to the detail
required. Judging by this work done
here, no-one properly attended to the levels involved.
This is absolutely basic
stuff. You may say, Does it really
matter? Well this is money not being
well spent, and physical infrastructure being built to a lower standard of
function and durability than could be attained with exactly the tools and
equipment if the supervising engineer did what he should. In other words, the people who are doing
these jobs are cutting corners, not paying attention to details that the Romans
knew about when they built their roads two thousand years ago, and not
producing work up to the the industry standard.
And what is worse, the
supervisors and bigwigs of the Highways Department don't even check the work to
see if the standards are being adhered to.
A few yards further along from
where I videoed this, in the bus layby, a drain had its 60 year old drain cover
replaced with a modern one (which is far less aesthetically designed) and yet
the drain itself is still blocked and another long puddle stretches along where
the bus pulls up for the passengers to get on.
(They rebuilt the drain cover, but didn't clean it out, like putting new
wall paper over old without any preparation at all.) My neighbout actually mentioned this to me, so I am not a lonely
anorak complaining in the dark. I
rarely use that particular stop for boarding, only alighting, so I hadn't
noticed that the bus sprays the waiting passengers from the long puddle by the
kerb with the blocked drain when it pulls up.
These new drain, 'gully grates' I
believe they are called, do not appear to have hinges on them so far as I can
tell, so they cannot be lifted for drain cleaning like the old ones which did
have hinges. Whatever the case, this
drain is totally blocked and should have been dealt with when the road was
resurfaced.
This is work that was done in
about November of 2013, so it is extremely recent. And a few yards further along from that, at the pedestrian
crossing, the dropped curb has another one of these long puddles that settles
along it just like the others I have already drawn attention to because of
badly aligned levels, and so pedestrians are forced to walk through or step
over these puddles when there has been rain (and we've had a lot this winter).
These kind of poor standards are
endemic in the road works that Leeds Highways Department are responsible for,
and they are wasting our money while giving us poor quality service.
The latest thing I have noticed
is that perfectly sound cast iron drain covers which have a certain aestetic
and a patina of age which you simply couldn't buy, have started to be replaced
with modern steel gratings which are harsh and jagged in appearance compared to
the more attractive traditional designs which have lain in our streets for, in
some cases, over a century. The drain
covers which have been changed in this end section of Queenswood Drive had been
there for over 60 years and were in sound condition, just like all those along
our road, every thirty yards or so. It
is not just the traditional appearance which is important here, but the cost or
replacing perfectly sound street furniture with new stuff that must be costing
the city a great deal of money. If a
new steel drain cover cost £20, (I believe it could be more) and there are
about 120 drain grilles per mile, then the costs of replacement would be £2,400
per mile or more. This is a
guesstimate, but food for thought nonetheless.
Council officials have given me
absurd excuses as to why this is being done, such as ~ people steal the old
cast iron ones. I ask people all the
time if they have ever seen a missing cast iron drain cover, and never has
anyone answered positively to that, so I have to question this claim that many
go missing. I am in the process of
being about to enter an FOI request as to how many of these have been stolen in
the last five years and await the response.
And the idea of removing them all
so that they can't be stolen is, I have to say, perverse... I mean ~ how many
have been stolen, and how much did that cost, compared to the automatic removal
of probably thousands already and the cost of replacing them with these new
ones? I don't know the figures yet, but
it comes down to the cost of putting in new ones against retaining perfectly
sound ones and only paying for the (somewhat mythical I suspect) grates which
are claimed to go missing.
There is no need to replace these
cast iron grates. There are examples
around Headingley and Leeds which are over a hundred years old, and they are
barely distinguishable from those that are 60 years old. In other words, these things have a usable
life of well over a century and almost never go wrong or break, and yet
Highways have been stripping them out and replacing them for the last year and
a half or so with little or no public consultation, it just happens and then
it's a fait accompli.
At a time of unprecedented cutbacks
in public expenditure, this department is spending money on unnecessary
replacement of perfectly sound and aesthetic street furniture. This is just ludicrous and one has to ask
who is getting the contracts for the replacements?
Then they say that the old ones
are curved so they are dangerous. By no
means all are curved, a good proportion are actually flat, but those that are
curved were made that way so that water more easily flows into them, and they
have been an accepted standard design across the whole of Britain since at
least the late nineteenth century.
There are places in old Woodhouse and Headingley Hill where examples of
these which are from the 1880s are still in place and in one piece. To attempt to expunge this historic design
of street furniture from our cities and towns on the basis of some trumped up
health and safety excuse is absurd. How
much would it cost to replace the at least millions, probably tens of millions,
and possibly hundreds of millions of these cast iron grilles throughout
Yorkshire and the rest of the UK? It
reminds one of Pol Pot's attempt at creating a Year Zero, seeking to entirely
wipe out the past. When one pays it a
little attention it not only appears to be a completely bizarre and
inappropriate obsession with deleting and overwriting the past, but one has to
question where such a motivation comes from when there are so many other more
important things for the Council's various departments to be putting their
limited resources to.
At the very least the Highways
Department is out of touch with the reality of the present time and needs to be
reined in from profligate spending and made to concentrate on the engineering
standards of its works which are erratic at best.
At worst one is led to question
the motives for such policies which are both unnecessary and wasteful of the
public purse.
I have previously challenged
Highways on their removal of stone paving and now they are removing other
heritage street furniture unnecessarily, assuming perhaps that no-one will
notice, even in conservation areas where such things should not be permitted.
Well, people do notice. My father was a roads engineer in the West
Africa when I was a child, and he built better roads in the Nigerian bush fifty
years ago than most of these contractors do for Leeds in the 21st century.
It is a scandal that these public
servants fail to properly justify the trust that is given to them and wilfully
misuse that position to produce shoddy workmanship and unnecessary destruction
of our traditional heritage.
Complain about this waste of our
public resources to your local Councillor,
and the
Chief Executive of Leeds City
Council
tom.riordan@leeds.gov.uk
Leader of the Council
keith.wakefield@leeds.gov.uk
or Head of Highways
richard.lewis@leeds.gov.uk
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