Senior councillors approve £20million for park and rides at Temple Green and Alwoodley

Senior councillors at the council’s executive board on Wednesday 24 July, agreed to progress plans for a new 550-space car park and ride at Alwoodley and up to 400 additional car spaces at Temple Green.Together these sites along with an extension to Elland Road and new Stourton park and ride will create an additional 2,000 park and ride spaces across the city.This work is from Connecting Leeds – which is to invest an unprecedented £270million in the transport network of the city.Connecting Leeds, the long-term transport strategy for Leeds, aims to improve all aspects of transport and travel in the city and connecting to the wider Leeds City Region.The report highlighted investing £14million in a new Alwoodley Park and Ride site located on council owned land opposite Leeds Grammar School. The location has the advantage of intercepting traffic moving towards Leeds from Harrogate on the A61 North, reducing traffic levels in the north part of the city.It is planned the site would provide a high quality, high frequency bus service to encourage people out of their cars and reduce vehicle congestion.Just two years ago the 1,000-space bus park and ride site at Temple Green, in east Leeds opened. Temple Green park and ride has proved very successful and is over 85 per cent full at peak times. At current growth levels it will reach maximum capacity before the end of this year. The extra investment in the site extension is £6.5 million.Connecting Leeds are currently consulting on Temple Green expansion plans and people can have their say on the Council’s website until Friday 9 August.Together these sites could see over 400,000 less vehicles driving into the city centre per year and take-out 5,800 tonnes of carbon, therefore improving air quality, reducing noise and emission levels. These improvements will help to encourage more people to travel by bus, further reducing congestion on the city’s highways and will contribute to the target of doubling bus patronage over ten years.The designs of the park and ride schemes are subject to planning permission and then developed with our construction partner, with the work expected to complete by March 2021.