Leeds Bradford International Airport

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Stuart Andrew]

My hon. Friend is another constituency neighbour, and he is absolutely right about the traffic jams that go right through Greengates, which people try to avoid as much as they can. Adding a new link road up to the airport would do nothing to alleviate the traffic on that road. In fact, as I said, a new link road would make the traffic much worse.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the biggest problem when assessing accessibility to the airport is that solutions have always been sought in and around the airport’s immediate vicinity, rather than across the whole region? Many people from my constituency also access the airport, so we must look for solutions on a much wider scale.

[Stuart Andrew]

Absolutely. I hope that the rail link to the airport is the start of a wider connection improvement across Yorkshire. The new rail link is the only option for me, because it offers an opportunity for greater modal shift, which will mean that we are better placed to cope with any future expansion. We need only look at other airports across the country that have direct rail links to see how successful they have been; I am thinking of places such as Manchester airport. A number of rail options are available to us. Some of them are gold-plated, but I would advocate going with a stage 1 approach that links the airport to the existing Leeds, Horsforth and Harrogate line. That would mean that a journey time of as little as nine minutes would be possible from the centre of Leeds, which is a pipe dream for anyone trying to achieve the same journey by road.