Councillor Richard Lewis talks about Headingley, trees, Woodhouse Moor, and pollution
by Bill
Cllr Richard Lewis (photo courtesy of Yorkshire post Newspapers)
In an interview broadcast on the 10th March on Radio Aire, Councillor Richard Lewis, the head of Highways said about the trolleybus scheme:
“One of the problems there’s been for Headingley is it has always wanted to say “No” to whatever ideas have come along so that Headingley Bypass – no we don’t want it; Supertram – no we don’t want it; NGT – no we don’t want it…
“Yes we are losing 300 trees and that’s absolutely regrettable, but we will be replacing I think it’s on a 5 to one basis. That is something I would rather we didn’t see but you can’t do any major scheme without some changes to the environment…
“There are a lot of pluses that come with it as well in terms of us getting a pocket park down at St Michael’s church which is a big improvement; improvements to Woodhouse Moor, part of it is fairly grim for an urban environment…
“You’ve got electric vehicles so you’re taking all the pollution out that that produces. You’ve also got the fact that you’ve got traffic moving more quickly. All the modelling is telling us now that we will be reducing all the pollution on this route.”
Those 5 to 1 trees will never compare to the trees that will be lost. They will be 5 year old trees replacing 150 year old trees. The liklihood is that many will never survive to maturity.
When will they realise the ngt is the wrong scheme in the wrong place. To suggest models say less pollution is a total about turn having accepted it would cause more congestion. A violation of the moor and of listed buildings for a couple of minutes off a journey does not seem worth it. To kill mature tree in favour of a few saplings seems a pretty shoddy exchange too