Metro has welcomed today’s decisions by the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Transport Board (RTB) to give its backing to almost £80m of transport funding for the Leeds City Region.

A new southern entrance to Leeds City Station, a new Parkway station to the east of Leeds, the extension of the Yorcard smartcard ticketing scheme across the whole of the Yorkshire and Humber region and further developments to York’s Park and Ride scheme were all given the go-ahead at today’s meeting.

"This package of schemes will enable us to make some important developments on the City Region’s rail network develop simpler, more integrated ticketing through Yorcard, and sees some important developments to York’s highly successful Park and Ride scheme” said Metro Chairman Councillor Ryk Downes.

“However if we are going to combat growing congestion and the business and social costs that come with it, we still need to find extra capacity above and beyond the Government’s proposed 60-90 additional carriages to meet increased demand on the rail network,” he continued.

“We have drawn up detailed plans to achieve this extra capacity through new stations, trains and 500-plus park-and-ride spaces at stations, and have devised a scheme to improve access and encourage regeneration along the busy corridor between the Aire Valley and Bradford, and will be making the case for these to the RTB at future meetings.”

The schemes approved at today’s meeting are:

Yorcard (£28m)

Yorcard is a regional integrated smartcard ticketing scheme. The catalyst for this project is the imminent introduction of almost one million smartcards in the region as a result of the English National Concessionary Travel Scheme. This project aims to build on this by introducing a multimodal, integrated and cross boundary smartcard system to cover the whole of the Yorkshire and Humber region.

Leeds Station Southern Entrance (£11m)

The scheme will create a new passenger access on the southern-side of Leeds rail station. It will increase the passenger capacity of the station and significantly reduce access times to/from the developing southern section of Leeds City Centre.

East Leeds Parkway (£20m)

This scheme reflects the Leeds City Region Transport vision and would be the first phase of electrification of the routes east of Leeds. This new parkway station would significantly boost park and ride spaces available (it includes parking for 500 cars), would facilitate an increased train service to local stations east of Leeds and would also free up capacity at Leeds Station for other service expansion by allowing some terminating services to continue to the east.

York Park & Ride – Askham Bar Site (£5m)

Relocation of the existing overused 550 space Park and Ride site at Tesco’s to a former landfill site that provides 1250 spaces and, due to its proximity to the East Coast Main Line provides potential for a tram train option to be developed in the future.

York Park & Ride – A59 (£10.5m)

Construction of a 750 space car located just outside the York Ring Road.

York Park & Ride – Clifton Moor Site (£5m)

Construction of a 500 space car park located just within the York Ring Road.