Supertram is Here....Well, Sort of.

Here you have it ladies and gentlemen, the answer to all of Leeds' transport problems. The "First ftr"






This is what the various transport boffins in Leeds City Council, Metro, the DfT and First Leeds claim will ease the chore of the early morning commute in the city centre and will completely make up for the city being shafted on the Supertram project.

The "ftr", which apparently is txt spk for "future" will apparently change the way in which we travel on public transport, with new levels of comfort and convienience, or so the people who sell the things say.

What they fail to mention however, is that this is meerly a single decker bus with a Max Power body kit and repulsive paint-job.

Rather than actually do anything remotely constructive, First have most probably just handed a standard single decker to the first group of burburry cap wearers they found on the local retail park on a Sunday night, given them a few quid to 'do it up' and then sold the resulting mess to unsuspecting local transport authorities who are looking for something possitive to say after wasting some £40m of public money. Hence why the ftr is now in Leeds.

Having seen the actual thing driving around Pudsey, I can assure you that the image above does not even begin to tell of the horror. Perhaps First's plan to get the ftr round town quicker is to frighten other drivers off the road with it's ghastly purple tube.

But for all the fanfare, what First haven't realised is the actual problem with transport in Leeds - it's them.

Thatcher's image of privatisation was one of having the freedom to choose who we recieve our public services from. Everything from the buses and trains to gas, electricity and even the post. We would have had a plethora of private companies offering to serve us and the competition whould make it better for us, the consumer.
And in some ways she was right, we do have a choice. We can either use First, or we can walk. First's monopoly in Leeds means that they can do what the hell the like. They can charge what they want, because there is nobody to start a price war with, they can turn up when they want, because nobody else will arrive and they can go where they want because, well, there's nobody else is there?
Supertram had the bigwigs at First defacating in their pants, mainly because unlike everything else, they wouldn't have been able to get their grubby mits on it and muck it up like they would have wanted to.

Listen to the fanfare of the ftr all you want, but if you don't you won't get very far.