Recently we raised two sets of road safety concerns with the council’s Highways & Transportation department: bicycle accidents on Headingley Lane and cars going the wrong way along the one-way stretch of Alma Road.

Council officials have now responded on both issues, and have agreed that the concerns are real. The stretch of Headingley Lane between Hyde Park corner and Bainbrigge Road has seen 40 accidents in the past five years – a rate which is 276% the national average for a road of this kind. Meanwhile, traffic surveys on Alma Road in 2009 and 2012 recorded an average of 28 vehicles every day travelling in the wrong direction on the one-way stretch closest to the A660.

These are serious issues, then.

However, we noticed a common theme in the council officials’ responses. They stated that both roads are due to be affected by the NGT trolleybus route if the project is implemented, changing them substantially and improving their safety.

But a decision is yet to be made about the trolleybus. The results of a six-month-long public enquiry are not expected until later this year, or even early in 2016. And of course the eventual result may be that the scheme is abandoned.

It sounds to us as though the uncertainty around the trolleybus scheme is delaying measures which are needed now to improve street safety in Headingley. The local community is already strongly opposed to the trolleybus, and certainly shouldn’t have to wait until it is installed for Headingley’s streets to be made safer.