Leeds has claimed one of the top spots in a new study looking at the best commuter cities in the UK - but what are your travel experiences?
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00:00 I lived in Leeds last year, I live in Manchester now so I usually get a train in but I've always
00:06 got the buses just back and forth and even a lot of people live up in Burley and like
00:10 across that direction so the train's very easy to get so I'm not surprised that it's
00:15 one of the best commuting towns because it's very easy to get around.
00:18 I'm fairly lucky so I get to park under my work building which I know I am fortunate
00:23 because like a yearly pass for some of the car parks are quite expensive but it's worth
00:28 it for me. I used to use the park and ride and I was an evangelist for the park and ride
00:32 and I don't want to be negative but it used to be really on time, every ten minutes you
00:38 could absolutely count on it and it just seemed to have gone downhill a bit and there's a
00:44 few of us that used to use the park and ride and now have taken to either buying yearly
00:48 passes or whatever because of the convenience because you could be waiting thirty minutes
00:52 on an evening for a bus.
00:53 I mainly commute by bus, I normally get a weekly ticket so I come in and out relatively
01:00 easily. I find when I finish work I'm normally bombarded by students and particularly school,
01:09 people that just finished say high school and I don't mind but sometimes the buses can
01:16 be a bit late but on the whole I would say it's pretty good.
01:21 I come in from the Huddersfield direction so I get the train from Huddersfield in. It's
01:26 ok it has improved, it was consistently being delayed or consistently late, that has improved,
01:33 there has been rail improvements recently that have helped with that however I still
01:39 find a couple of times a week still five, ten minutes late. The city itself with them
01:45 pedestrianising more of it has made it easier to traverse on foot so once I'm off the train
01:50 yeah a lot quicker.
01:52 In terms of price it would be like two quid, three quid one way even the train because
01:56 the train from Leeds station to Burley is only two fifty or something so it's not too
02:01 bad it's not too bad.
02:03 If you can park in the city centre I think it's great and I come in early enough that
02:07 I miss some of the traffic. Some of the road works can be a bit of a pain but it's a city,
02:12 it's a working city, there's road works, what you're going to do that's fine.
02:15 From the M1 when you get off I personally find it dead easy to get right into the centre.
02:22 There's a bus lane or a bus gate that has a specific time that if you're in early enough
02:28 you can go down the bus gate and it's not used very often and you just get right into
02:32 the city centre it takes no time at all. So if you know your routes and you know where
02:36 you're going you've got to be really careful because it's really easy to go into the wrong
02:39 bus gate.
02:40 At the minute the trains have gone up to ten pounds a day if I want to get an open ticket
02:44 and it's getting to the point where it's actually cheaper for me in petrol and car parking to
02:48 do that instead which while easier and cheaper isn't particularly environmentally friendly.
02:54 Speed wise it just depends how busy the roads are and how many passengers want to get on
03:01 at the bus stop and that's just 50/50 really.