By Jill Stocks
A new project in Leeds is inviting residents from four areas to join a research community to shape the future of transport in the city.
The INFUZE community aims to collaborate with people across Horsforth, Moortown, Roundhay and Weetwood to develop how we travel about the city and how we can do this better.
Tina Shield, project officer, and Teresa Nelson, trial officer, from the University of Leeds spoke to regulars at Horsforth’s community cafe on Monday about the project and how to get involved.
Tina told us: “It’s a research project led by the University of Leeds. What we’re doing is we’re working with four communities to look at what combination of transport options would help them feel like they didn’t necessarily need to own a car, so things that are better for the environment.
“This could include cycling or walking, public transport, buses, trams, trains, getting around using more of those options so you can get to a point where you feel like ‘actually I don’t need to own a car, I don’t need to pay for one or keep a car on the drive taking up space, because I’ve got enough other options’ and that’s what we’re looking at.
“And also being nicer, because cars take up a lot of space. Just think about what we could do if we didn’t have all these cars parked on the street, all this congestion, all these big car parks. We could use that space for so many other things.
“Getting around would be nicer for everyone if there wasn’t so much congestion and fewer people only using their cars as a default would mean that there was more space for everything. So that’s kind of what we’re looking at.
“What we need now is for people to join our community. We’ve got a website. You can join the mailing list and that’s where we will give you updates about what we’re doing.
“Also we’ve got some surveys sometimes asking people what things work for them, we’ve got some community workshops, we’ve got an experiment that’s going to be coming up next year, where we’re going to be asking people to try different things, so there’s loads to get involved in and what we’re trying to do now is just get more people to join our mailing list so that we can let them know about those things.”
Over time it is hoped that what is found over these four areas can be scaled up to look at how things could work across the wider Leeds area.
The five-year project, led by the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds and funded by a grant from the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council, is in partnership with research partners The Royal College of Art and Lancaster University.
Other local industry and transport sector partners who are actively involved include Leeds City Council, West Yorkshire Combined Authority and First Bus.
You can join the research community and read more about the INFUZE project on their website.
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