CALLS are being made for multi-million pound airport link road proposals to be scrapped amid claims the schemes are flawed.

Leeds City Council is carrying out a consultation on three options to improve connectivity to Leeds Bradford Airport, but its strategy has been attacked by Rawdon parish councillors.

The parish council has carried out its own traffic survey and says most airport traffic does not use the area that would be the focus of the new routes.

Rawdon Parish Council is now urging residents to lobby Leeds City Council (LCC) against all three options, which range in price from £15 million to £75 million.

And it is calling for the current process to be suspended in favour of a "broader, coherent transport strategy", which it says needs to be developed based on "comprehensive and up-to-date evidence".

A statement said: "Rawdon Parish Council believes Leeds City Council has no coherent strategy for transport infrastructure in the city – it focuses on one high-profile project at a time and, as a result, it fails to properly consider all available solutions.

"This leads to expensive white elephant projects that fail to deliver on their stated aims."

The parish council argues: "All three options depend on traffic using Horsforth roundabout, to which no further improvements are proposed and which even after £2.5 million in improvements, is still barely able to cope with existing traffic. All three also depend on other problem areas for access, such as the River Aire bridge and Horsforth New Road side, with no improvements planned.

"The vast majority of traffic accessing the airport does so from directions that would not include any of the proposed new routes in their journey. Based on Rawdon Parish Council’s traffic survey, only five per cent of airport traffic uses the A65 (options A and B) and 19 per cent uses a combination of the A65, Green Lane and Harrogate Road (partly option C).

"There is no evidence offered to justify any of the routes on the basis of demand. Connecting the airport directly to the A65 via a new road is a flawed strategy."

The parish council also criticises the inclusion of Harrogate Road as part of a strategic route, and stresses the road is central to a residential area.

The statement adds: "Leeds is to have one of the largest rail hubs in the country, connecting existing networks with HS2 and HS3, and yet will only connect to the airport via the existing road network and a token 'link road'. This is a further demonstration of the disjointed approach to transport in Leeds."

The parish council is supporting the building of a Parkway Station on the existing Harrogate Line at Bramhope Tunnel as a first stage in improving public transport access to the airport.

It says: "A station at this location would cost significantly less than road options A and B, would connect the airport to a far wider transport infrastructure, offering the potential for regular direct trains to London Kings Cross, and would represent significantly better value for money than a token link road."

An LCC spokesman said: “The consultation is still ongoing so we would encourage as many people as possible to take part in that consultation and tell us what they think, before it closes on February 26.”