Yesterday’s brief early morning flurry of snow wasn’t that heavy; but the speed with which it turned to slippery slush seems to have caught out hundreds of drivers, causing traffic jams into Bradford from the south, the west and the north.

In October, Bradford Council’s fleet of 30 gritters went out on a practice run. The local authority had stockpiled 26,000 tonnes of grit. Come the bad weather they would be ready? Oh no they weren’t!

Councillor David Green, whose portfolio includes highways, took 50 minutes to reach work, double the time he takes on normal days. Many other people were stuck for a lot longer than that, with reports of commuters trapped in gridlocked traffic for several hours.

Unlike this time last year the weather was not particularly icy or treacherous – so what went wrong to cause two and four-hour delays?

Coun Green says: “I was talking to somebody trying to get out of Harden who said all the roads into Harden were gritted beautifully, but the road into Bradford was not gritted because of the traffic. We rely on the weather forecast, but that is not always 100 per cent accurate.”

The police logged up to ten road traffic incidents, mainly in the Bradford South division covering the city and west towards Queensbury. Officers got to all reported incidents. No-one was seriously injured.

Cold comfort though it may be, but Bradford was not alone in getting caught out yesterday. Sheffield and South Yorkshire suffered poor driving conditions with slippery roads resulting in similar rush-hour road traffic delays. Unlike in Bradford, though, some routes were closed in spite of overnight gritting.

Perhaps if morning rail services were more reliable, motorists would not think twice about leaving the car at home to take the strain out of getting to work by using the train. But with a new timetable starting this week, Northern Rail’s morning services in and out of Bradford were running late on Monday and Tuesday.

“People need to be able to trust public transport more,” Coun Green adds. “It’s not so much getting in, but people think, ‘If I have my car I have a chance of getting back, whereas there’s no guarantee trains and buses will be running later this afternoon’.”

A spokesman for Northern Rail said the company looked at weather conditions all year round.

Not all their trains returned to depots at Leeds, Newcastle or Manchester overnight. Those ‘stabled’ at stations such as Skipton were subject to lower temperatures. De-icing and other procedures that motorists undertook applied to train drivers.

“We’ll put extra lagging on fuel pipes. We can also implement emergency timetables, if needed, to ensure that we can provide a robust service for passengers,” the spokesman added.

So does Bradford’s endemic rush-hour delays in inclement weather come down to inherent congestion in the road system?

Satellite navigation company TomTom claimed not so long ago that Bradford was the fifth-most congested city in Britain, a claim disputed by the local authority.

The Council’s principal engineer, Joe Grint, pointed out that, according to Department of Transport figures, Bradford came 56th out of 152 local authorities. Congestion had been at the same level for ten years.

Mr Grint spelled out the improvements to traffic lights at more than 100 junctions and the work planned for the £3m Bingley Road/Saltaire Road traffic project in the next couple of years.

An unexpected snow shower, and gritters and commuters taking to the roads at the same time appears to be the explanation for yesterday’s delays. Gale-force winds and torrential rain would probably cause similar problems.

Last year, roads out of Bradford were jammed for hours after a heavy morning snowfall because thousands of people decided to make for home at about the same time in the early afternoon.

“We had issues with people jumping lights at junctions last year. We put out a warning asking people to drive with more consideration in extreme weather,” a police spokesman said.

The weather later today and tomorrow is likely to be wet and windy with icy blasts, according to the Met Office. Sunday should be colder, but clearer and brighter – at least until Monday.