Hundreds of drivers a day are using the city's two-plus car lanes illegally, but the vast majority are escaping punishment for doing so.
In 1998, Leeds became the first city in the UK to introduce the lanes, which are designed to encourage car sharing and the use of public transport.
Known officially as high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, there are three roads in Leeds where they have been introduced.
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But figures obtained by LeedsLive reveal that just 85 drivers have been fined for illegally driving in the two-plus car lanes in the last five years.
It means the schemes, which cost more than £1 million to implement, have raked in just a few thousand pounds in fines since 2017. Last year, not a single driver was fined for using the lanes illegally.
There are no permanent cameras to catch drivers out. Instead, the lanes are patrolled by police officers on an ad-hoc basis.
Enforcement appears to have all but stopped in recent years, but a spokesperson for Leeds City Council said it "will resume if considered necessary".
The spokesperson also claimed "visible enforcement by the police deterred single drivers from using them", but data shows that hundreds of drivers illegally use the lanes on a daily basis without being fined.
The city council's own data from July 2021 reveals that hundreds of vehicles with just a single occupant used the A63 East Leeds Link Road HOV to bypass traffic between the hours of 7am and 10am. None of these drivers were fined.
* The A647 Stannignley Road HOV lane closed in 2021.
Leeds was the first city in the UK to introduce a two-plus car lane, officially known as high occupancy vehicle lanes, on the A647 Stanningley Road in 1998.
The trial was praised by transport experts, who noted an uptake in the number of commuters switching to buses and more people forming car shares.
A 2005 Highways Agency report noted a reduction in journey times and added: "The scheme has been deemed a success."
The A647 pilot study, which cost £585,000 was made permanent. Another HOV lane was later added on Roundhay Road at a cost of £540,000, while a third lane on the A63 was also built.
The cost of the projects soared to well over £1 million, but the fines recouped are just a fraction of that cost.
In 2017, just five people were fined by West Yorkshire Police for using the lanes illegally. That figure rose to 50 in 2019, but it was still just a tiny percentage of the number of drivers using the lanes illegally.
The first HOV lane, on the A647, has since been scrapped, with priority now given to buses. Speaking in 2019, Leeds City Council's former transport chief Richard Lewis said: "The HOV lanes have proved a mixed blessing in some ways.
"One of the main problems being that it is impossible to enforce, with very significant misuse by single travellers."
The council says it may also soon get rid of the Roundhay Road HOV lane.
Overall use of the HOV lanes has fallen during the pandemic, not just in terms of the number of drivers, but also the proportion of road users.
In May 2019, Leeds City Council found that 23.2% of all vehicles on Pontefract Lane (A63) drove in the inbound section of the 2+ car lane between 7am and 10am.
By July 2021, the proportion of vehicles using the same lane had dropped to just 12.95%.
A straw poll by LeedsLive found the number of people using the inbound 2+ car lane on Pontefract Lane in November 2021 to be even lower.
Between 8am and 8.15am on Thursday, November 4, 2021 just 9.46% of all vehicles on Pontefract Lane were driving in the 2+ car lane.
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The council said the drop-off was "not surprising" considering the impact of Covid-19, but that it expected numbers to increase as restrictions eased.
Speaking about the low number of fines handed out in recent years, a spokesperson for Leeds City Council said: "The number of fines issued on the high-occupancy vehicles lanes in Leeds has been relatively low in recent years as road users became more aware of the rules regarding their use, and also visible enforcement by the police deterred single drivers from using them.
"During the pandemic, with traffic levels dropping dramatically the lanes have seen much less usage as periods of congestion have been much fewer. We continue to monitor traffic levels and patterns as people are now returning to workplaces again, and enforcement will resume if considered necessary.
"Due to road changes and improvements as part of the Connecting Leeds and City Connect programmes, the high-occupancy lane on Stanningley Road is in the process of being converted into a bus lane and consultation is currently underway as to the future of the lane on Roundhay Road, with the aim of reducing traffic emissions and improving air quality part of the council’s commitment to tackling the climate emergency."
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