York fears over transport bid

3:00pm Friday 21st November 2008

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A LEADING councillor today voiced his concern that York’s multi-million pound bid for transport improvements was lacking in detail.

Coun Andy D’Agorne said that while a successful bid would mean extra capacity on the outer ring road, he was worried there was “less of a commitment” to other aspects of City of York Council’s strategy, such as reducing congestion in the city centre.

Coun D’Agorne, leader of the Green group on the council, said the bid had not set out in detail how the authority would achieve its aim of increasing road space for buses, cyclists and pedestrians, and its objective to reduce traffic levels.

He said the council needed to thrash out a detailed strategy of how it would accomplish those aspirations, to ensure any funding it received could be used to reduce congestion throughout York.

“If the increased capacity on the outer ring road isn’t matched by measures to reduce the capacity within the city centre, then all it will do is create a total of more traffic on the network,” he said. The £41.5 million bid, which was submitted to the regional transport board in September, is for a package of transport measures.

These include bus priorities and enhancement to cycling and pedestrian routes in the city centre, as well as improvements to the junctions on the ring road.

The proposal will provide improvements to seven ring road roundabouts from Wetherby Road to Strensall Road, incorporating a new orbital cycle route and subways.

However, Coun Steve Galloway, the council’s executive member for city strategy, said there was still time.

“We are still a number of years away from implementation of the bid, assuming it is successful when it gets to the regional transport board in January.

“The major capacity engineering works on the outer ring road take much longer to plan than would any network changes in the city centre.

“The two things people can expect to see are improvements to the Hopgrove roundabout and the introduction of three new Park&Ride sites, both of which are further down the planning timeline than the Access York Phase 2 bid.”