York could be on the verge of a transport revolution.
City of York Council is committed to reducing traffic in the city by 20% by 2030.
And detailed ideas as to how to reduce congestion, improve air quality and get the city moving have now been published.
It comes as part of a report into York’s emerging Local Transport Strategy & Plan.
The proposed detailed policies are under headings including Accessibility, Shaping Healthy Places and Improving Public Transport.
Nothing has yet been decided. The report says: “The detailed transport policies are the product of workshops with a range of members and officers and remain a work in
progress.”
Here are a selection of the member workshop ideas that could be “refined and improved” before going to a public consultation next month.
- Create a priority walking and wheeling network, offering safe, high quality routes to the city centre, all district and village centres, and schools, colleges and places of employment.
- Comprehensively upgrade the city centre footstreet network to provide continuous level surfaces
- Upgrade cycling facilities on all parts of the priority cycle network, to include continuous cycle lanes, segregated where appropriate, priority at traffic signals
- Provide each York community centre with a communications, mobility and delivery hub for parcels, and facilities such as toilets, safe cycle storage, pushchair, mobility scooter and cycle hire and repair workshops
- Adopt the Vision Zero approach, seeking to eliminate all fatalities and serious injuries on York’s roads
- Extend the bus network, ensuring effective and reliable early and late services when people need them, and upgrading high frequency bus services – in some cases into bus rapid transit services or possibly light rail transit systems.
- Develop an integrated fares policy for all road-based public transport which encourages and rewards frequent use and makes bus use affordable for young people and low-income household
- Consider the scope for providing water-based access to York city centre from Rawcliffe Bar park and ride – e.g. using the existing tour boat service or water taxis – to provide an attractive alternative to driving into York for visitors
- Incentivise electric / hybrid replacement of internal combusion engine vehicles in York – for example through differential parking charges
- To make travel safer for pedestrians, wheelers and cyclists, adopt 20mph as the default speed limit for all roads through residential areas, near schools, in villages and at retail areas and parks
- Develop a parking strategy to cover all publicly available parking within 400m of the city centre, which assesses parking needs and sets parking charges designed to make it more attractive to use Park and Ride or the bus, or to walk, wheel or cycle
- Provide one or more transhipment facilities on the edge of footstreets area, and seek to limit all freight movements within the city centre to electric vehicles of 3.5 tonnes or less. Promote and support the use of cargo bikes within the city centre and in district and village centres
The report will go to the council’s economy, place, access and transport scrutiny committee next Tuesday (24 October). You can read the full documents here.