A woman from York who lost her husband in a collision between his bike and a car says the council should not delay providing a safe walking and cycle route along the northern ring road any longer.
York’s transport chief says he is battling to salvage elements of the Knapton to Rawcliffe scheme.
Cllr Andy D’Agorne says he shares the frustrations of campaigners after a council report recommended improvements between Wheldrake and Heslington and along the A1237 were scrapped.
The executive member for transport, asked council officers to go away and look at the possibility of building a new bridge over the river and the East Coast Mainline.
He said: “If there was to be an accident and that vehicle was travelling at 60mph, there’s not much chance of you surviving a collision.”
Carole Green’s husband Kevin, a keen cyclist, was killed at the A1237/Great North Way junction at Poppleton in 2001. He was involved in a collision with a vehicle while on the roundabout, which many describe as very confusing for both drivers and cyclists.
“I still find it, even all these years later, very difficult driving across that junction. All these years later, I can’t go that way without thinking about what happened to Kevin.
“And it does annoy me that nothing has been done. It’s probably even busier now than it was 20-odd years ago when Kevin had his accident.
“I know that there is a safe cycle path going the other way in the Haxby area and we need one here too. A dedicated cycle path and better road marking would definitely have saved Kevin’s life.”
‘Terrible’ record
Rob Ainsley, from York Cycle Campaign, said York had been given £1.2m in the last three rounds of government funding. “The record of delivering these schemes is terrible,” he added. “No major cycle scheme has reached consultation stage, let alone completion. Cllr D’Agorne admitted that they had “significantly underestimated the likely cost of delivering those schemes”
A council report said that the A1237 scheme – connecting Rawcliffe with Poppleton and Knapton, as well as providing a link to Manor School, was “not viable” due to engineering considerations.
But Cllr D’Agorne said.“We owe it to parents and pupils at Manor School to find ways to improve the situation as quickly as possible and if that involves working up a scheme for a separate pedestrian and cycle bridge, so be it. I don’t see that as being mutually exclusive from dualling the ring road.”
Council officers told the Transport boss that a decision to scrap an off-road route from Wheldrake and Heslington was “purely about the funding” as they expected it to cost around £2m.
The report called for the cash earmarked for the scheme to be used elsewhere, but Cllr D’Agorne said he wanted to get advice from transport bodies on how best to deliver the project in the longer term.
Finding the land is a stumbling block as it does not yet have full support from landowners.
Cllr D’Agorne asked officers to look at a smaller scheme that might pave the way for a full, continuous route adding: Clearly we will need to find more funding than we have got allocated, but we need to make the best use of the funding we have to make that step towards making this a viable scheme.
“I’m not happy with the funding being relocated if it might be needed as match funding for a bigger pot of money to complete the scheme.”
A host of other active travel measures – including better city centre cycle parking and making the Navigation Road low traffic scheme permanent – were approved by Cllr D’Agorne.
“We’re not giving up on active travel,” he added. “We are completely committed to delivering these schemes wherever that is possible but we need to work through these processes.”