At a meeting of North Yorkshire Council (NYC) Executive on 30th May 2023, the Harrogate Station Gateway project was given the green light. The Executive voted unanimously in favour.
A Full Business Case can now be submitted, to enable the council to draw down the funding. Work on the scheme is likely to start this Winter.
The necessary Traffic Regulation Orders can be made, for example to reduce Station Parade to one lane for motor vehicles, and to remove a small number of parking spaces.
How Station Gateway Fits in with Harrogate’s Cycle Network
In advance of the meeting, the Corporate Director wrote a report on the scheme, with recommendations for the Executive.
In it, he pointed to a North Yorkshire Strategic Transport Planning Map as showing how Station Gateway fits in with NYC’s wider strategy. On the map are:
- Oatlands Drive – cycle tracks abandoned after first consultation in May 2021
- Otley Road – Phase 2 abandoned after third consultation showed majority support in February 2023
- Beech Grove – modal filters ripped out despite 66% support for them
- Leeds Road – part of Harrogate Transport Improvement Programme, which has been ongoing since 2019 without producing a single on-the-ground improvement
- Victoria Avenue – 2023 Active Travel Fund 4 bid failed; not a single on-the-ground improvement has resulted from the Active Travel Fund 2 money awarded to NYC in 2020
NYC’s Strategy But Not NYC’s Strategy
When it is convenient for NYC to have a strategy, they point to this strategy map of failed and abandoned projects. Are they implementing the strategy? No. Is it genuinely their strategy? No it can’t be, because they show zero commitment to it.
The Strategic Transport Planning Map shows routes which are simultaneously NYC’s strategy but not NYC’s strategy.
Station Gateway does fit in with existing cycle routes (which need improving), but it does not fit in with a wider NYC strategy because there isn’t one.
Major Projects and Highways
Station Gateway is managed by the Major Projects team, who actually want to build it.
The other schemes – Otley Road, Beech Grove etc. – are all the responsibility of the Area Highways team, who have proved over many years that they do not want to build anything.
The Area Highways team will keep going round in circles with endless meetings and reports, wasting everybody’s time and achieving nothing, until the cows come home.
Read more about the Executive meeting on 30th May 2023.