Victoria Avenue, Harrogate
Victoria Avenue, Harrogate

Only 6 people supported revised plans for Victoria Avenue in the recent consultation. The majority were against them.

North Yorkshire Council (NYC) won funding of just over £1 million from Active Travel Fund 2 (ATF2) in 2020 for four ambitious cycling schemes.

In the years since then, the council has failed to deliver any of the schemes.

In April this year, NYC consulted on revised plans to spend all the money on Victoria Avenue, abandoning the other three schemes. The council had stripped all the cycling elements out of the revised Victoria Avenue scheme.

What remains in the scheme is:

  • light-controlled pedestrian crossings at either end of Victoria Avenue and
  • moving the zebra crossing near the Library very slightly and taking the dogleg out of it

Consultation Results

The consultation results are set out in a council report about the Victoria Avenue ATF2 scheme.

There were about 70 responses to the consultation, according to the report. The headline results were:

  • 6 in favour of the Victoria Avenue proposals (10%)
  • 31 against (53%)
  • 22 neutral (37%)

(This adds up to 59).

The results are not summarised in the main report but are consigned to a table in Appendix D, which is split over two pages and hard to read.

Aside from the headlines, some other details that emerge from the consultation table are that:

  • 17 people were concerned about the illegal movements by drivers from Beech Grove to Victoria Avenue
  • 19 people wanted the Beech Grove modal filters reinstated
  • 26 people wanted the cycle elements of the Victoria Avenue scheme reinstated
  • 7 people were against cycle lanes (although none are proposed in the immediate scheme)
  • 2 people were against loss of parking

It is also worth noting that the council tries to single out consultation responses based on our suggested template as being somehow less valid (para 4.4 of the report). That is wrong.

HDCA Supporters are not puppets or automatons. They are people who are committed to the creation of a cycle network in Harrogate & Knaresborough. If they make the effort to send in responses based on our suggestions, it’s because they agree with them.

Some respondents wanted the illegal movement for motor vehicles from Beech Grove to Victoria Avenue to be permitted, and NYC have not ruled this out (para 4.6).

It would be a huge negative if the council used active travel money to open up a new rat run.

Funding

The original funding was just over £1 million.

The council has already spent £205,505 paying consultants to do abortive designs. It has £806,245 left.

The design by consultants WSP for the full Victoria Avenue scheme including the cycling elements was to cost £1.57 million, and NYC do not have enough money to build it.

NYC are promising to bid for funding for the cycling elements, and to deliver them in a second phase – but their track record over a decade is abysmal, and they have never delivered the cycle infrastructure they promised in other parts of Harrogate.

Future Cycle Track

The current tentative plan is for a bi-directional cycle track in the middle of Victoria Avenue.

This would remove conflicts between cycle tracks and bus stops, and have safety benefits for all road users (para 3.3 of the council report).

NYC is proposing to allocate £10,000 to a feasibility study for the cycle track. If viable, there would then need to be a preliminary design before a funding bid could be made.

Active Travel England Feedback

NYC have had feedback from Active Travel England (ATE), who are funding the scheme.

ATE’s comments were in three main areas:

  • critical issues identified
  • the high cost of the scheme
  • links to TCF Station Gateway

Critical Issues

NYC’s original proposals for unprotected cycle lanes either side of Victoria Avenue (which we have not seen) were unsafe and regarded as a critical issue.

Another critical issue is parked cars blocking pedestrian desire lines to more parked cars in the centre of the road. Removing the central parking would resolve that.

The third critical issue is the raised metal domes in the current parking spaces, which are potentially dangerous to people on bikes if they are cycling in empty parking spaces.

High Cost

ATE say that NYC’s costings are too high. ‘Please actively identify opportunities to lower the cost of the scheme…’

Links to TCF Station Gateway

NYC has been asked by ATE to ‘…explore opportunities to improve connectivity to the latest Station Gateway proposals to maximise uplift potential’.

Next Steps and Timetable

The report will be considered by Corporate Director Karl Battersby and Executive Member for Transport Keane Duncan at a meeting on 12th July 2024.

The recommendations to them are:

  • to give the go-ahead to the cycle track feasibility study
  • to green-light a detailed design for the pedestrian-only scheme and
  • to ask officers to commence Traffic Regulation Order processes for both schemes as soon as practicable

There is no timetable as such. The pedestrian-only scheme is to be delivered ‘as soon as reasonably practicable’.

One small positive is the intention to get on with the TROs for both the pedestrian and the cycle schemes:

‘As both schemes require TROs and this process can impact timescales for delivery it is proposed to commence advertisement of the relevant TROs for both scheme options as soon as possible’.

para 3.6 of the report

The details are set out in para 7.2. There are to be TROs for the pedestrian scheme, and for the removal of the central parking on Victoria Avenue once the initial feasibility design work has been done.

Only Six People Support North Yorkshire’s Victoria Avenue Plans

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