by cath
Wed Aug 29, 2007 4:56 pm
Like most York residents, I'm broadly in favour of dualling the ring road, but it needs to go hand in hand with a clear policy on residential development - there'll be a great temptation to build as much as possible close to a nice, fast new transport link.
From where I live, the quickest car route from one side of the city to the other is using the dual-carriageway A64 - which is also the furthest in distance (thats assuming the Hopgrove roundabout isn't gridlocked) & it takes about 20 minutes. The last time I travelled to my parents by bus it took over an hour to do 4.5 miles. I can fully understand why people drive around York rather than use public transport - I've been refused access to a half-empty bus before with a pushchair and it's a common story for parents with young children, so if I have to go into York and don't feel like pushing the pram 2.5 miles each way, I'm afraid I will drive in.
To change that and encourage (or force) people to leave their cars behind and use the buses, it will need a change in the law. Red Ken has a level of control over the bus companies (routes & fares) that YCC can only dream of (& as an ex-Barbican centre user I never normally say sympathetic things about the council!) and until that happens we'll be stuck with too few buses and high fares (& those big horrible purple things that fortunately, we don't have). Of course, building more and more roads isn't the answer - but until a government finds the guts and the money to take really drastic action, thats the way it'll continue - and I'm not in favour of the 'road pricing' proposals as I think that will just push people off the dual-carriageways and onto cheaper rural roads - the ones we now enjoy on our bikes.
And I've got typists cramp now.
From where I live, the quickest car route from one side of the city to the other is using the dual-carriageway A64 - which is also the furthest in distance (thats assuming the Hopgrove roundabout isn't gridlocked) & it takes about 20 minutes. The last time I travelled to my parents by bus it took over an hour to do 4.5 miles. I can fully understand why people drive around York rather than use public transport - I've been refused access to a half-empty bus before with a pushchair and it's a common story for parents with young children, so if I have to go into York and don't feel like pushing the pram 2.5 miles each way, I'm afraid I will drive in.
To change that and encourage (or force) people to leave their cars behind and use the buses, it will need a change in the law. Red Ken has a level of control over the bus companies (routes & fares) that YCC can only dream of (& as an ex-Barbican centre user I never normally say sympathetic things about the council!) and until that happens we'll be stuck with too few buses and high fares (& those big horrible purple things that fortunately, we don't have). Of course, building more and more roads isn't the answer - but until a government finds the guts and the money to take really drastic action, thats the way it'll continue - and I'm not in favour of the 'road pricing' proposals as I think that will just push people off the dual-carriageways and onto cheaper rural roads - the ones we now enjoy on our bikes.
And I've got typists cramp now.