Topic Title

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.

[quote="fatsprinter"]I haven't tried traveling with bike on train recently as when I used to try in my student days it was such a hardship. I'm glad if it is better. I'll have to give it a go.[/quote]

It's all pretty straightforward these days - sometimes you need to reserve (usually for the 'long distance' operators like GNER, Transpennine and Virgin), but these reservations are free. Northern Rail, which runs most of the local trains in and out of York, is quite bike-friendly with minimal peak-time restrictions and no reservations needed; I often use their services as part of my journey to work and for getting to/from races (and I've yet to be turned away for taking a mucky 'cross bike on a train!).

Dave B

Remember the bitter battle over the Newbury bypass some years ago. The A34 which used to pass through Newbury until the bypass is an incredibly busy road. Most of Newbury where very keen on a bypass, it would divert traffic out of the town they thought. They were right initially, but within three years of the opening of the bypass traffic levels were higher in Newbury than they had been before it.

So if we think dualling the northern ring road will reduce traffic in York, which naturally would be better for cyclists I think we're going to be disappointed. We'd all accept the statistical evidence that more cyclepaths mean more cyclists, then we also must accept that more roads mean more cars.