Measures designed to improve safety on a city centre street in York have been approved.
The proposals for Blake Street include a loading ban from 10.30am to 5pm and new signs to try and stop vehicles from entering during pedestrianised hours.
Currently vehicles have to exit back onto the Museum Street and Duncombe Place junction which is illegal due to one-way restrictions in Blake Street.
The council’s report stated it was also unsafe because vehicles were rejoining the road without any traffic signals.
The plan is now to allow vehicles which drive onto Blake Street within footstreets hours to exit via the slip road onto Duncombe Place when the bollards are closed.
That part of Blake Street would allow for two way traffic flows.
York Civic Trust opposed the changes. It had put forward an alternative reconfiguration of the junction which City of York Council officers rejected on cost grounds.
The trust’s transport lead Prof Tony May told the transport decision making session at the council: “Sadly, it’s been seriously misrepresented in the report.
“It would not need an extra signal stage, and it would certainly not cost ‘quotes ‘several hundred thousand pounds’.
“It simply involves putting two new signal heads on the junction so the traffic connects it from Blake Street into the junction. It thus avoids the need to open the slip road.”
Andy D’Agorne, leader of York Green Party and a member of York Cycle Campaign, urged the council to delay bringing in the two-way traffic proposal.
He said the planned changes “actually condone the current illegal manoeuvres and will encourage more pick up and drop off activity at all times of the day or night.
“The dog’s breakfast, wrong way use of a slip road, which has not been regularly used for years, will be dangerous for pedestrians crossing it, who are more likely to be looking towards the Minster as they cross, or looking out expecting any traffic to come from Duncombe Place.”
For cyclists “making the sharp left turn towards the main road will block the cycle lane, and then, when the lights turn green, swing out into the path of vehicles entering Duncombe Place from the main junction”.
Cllr Kate Ravilious, the council’s transport lead, agreed the loading ban and to implement an experimental traffic order for the Blue Badge parking bays and the changes to the one-way system.
This will be monitored over the next 18 months to assess the impact of the scheme.
