North Yorkshire Council is set to scrap a planned £100,000 leisure cycling route that had been branded a “waste of money” by local bike riders – with a report saying that the cash would be better spent on other active travel projects.
In September, outlining a range of proposed measures for the area West of Harrogate, mainly aimed at reducing motor traffic congestion and encouraging active travel in the Otley Road corridor, the local authority revealed plans to turn Nursery Lane, an existing public right of way, into an off-road leisure route, with an upgraded and improved surface.
But a report entitled Otley Road Sustainable Transport Measures West of Harrogate compiled by the Conservative-run council’s Assistant Director Highways and Transportation, Parking Services, Street Scene, Parks and Grounds ahead of a meeting, next Monday, of the council’s Environmental Executive, says that the scheme “was not supported in the feedback from both local members and the wider community and so has been removed from the proposed package.”
As local news website The Stray Ferret points out, in September when the proposal was outlined to a meeting of the Harrogate & Knaresborough Area Constituency Committee, David Mitchell, from Harrogate District Cycle Action (HCDA) said that spending that sum on Nursery Lane was “not sensible because it would not make a meaningful difference to the cycle network.”
Conservative Councillor Paul Haslam, meanwhile, said that he had been told by cyclists that the plans were “a complete waste of money because that lane is already safe.”
The report to be laid before the committee next week instead recommends that £60,000 be spent on “patching and resurfacing” a shared footpath and cycleway between Green Lane and Blenheim Way, which is known locally as the Rosset Cycle Path.
According to the report, the proposed works will “improve the surface to remove potential tripping hazards for pedestrians and cyclists … to enhance the off-road route and to encourage its use as an alternative route to the Otley Road Corridor for walkers and cyclists.”
In all, the council has set aside a budget of £845,000 for works on the Otley Road Corridor, as detailed in the report, with the improvements estimated to cost £715,000 and the balance being retained as a contingency against fees for design work that is due to begin in the New Year.
Local cyclists could be forgiven for wondering whether they will ever see the plans come to fruition, however – proposals for improving active travel provision on the Otley Road Corridor have been under discussion since 2018, the year before Harrogate hosted the UCI Road Cycling World Championships.
The original plans were ditched in February this year, however, with the council attracting criticism from local cycling campaigners after it grouped ‘no preference’ responses to a consultation with those opposed to the measures and suggested they lacked sufficient support.
> Council scraps £500,000 Harrogate cycle lane expansions… even though majority support plans
However, among people who did express an opinion, 52 per cent were in favour of some sort of active travel scheme in the corridor, and HCDA said that the council’s decision reflected a “complete abandoning of plans to promote active travel.”