Cllr Paul Doughty has said it is vital that City of York Council’s coalition clarifies its position on the dualling of York’s A1237 northern bypass. Are they still committed to the project?
Dualling the Outer Ring Road has long been a priority for the York Conservatives and the 2015-19 Conservative-led council secured £35 million of funding from West Yorkshire Combined Authority for improvements to seven roundabouts making them all “Dual Carriageway Ready”. The administration pushed for dualling and was rewarded with welcome news from the government on likely dualling around Skelton, Haxby and Huntington late last year. Part of this success was a York Full Council Motion from Cllr Doughty to lobby for the road improvements. Dualling the road will slash journey times and is worth tens of millions in economic growth, not just to York but North Yorkshire and surrounding areas.
Concern about the Lib Dem / Green coalition’s continued focus has surfaced on twitter. When asked about dualling the ring road, both the York Lib Dems as a group and the Green Party Executive Member Andy D’Agorne have refused to answer. Even more worryingly, York Green Party has tweeted ‘we should stop the dualling of (sic) the northern ring road round York’. Indeed during the election Cllr Dave Taylor, Green Party Councillor for Fishergate, confirmed at a public meeting that he was opposed to any dualling.
Cllr Doughty said ‘the last Conservative-led administration made great strides forward on the problem of York’s Northern Ring Road. We are not criticising the coalition for what they have or have not done but their intentions. It is vital the administration backs dualling or this will slash the chance of getting further government funding. My request to the coalition is simple, please come out and say clearly that this administration sees the dualling of the northern ring road as being as important as the last administration did and will work hard to ensure as much as possible is dualled’.
