Terry Avenue Disappointment

Earlier this week (13th January) we heard that the Environment Agency had changed its mind, and that there would be no access along Terry Avenue for pedestrians and cyclists during the installation of the Clementhorpe flood defences. It’s disappointing to hear this and we still don’t know the exact reasons for the U-turn, but we will now focus our efforts on campaigning for a safe and accessible diversion route. We will also continue to insist that good measures are put in place in the Butcher Terrace area to ensure that cyclists and pedestrians accessing the Millennium Bridge are kept safe and vehicle traffic is minimised.

In December we met with a member of the council highways team and presented our cycle and pedestrian count data for the Millennium Bridge and Terry Avenue and compared this with some of the data from the council’s electronic cycle counters. Thank you to our intrepid volunteers who did the counts – Jamie, Helen, Rachel, Andy and Anna – the frostbitten fingers were worth it!

The highways officer agreed with us that mixing large volumes of vehicle traffic (including caravans, hotel traffic, visitors to Rowntree’s Park, construction workers and construction traffic) with vulnerable pedestrians and cyclists was a concern, particularly at peak times when our data showed that over 500 cyclists and 250 pedestrians move through this area in one hour. Since then he has made some recommendations to the Environment Agency to improve the safety in this area and we are waiting to see if the Environment Agency will have taken those recommendations on board.

Below you can see a map of our preferred diversion route for cyclists. In order to make this safe we would like to see temporary crossings installed at Bishopthorpe Road, Scarcroft Road and Nunnery Lane. We prefer this route over the Environment Agency’s initial suggestion (New Walk and Skeldergate Bridge) because we feel it is less vulnerable to disruption (New Walk floods too often) and it is safer and more accessible to everyone. We have shown our suggested diversion route to the council highways officer and we are meeting with Micklegate ward councillors to discuss it further next week. The Environment Agency haven’t yet announced their suggested diversion route, but we hope to work with them to achieve a workable and safe solution.

We are expecting the plans to go before the council’s planning committee in March, and if they are passed the work will probably start this summer. We’ll keep you posted with any extra information as and when we find out more.