Campaign member Martin met with with Greg Morgan, the Active Travel Transport Planner for City of York Council along with representatives of Make it York and the council to discuss changes to cycle parking in Parliament Street and it’s surroundings. He’s provided the following update from his meeting.
The main point of the meeting was to discuss moving some of the current parking to accommodate the Christmas Fair which is coming soon and other events in the future.
My main point was to encourage the idea that when the parking moves there needs to be more of it covering a variety of locations, more useable parking for a variety of bikes and an intention to make most of it permanent.
The current cluster of racks close to Marks and Spencer will move. I pointed out that the ones in the middle of this are only of any use to someone who can lift their bike above their head when the outside ones are in use.
The long line of racks running along from the St Sampson’s Square end towards where the fountain used to be will also need to move. Both sets of racks will be rendered useless by the market.
As well as repositioning some racks to the road side of the street and spreading them along there Greg suggested that the area at the corner Parliament Street and Church Street would be a good spot. This required a bit of rejigging of the market stalls to be done by Make it York. We will see if this happens when the plans come through.
The more encouraging ideas that we came up with were firstly to install as much parking as possible in the area in front of All Saints Church. This would hopefully be a good alternative to the current option of locking your bike to the railings there.
The amount which can be installed at this location is limited by access requirements, but I’d say at least eight hoops could be fitted in.
The best spot in my opinion is opposite WP Brown’s on St Sampson’s Square. The road is wide and there’s an unused taxi rank running along the length of it. Even with a large run of a variety of bike parking options in what is currently marked as a taxi rank there would still be enough space for service vehicles and trucks to manoeuvre. This would mean the bike parking which will move from the raised part for the Christmas market wouldn’t need to be put back and would be replaced with a lot of easier to use and more accessible parking.
Further afield there is room for a few hoops to be installed on the corner of Patrick Pool and Church Street without causing an obstruction to pedestrians.
Heading down Davygate the current parking can be added to outside Sainsbury’s and some sort of protection can possibly be put in place to stop vehicles reversing into the end of the parking on Blake Street opposite the Lakeland Clothing shop.
At the end of Blake Street where Blue Badge parking is proposed to replace the current bike parking there is room for some more hoops in two unused car parking spots outside the Visit York building on the corner. There is also room for more alongside the flower beds where some additional parking has been installed.
When we discussed the Blue Badge parking it seemed there was no plan for how the cars would get out and back onto the inner ring road. They are not allowed to drive down Blake Street and turn onto St Helen’s Square and they can’t drive out of the end of Blake Street unless the junction is redesigned and made into a four way traffic light. Will they reverse back onto Duncombe Place? I don’t know.
I do hope something comes of this and that most, if not all the changes can be permanent. I felt it was in the interests of everyone to not have to keep coming back to move bike parking around. Greg Morgan is very keen to make real changes and is drawing up plans which he’ll send to us when they are ready.
York Cycle Campaign 
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