Holgate Ward councillors recently hosted a public meeting to update residents about the developments with York Central, including news on the Riverside Route upgrades. This shared cycle and footpath runs from Scarborough Railway Bridge to Jubilee Terrace between the Ouse and the railway line. There has long been a need to upgrade the flood resilience, lighting and width of this well-used route, and the imminent stopping-up of Leeman Road to allow the Railway Museum to construct their new Central Hall has made the need for these upgrades much more urgent.

Falling short

Presently the limited width of the path means that there is often contention for space between pedestrians and cyclists, so the main feature of the upgrades will be to add a second path to “dual” the capacity. The path is also prone to being impassible during floods, so by raising the level at the lowest point it is hoped to reduce the frequency and duration of these times. We were told that ideally this needs to be raised by 75cm but they conceded that they are considering just raising it by 25cm to save on the amount of compensatory flood storage capacity that would be needed, which is likely to be the most costly part. Sadly this also means a much more modest improvement in average time that the path is cut off. There are also numerous other smaller enhancements planned such as better lighting, CCTV, benches etc.

Development delays

Our YCC ward reps in Holgate will be keeping a keen eye on this, and more details from the council have been promised in November with the opportunity to comment/consult on the proposed design.

Much of the frustration has been about the timing, since there is a significant risk of isolating an entire neighbourhood from active travel access to York centre if the riverside route is blocked by flood or closed itself for its own upgrade construction at the same time as Leeman Road is stopped up for the Railway Museum to start building, since the controversial “walkway agreement” to allow a daytime route through the museum won’t start to operate until their construction is finished, perhaps in 2026. When the Planning Inspectorate concluded on the closure of Leeman Road he described this scenario as a “diversion on top of a diversion” and placed a strong onus on York Council to complete the riverside upgrades before the road closure.

Sadly this is looking very unlikely to be in time, despite the council being successful in achieving £1.1m of Active Travel Funding in Spring 2023 towards this project. Meanwhile we learnt that the new road through York Central won’t be open until Spring 2025 (originally it was due to open at the start of 2024). Leeman Road cannot be closed until the new road is ready, so this winter residents will still have Leeman Road as our reasonably direct backup route for a few more months when the inevitable wintertime floods will block the riverside route, but after that we have to wait and see what happens.