Proposed extra lane for A19 announced
The proposed changes to the A19/A64 junction will form the first phase in the A19 Pinch Point Scheme, which York received approximately £2million for from the government’s Department for Transport, aimed at helping support growth and tackle congestion.
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Multiple traffic light failures have been blamed for increases in congestion this morning. Click graphic for updated position
Dringhouses Library which has to close for a short time yesterday following a power cut, is now fully operational again.
The Council Cabinet will decide on 20th January how to implement the Councils decision to “automatically” refund those who were fined during the Lendal Bridge trial.
So far 12,512 refunds have been issued by the Council.
The most likely course of action is that all 35,000 motorists, who have not yet claimed a refund, will be written to and advised of their opportunity to claim.
After that the process will be much the same as the scheme currently in operation.
The cost of sending out and managing the notification process is put at £150,000. The money will come from grant income which otherwise would have been spent on public services in the City.
In total the Council took around £1.8 million in fines from the Lendal bridge and Coppergate schemes. The Council continues to pursue a claim that the Coppergate fines were levied lawfully but their appeal has been outstanding for over 9 months now.
Additionally, over £700,000 was spent on implementing and administering the original schemes.
The Council is shying away from simply putting a cheque in the post to the registered vehicle keeper details that its agents have on file. They fear that many of the payments would not reach the right people (hire cars, parental cars, foreign tourists, deceased etc) and Legal Counsel have said that such an option could jeopardise the Councils Coppergate appeal.
All in all it now looks like the Lendal Bridge experiment will cost over £1 million.
This year to date (1st Jan to 3rd Dec) there have been a total of 696 traffic signal faults reported to the York Council’s maintenance contractors.
This number was 678 for the same period last year.
The Council does not have a means of recording the total duration for which signals have been out of operation; however, for high priority faults in this period – which are recorded in their own indicator – 91% were resolved within 4 hours, compared to 82% for the same period last year.
Barrier faults have occurred during a total of 17 days since they were introduced at the Marygate car park. Currently income from the car park is less than it was when operated on a pay and display basis.
Income from the Marygate car park, from the start of July to the end of October, totalled £231,000 in 2014/15.
The equivalent figure for 2013/14 was £246,000.
The York Council spent £100,000 installing the barrier system at Marygate.
NB. The Council has admitted that due to faults on its automated vehicle counting systems it doesn’t know how many motorists have taken advantage of the free parking offer which is available at some car parks from Thursday to Saturday.
Overall income from car parking is, however, over £400,000 below budgeted levels.
The government has stepped in to give York an additional £2 million a year to tackle the road maintenance backlog.
Details of the announcement can be found by clicking here
The York Council gained notoriety in 2012 by halving the amount that it invested in repairing local footpaths and roads.
They continued the policy into 2013 with a large backlog of repairs developing.
Investment only returned to 2011 levels this year.
The York Council announced its provisional resurfacing programme for 2015 a couple of weeks ago. The government announcement means that this list should now more than double in size.
The York Council has agreed tonight to cancel the end of December deadline for motorists wanting to reclaim fines unlawfully levied on Lendal Bridge.
They have promised that there will be a report in January which will confirm how the fines will be repaid “automatically”.
The decision was taken after the new Council required the Labour Cabinet to act to make the refunds.
It has also emerged that very few of the fines lodged against foreign tourists have been repaid.
The figures are:
Of the 5460 payments issued,
Following an accident on the A64 just south of York the eastbound carriageway was closed for a time.
Alternative routes, including Tadcaster Road and the A1237, were heavily congested.
Click on the map below for real time updates.
click for latest update
The Cabinet member with responsibility for Transport (now Cllr Levene following Dave Merretts sacking last week) will be asked on Monday to sort out the continuing Lendal Bridge refund crisis.
Although no background report has yet been published, it seems likely that the first step will be to scrap the 31st December deadline for the Council to receive refund requests.
Quite how the Council will “automatically” refund the remaining fines remains to be seen as does the result of the Council’s appeal against similar unlawful charges which were levied in Coppergate.
The proposal was tabled by Liberal Democrat Leader Keith Aspden
It is of course a decision which should have been taken in September 2013 when it became clear that the trial had failed.
15 months later it will be too late for some.
Those who have in the interim died, those who have moved home, those who have changed bank accounts as well as many who live abroad, may even now not find the fines are as easy to obtain as many would hope.
However it is an end to part of the saga with any inquiry, into the irregularities that took place, likely now to have to wait until after the elections in May.
Attention will now turn to the appeal relating to the imposition of fines for the extended hours restrictions on Coppergate.
If that appeal by the Council, against the traffic adjudicator ruling, fails then the repercussions for taxpayers and/or local service standards could be considerable.
Click to enlarge
The carriageway programme can be seen by clicking here The footpath programme can be viewed here
Alternatively click on the graphic right to see a ward by ward analysis.
Not a lot of work is scheduled for the west of the city although the bulk of the programme will not be revealed until the Council has completed its budget for next year in February. The current £2 million programme would normally be supplemented by another £4 million worth of schemes when the dust has settled.
Nevertheless there are some worrying omissions.
In the Dringhouses ward only a small footpath resurfacing scheme in Turnmire Road is included.