Tadcaster Road speed limit sign – Council explanation

VAS & car

The York Council has claimed that the new vehicle activated speed sign on Tadcaster Road will flash on whenever a vehicle approaches it WHATEVER SPEED IT IS DOING.

The matrix sign has apparently been installed by the Fire and Rescue Service and, although identical in appearance to the type of sign fitted by the Council on streets like Moor Lane, it is triggered by any approaching vehicle.

From observations it would seem also to be sensitive to vehicles travelling away from the sign on the other side of the road.

While the intention is to remind drivers of the speed limit on the road (30 mph in the case of Tadcaster Road), it does seem likely to cause confusion in some driver’s minds.

Many will expect such signs to be triggered only by those travelling in excess of the speed limit (as happens on Moor Lane).

The sign is likely to be in place for about 2 weeks.

New speed warning sign on Tadcaster Road on the blink

A new vehicle activated speed warning sign has been installed on Tadcaster Road near its junction with Mayfield Grove.

New VAS on Tadcaster Road

New VAS on Tadcaster Road

Several dozen of the signs have been in use in York for the last 5 years. They are triggered when an approaching vehicle is detected to be over the 30 mph speed limit.

They are a warning to drivers. No details are retained by a camera.

However the new device on Tadcaster Road was today flashing a 30 mph warning message to virtually all approaching vehicles irrespective of their speed.

Those apparently exceeding the speed limit included service buses.

Local LibDem Councillor Ann Reid has raised concerns about Tadcaster Road which does have a poor speed and accident record. The Council is right to try to address these issues.

However, the new VAS was installed without any consultation and needs to be properly calibrated if it is to have any credibility.

NB. Over the last 5 months the Police camera van has caught over 200 motorists on Tadcaster Road breaking the speed limit.

Council to impose additional parking restrictions in Clifton

Click for large scale maps of all the proposals

Click for large scale maps of all the proposals

The Council has agreed to implement as advertised Traffic Regulation Orders in

• R33 Bootham (South):
• Sycamore Place;
• R33 Bootham (South : Queen Anne’s Road);
• Junction of Ashton Avenue and Crichton Avenue;
• Ratcliffe Street, junction areas with Burton Stone Lane, Falgrave Crescent and Haughton Road;
• Westerdale Court, Compton Street and Clifton.

However objections from residents were at least partly upheld, and proposals amended, in:

Kitchener Street;

• and Field View, junction areas with Burton Stone Lane and Haughton Road (with additional restrictions on Haughton Road)

Following representations from residents and Liberal Democrat spokesperson Cllr Ann Reid, the Council has agreed to reduce the time that restrictions will apply outside 48 -54 Clifton. They will apply now only on weekdays, 10:00am – 4:00pm.

The decision was made at a “behind closed doors” meeting.

A1237 to Beckfield Lane cycle path agreed in another ”behind closed doors” decision

The Council has decided on the layout for a cycle link on the A59.

Behind closed doors logo

No justification for the design detail has been published by the Council nor were the normal cross party consultations undertaken. The cost of the scheme has not been revealed.

The footway would be widened on the A59 from the by pass through to the Beckfield Lane junction. All crossing points at the junctions would be upgraded to allow them to be used by cyclists.

There would be some shared use paths accommodating both cyclists and pedestrians.

The cycle route connects to a proposed crossing of the A1237 before terminating at the new Poppleton Bar Park and Ride site.

A1237 to Beckfield Lane cycle path. click for larger map

A1237 to Beckfield Lane cycle path. click for larger map

Suddenly we are awash with “All York” bus ticket sales information

The Council has issued a statement saying that 12,000 “All York” teenagers’ bus tickets were sold during August.

For 12 months the Council and bus companies resisted providing any information on sales figures.

When eventually they were forced to publish them, it was revealed that sales of the taxpayer subsidised “All York” tickets were only 25% of forecast levels.

The young persons travel tickets were designed to provide cheaper fares for teenagers during the schools holidays.

children-summer-bus-tickets

The £1-30 a day tickets were a worthy project in principle which bus companies should have been happy to fund. The extra revenue, won by filling empty seats, would have more than covered their costs

However, the York Council chose to offer a 20p per journey taxpayers subsidy.

So that’s around £2,400 taxpayers have had to fork out in just 1 month for a scheme that has netted bus companies around £15,000.

One bus operator is claiming that the August sales represent a 500% increase over the previous year. Given that there wasn’t an ”All York” teenagers ticket available last year then that seems to be a spurious claim.

If the announcement heralds a more open approach by the Council to the provision of information about local bus services then that is to be welcomed.

We look forward to seeing details of service reliability published on a regular basis.

Will the Council answer the key Lendal Bridge questions

Potentially the biggest test this teatime for the Lendal Bridge closure.

The schools are back and we have heavy rain.

Poor weather usually adds around 10% to traffic levels in the City.

click to update

click to update

All York bus ticket sales figures finally released

12 months after a Freedom of Information request was lodged with the York Council, officials have finally revealed the number of “All York” bus tickets that have been sold.

This was the product launched in July 2012 which allowed passengers to purchase one £5 day ticket which could be used on any bus operating in the York area.

When launched, the Council said that it would spend £20,000 of taxpayer’s money advertising the availability of the ticket.

They would also use administrative staff to allocate, the fare revenue collected, to individual bus operators.

all york ticket

It was this taxpayer’s subsidy which prompted a request that the number of tickets sold be publicised. The Council declined to do so saying that it was “commercially confidential”.

It took an appeal to the Information Commissioner to force the release of the information.

In March the minutes of a Council bus consultative meeting had suggested that “All York” ticket sales were around “10,000 a quarter”.

In reality it turns out that sales are only about ¼ of that figure.

The total number of tickets sold stands at 10,425 which represents a tiny proportion of the 16 million local bus journeys made each year.

It looks like taxpayers have subsidised each ticket to the tune of £2.

Many people thought that the Council should have prioritised the introduction of a smartcard which would allow cross operator ticketing at negligible cost.

Steve Galloway – who first raised the issue – says, “There is nothing contained in the figures that threatens the commercial interests of bus companies. The very low sales do suggest though that the Council miscalculated very badly the number or passengers who would take advantage of a scheme which has proved to be an unnecessary burden on taxpayers.

I hope in future that the Council will be more open with bus users about service information.

They have been withholding facts about bus service reliability for over a year.

I would like to think that they would adopt a more positive approach to information sharing in the future”

(more…)

More on Lendal Bridge

£1/2 million in fine income generated by cameras on Lendal Bridge and Coppergate. Call for “trial” bridge closure to be suspended

We have discovered that during the first week of the Lendal Bridge closure around 1000 drivers per day were caught by enforcement cameras.

Lendal bridge after its clsure

This would have generated up to £480,000 in fine revenue, had the Council not agreed to an amnesty.

However, no formal decision was taken by the Council on the amnesty, so questions still need to be answered on who took the (admittedly correct) decision to waive the income.

An independent company is processing the ANPR recognition results for the Council. They are understood to be Imperial Civil Enforcement Solutions Ltd of Northampton. No details of the payments due to the contractor have been revealed or whether such payments vary in relation to the number of penalty notices issued.

The situation on Coppergate is equally bad.

Here the times of the access restrictions were extended with minimal publicity.

Many drivers continued to observe the old hours resulting in a large number of offenders.

The Council announced only yesterday that the fines for the first two weeks of the Coppergate restrictions – which were introduced on 1st August – had also been waived.

Why this information was not made available in August remains unclear.

Now the Council has said that around 3000 potential offenders have been caught on camera since the 16th August. Although some of these may win appeals against the penalty notices, potentially the Council could receive £160,000 in fine income for just two weeks of the restrictions.

That is equivalent to £5 million a year!

What must now be clear to even the most ardent advocate of ANPR cameras, is that their use to monitor traffic restrictions of this sort needs to be properly advertised in the period up to their introduction.

Their existence and purpose must also be clearly signed on approach roads.

The Lendal trial was rushed in by the Council and its implementation has been bungled.

Like the citywide 20 mph speed limit, it is being imposed on an unwilling population.

The trial should be suspended and a proper review conducted into the problems that have occurred.

The city’s reputation is at stake and the prosperity of the central area could be irreparably damaged if a halt to the trial is not called.

No “footfall” figures – showing the number of shoppers in the central area over the last few days – are yet available, but we fear the worst.

The blunders may prove to have put the worthy cause of increased pedestrianisation in the City back by a decade.