£2 million investment in York’s streetlights

Thousands of York’s ageing streetlights are set for an overhaul through a £2million investment by City of York Council.

The council has a responsibility to maintain over 21,000 streetlights including 5,500 concrete columns across the city.

However, many lights were installed over 50 years ago in the 60s through to the 80s and are at the end of their natural life and are failing to contribute to carbon reduction targets.

Previous schemes have replaced around 1,000 steel and concrete columns and almost half of the city’s streetlights (10,000) with new ‘white lights’ or LED technology.

Approval was given back in February to invest a further £2million council capital funding into a new four-year programme of works to enable the remainder of the lights to be replaced.

These works are now set to get underway to install 2,000 concrete and steel columns and fund structural maintenance checks for 12,000 light columns city wide. All replacement columns with old sodium lights will also be replaced with new white light LEDs.
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Improvements to reduce congestion on the A19 south at Crockey Hill

City of York Council is asking for comments on new proposals which could help reduce congestion on one of York’s busiest roads.

The scheme will reduce the average time taken to travel on the A19 South through the Fulford interchange junction and down the A19 to Crockey Hill by up to five minutes. The length of southbound queues will also be reduced by up to 50 per cent.

Over 20,000 vehicles use this route every day and at times over 1,200 vehicles use the junction every hour in one direction, which often causes queues and sections of the A19 to block.

As a result of so many vehicles using this road there are often large queues of traffic particularly southbound during busy times in the evening. This can cause what is known as a ‘pinch point’ or queues of traffic at the Crockey Hill traffic lights (junction of the A19 and Wheldrake Lane). This rapidly backs up to the A19/A64 Fulford Interchange which causes congestion on the A64 off slip-road and on the A19 in Fulford.

The scheme will help address this problem and supports phase 1 which was carried outover the summer of 2015. This helped to reduce congestion and improve public transport journey times and reliability northbound at the busy A19/A64 junction (near the Designer Outlet).

However, for southbound traffic going out of York, the problem of traffic queues in the evening remains.  Phase two will help to ease the build up of congestion along this busy section of road, reducing the risk of blocking the A19/A64 junction and improving public transport reliability and journey times.

Funded entirely from the Department for Transport (DfT) pinch point fund, the scheme is estimated to cost approximately £1million.


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York Council making good progress with re-roofing works at blocks of flats

The Council re-roofing contractors are making good progress on the blocks of flats in St Stephens Road area.The blocks in that road are scheduled to be completed by the end of June.

The programme will then  move into Thoresby Road and The Reeves with work there scheduled to finish at the end of July.

The programme will then move on to High Moor Road, Wains Road, Thanet Road and Dringfield Close before moving on towards the City centre. The programme is scheduled to be completed by the end of November.