Traffic lights set to be upgraded at Carr Lane and Thanet Road

Ageing traffic lights at the junction of York Road with Carr Lane and the Thanet Road crossing near Foxwood Lane are set to be upgraded next month. Work will start on both sites on Monday 2 October.

The lights at the junction of York Road and Carr lane will be fully refurbished. The crossing will also be widened to better meet current safety standards.

The Thanet Road crossing near Foxwood Lane will see the separate pedestrian / cyclist crossing replaced with a shared Toucan crossing. The footpath and cycleway near to the crossing will also be relayed.

Local safety scheme work will also take place alongside this including installing a raised traffic table which will be added to the crossing along with speed cushions in the area to help reduce the speed of vehicles using the road.

Work at the York Road crossing will take place between 7.30am – 5.30pm, Monday – Friday and 9 am – 3pm on Saturdays.    Evening work will take place on Monday 9 October and Thursday 12 October from 6pm – 11pm. Three-way traffic management will be in place at the junction during the works. Full access will be retained to all properties during construction.

Work at the Thanet Road crossing will take place between 7.30am – 5.30pm, Monday – Friday and 8am – 3pm Saturdays. Traffic management will be in place at the junction of Thanet Road / Foxwood Lane during the works. A controlled crossing will be provided during construction to allow pedestrians and cyclists to cross the road safely.

Thanet Road will be closed between Foxwood Lane and St James Place on 22 October for the installation of the raised traffic table. Additional road closures will be in place on 6 and 7 November to install the speed cushions.

As with any construction work, there is likely to be a certain amount of disruption. Residents are assured that everything reasonably possible will be done to keep this to a minimum, however buses that normally use this street will be diverted and motorists should expect some delays and plan their journey accordingly.

The five year traffic signal asset renewal programme was given the green light by the councillor responsible for transport and planning in November 2015 at a public meeting.

The total replacement programme will cost £2.620m over six years and will be funded through the capital programme budget and the existing Local Transport Plan budget.

For information about bus diversions during the works visit: www.itravelyork.info/

£250,000 cycling “Departy” shambles finally admitted

Big loss on the Grand Departy

The Councils Executive will this week receive the final report into the 2014 Tour de France concert fiasco.

The Concert cost some £250,000 but attracted only around 1500 people to the Huntington Stadium

The report (click) makes salutary reading

It has subsequently turned out that this casual approach to spending taxpayer’s money was the tip of the iceberg with another recent report into the appointment of consultants also revealing that procurement rules were broken.

The Executive is being recommended to approve a series of recommendations aimed at preventing a repetition of the problems.

However, rather surprisingly, it appears that officials apparently do not want the following scrutiny committee proposals to be approved.

To ensure the risks associated with future major events are assessed and mitigated effectively:

vii. The event manual for each planned event must be prepared and supplied to the SAG and event management staff by the required pre-event deadline.

viii. For those events where ticket sales are required, to mitigate any associated financial risk, arrangements for monitoring ticket sales must be made before tickets go on sale and an effective method for the continuous assessment of sales against targets put in place. Any proposed price changes or special offers to boost sales must be assessed and agreed before implementation.

  1. Where an additional event is proposed to be run alongside an existing externally-originated programme, it must be agreed from the outset that this can be done and that no element of competition is anticipated.
Councillors would be wise to adopt all the investigation recommendations

What’s on in York, Poetry Workshop with Anna Woodford

York Explore Library :

Thu 28 Sep :

2.30pm – 4.30pm :

Free

Sept _28Anna WoodfordAnna Woodford – creator of the exhibition T(here) on display at York Explore – invites you to join her for this informal creative writing workshop exploring freedom. Beginners and experienced writers welcome.

We will be exploring freedom to travel with our bodies and our minds in this lively informal creative writing workshop We will also be looking at free writing and poems on freedom by writers from Jack Mapanje to Emily Dickinson. Please come along whether you are a beginner or an experienced writer. Bring a pen, paper and a sense of adventure!

Anna Woodford’s poetry collection Birdhouse (Salt,2010) was a winner of the Crashaw Prize. The Guardian included Birdhouse in a round-up of poetry books of the year and Grazia called it ‘quite quite wonderful’.

Her poems have appeared in many publications including the Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, the Rialto and Poetry London. She has also been anthologised in The Forward Book of Poems of the Year.

To book tickets click here.