York Councillors asked to approve funding for York outer ring road dualling

Councillors will be asked to approve match funding for the dualling of the York outer ring road from the A19 Shipton Road through to Little Hopgrove (Malton Road), when they meet at Executive on Thursday 20 December.

The plans don’t include improvements to the Ouse river crossing, one of the main pressure points on the existing network. Nor are there plans to introduce split level intersections  raising concerns that the existing junctions, even with larger roundabouts, will continue to be pinch pints on the network.

A Council report asks the Executive to recommend  that £2.8m match funding, approximately 10 percent of the estimated £28m cost of the dualling element of the overall upgrade scheme, is provided in the Council’s Capital Programme.

The opportunity for funding of the scheme using the new Major Road Network Fund was announced by the Secretary for State earlier this year.

This follows on from the outer ring road roundabout upgrade scheme which will see seven roundabouts upgraded ready for dualling as part of a West Yorkshire plus Transport Fund scheme.

Work is nearly complete at Wetherby Road roundabout after starting earlier this year. Monks Cross is the next in line with ground clearance works set to take place early in 2019. It is proposed to join the dualling and roundabout schemes together as early as possible to reduce overall costs and disruption.

Subject to the decision on the match funding proposal at this Executive meeting a formal Outline Business Case (OBC) would be submitted to the DfT this month.  This is the first stage of the DfT’s approval process. Dependent on a positive assessment of the OBC and Ministerial approval it is anticipated that Programme Entry status would be granted for the scheme by March 2019.

Increasing the capacity of the ring road leading to the redistribution of trips will complement the city’s transport policies and help to enable more sustainable travel options to be delivered in the urban area of the city.

The York Outer Ring Road improvements programme is being funded through the West Yorkshire-plus Transport Fund, and the Leeds City Region Growth Deal – a £1 billion package of Government investment through the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership (LEP) to accelerate growth and create jobs across Leeds City Region.

For more information about the York outer ring road roundabout upgrades visit www.york.gov.uk/yorr

Executive takes place on Thursday 20 December from 5.30pm and is open to members of the public or is available to watch live online from: www.york.gov.uk/webcasts

To find out more about the report, or to attend, visit: https://democracy.york.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=733&MId=10475&Ver=4

What’s on in York: Everything is Permitted, Restrictions Still Apply

“Everything is Permitted, Restrictions Still Apply” – a psychoanalytic perspective on contemporary life.

Dec _10Ian

York Explore Library :

Mon 17 Dec :

6.00pm – 7.45pm :

Free

Ian Thurston, a public sector psychoanalytic psychotherapist living in York talks about his recently published first book, which offers an applied psychoanalytic perspective on dominant emotional trends in contemporary life.

There is a need to better understand the emotional motivations that might underlie the polarized thinking currently evident amongst populist right and progressive left alike, motivations that might be at odds with professed political ideology.

The author suggests that there are powerful social defences against facing loss, limitation and internal conflict. He applies a historicized psychoanalytic perspective on these phenomena, highlighting the decline and denigration of the old centres of traditional industry, and the rise of an increasingly narcissistic culture, in which emotional narratives of victimhood trump the need for evidence and the claims of “traditional” expertise and authority.

There will be opportunity for discussion and debate.

Author’s Biography:
I am a York resident, brought up on Tyneside,  currently working as a psychonanalytic psychotherapist within the NHS, and with many years of experience of working in public sector mental health care, in the north of England and London.

Please visit our ticketing website to book a place.