York Council says parking signs will be fixed by end of March

At long last the Council has responded to our questions about the failure of its parking space availability policies.

Following our article published in December, which revealed that the Council’s web site was out of date and that many street signs were faulty, we asked the Council when repair work would be completed.

On line site parking space availability click to access

The on line map was a particular concern as it had not shown parking space availability for over 4 years and some of the listed car parks had actually closed.

After some delay, the Council has now said that the on line map – in line with a new mobile app – “will be updated by the end of March”.

This will include an update to the listed tariffs.

The delays in restoring the parking space availability feature (known as the Car Park Guidance System) is put down to issues with the slow roll out of the Council’s new fibre optic network. Apparently the car parking counting devices are currently being refurbished in time for the March relaunch.

The Council also confirms that all of the Variable Message Signs which can  be seen on the streets of the city were faulty.

The Council says it has

Parking space availability

“taken the novel step of working with a suppler to develop a new ‘technology package’ that can be inserted into the existing sign cases as this is a much cheaper way of renewing the VMS than simply replacing them.

The first four pre-production signs that have been used to test this approach are now operational and under test in the City, and the Heworth Green and Foss Islands Road CPGS signs are part of this group.

Work is now underway to apply this renewal technique to the five remaining City-centre ‘free text’ VMS and these will be back on street and operational by the end of March.

The remaining twenty CPGS ‘Insert’ signs (right) located in the City centre will be refurbished and brought back into use between April and August 2017″.

There are no plans to provide additional VMS signs in the City.

Finally the Council has confirmed that it is working with a number of GPS/SatNav suppliers to include real time parking space availability features on their devices. 

Join residents and businesses in the BIG York Challenge!

City of York Council is encouraging York businesses and their employees to get into gear and join over 270 people and 39 businesses who have already joined the i-Travel York BIG Challenge.

The i-Travel York BIG Challenge started on Monday 1 June and offers prizes to those who clock up the most journeys using different modes of sustainable travel during the six-week period, plus weekly prize draws for taking part.

Picture-of-different-vehicles.

This can include walking, running, cycling, scooting, skating, bus, train, park & ride, park & pedal, car sharing, electric car, teleconferencing or working from home, so almost everyone should be able to join in.
Some of the city’s largest employers have joined, including York College, The Vangarde Shopping Park and Aviva.

Registering is simple via: www.itravelyork.info/bigchallenge

The BIG Challenge is being run by Sustrans, the national sustainable transport charity, in partnership with i-Travel York.
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i-Travel York on Acomb doorsteps

More than 6,000 homes in the Acomb and Poppleton areas of York will be able to benefit from free travel advice when a team of i-Travel York travel advisors continues one of the biggest door-to-door exercises undertaken in York.

Over 8,000 homes in the city have already befitted from the personal travel planning scheme throughout 2013/14. During this time nearly 30,000 individual resource items and 6,000 personal travel challenges were issued to residents.

From Tuesday 19 May, i-Travel York advisers will be visiting households, beginning in Poppleton, to encourage even more residents to consider using more sustainable and active modes of transport including walking, cycling, public transport and car sharing.

As part of the exercise, advisers will provide information such as bus and cycle maps, and offer personal ‘challenges’ for individuals to try out a new form of sustainable transport.  Participants will also receive incentives such as a free All-York bus taster ticket, a pedometer or a bike health check to help them on their way.
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Government gives York additional £100,000 towards transport improvements

sectors_transport

City of York Council has been awarded an additional £100,000 from the Department of Transport, towards the city’s i-Travel York initiative.

Many residents will hope that the funding is used to repair faulty “real time” information systems indicating the Variable Message Signs on the City’s arterial routes as well as the car park availability information which has disappeared from the Council’s web site.

One of only nine local authorities to receive the funding, York successfully won the financial backing following a bid in November 2013 to deliver the government’s Local Sustainable Transport Fund project ).

This council’s i-Travel York initiative was launched in 2011, made possible by £4.6 million of government funding which the council successfully bid for in 2011.

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More problems for York real time traffic information site

Click to visit site

Click to visit site

The much publicised, and very expensive, ITravel web site – launched at the beginning of the year by the York Council – is still plagued by gremlins.

 

It was heavily criticised for not providing the kind of real time traffic congestion camera input which has been widely available elsewhere for over a decade.

The responsible Councillor promised in October that this feature would be available within days.

But now the interactive map has crashed altogether and does not provide any information at all about car parks, road works etc.

It is an embarrassing “fail” for the City in the busy run up to Christmas and may have contributed to the sometimes chaotic traffic scenes which arose during the St Nicholas Fayre period.

Many private cars were seen using Lendal Bridge during restricted hours over the weekend suggesting that some may pay more for their Christmas shopping trip than they were anticipating.