No room for Starbucks at busy Harrogate junction – Yorkshire Post Letters

ASK anyone who lives in or regularly visits Harrogate and they will tell you what a nightmare it is navigating through the Woodlands Pub junction on the A661 Wetherby Road.

Overcrowded Harrogate is not the town that it was – Yorkshire Post Letters

Already an Air Quality Management Area, the road is notorious for traffic jams and frustrated drivers. It seems incredulous that there is yet another planning appeal to build a Starbucks café with drive-through on the site of the old dental laboratories – situated in the heart of this busy junction.

With two traffic lanes currently heading towards the town centre and two traffic lanes heading outbound towards Wetherby, how on earth can a new dedicated ‘Starbucks’ fifth lane in between them all be classed as safe?

With residential dwellings, small businesses, a petrol station, a pub, a car showroom and a bus stop all within walking pace of each other at the junction, an additional fifth lane and entry/exit point for a drive-through seems simply unworkable.

Not only that, but with the proposed long opening hours the poor residents who live on the border of the site and opposite the site are likely to have all of their privacy, safety and air quality compromised seven days a week.

Please, please, please let common sense and the local knowledge and experience of the people of Harrogate prevail.

Yes, the site is an eyesore and in desperate need of development and everyone who lives in the Woodlands area wishes it to be smartened up – but this really is not the answer.

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