Time to re-route Harrogate town centre traffic – Yorkshire Post Letters

SHOULD West Park/Parliament Street in Harrogate revert to two-way traffic, as it was before 1970? Many, including Harrogate Civic Society, say it should be again.

The renewed debate, sparked by the Station Gateway project, brought an initial response from the county council that the ‘potential benefits would be minimal at best’, which failed to convince many and seemed bizarre to some at least.

Whatever the pros and cons of the two-way option, the effects would certainly be very considerable, enabling southbound traffic to follow the straight route through the town, rather than as now having to go the long way, effectively round three sides of a square.

Now the argument seems to have shifted from ‘potential benefits’ to cost, which the council says would be at least £30m, a figure which is presumably intended to sound prohibitive.

It would have been more constructive to ask what the £30m estimate was based on. Is that just for the essential work to make the road two-way, and alterations to junctions? If so, £30m doesn’t seem to go very far.

But if that really is the cost does it mean the idea should not even be studied properly?

The cost of a feasibility study is put at £50,000. That sounds to me like money well spent on such a fundamental proposal which could transform our town centre.

From: Margaret Cyster, Harrogate.

WITH regard to the ongoing discussion about the pros and cons of the Gateway changes, I would like to add the following.

Anyone who has ever arrived at the traffics lights at the bottom of Parliament Street and found they are not working will have been surprised to see how little traffic there was about.

Somehow everyone had managed to turn whichever way they wanted without the aid of traffic lights. In fact it was often a case of two drivers looking at each other wondering politely who should go first.

NYCC consulted the public on various solutions to the Bond End problem. The one chosen was the least costly and the most effective and was quite clearly the common sense solution. Traffic now flows therefore less pollution.

Apply the same principle to the A61 and return Parliament Street to two-way traffic. A mini roundabout there, one where Victoria Avenue meets A61 and another on the Kings Junction.

There are not huge numbers of pedestrians before 9am in the morning or after 5pm in the evening so crossing on demand rather than by timed lights would suffice.

I would much rather see a common sense solution in Harrogate than frustrated drivers zig zagging along unsuitable roads to cross town.

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