New plans to cut congestion on Oatlands Drive in Harrogate delayed
It's more than a year-and-a-half after original plans were abandoned.
New plans to cut congestion on Oatlands Drive in Harrogate won't be ready until at least autumn.
North Yorkshire County Council scrapped plans to make the street one-way traffic in March 2020 - before launching a feasibility study for the wider area.
A council spokesperson said the consultation is “still being finalised”.
The original plans were opposed by many residents who warned a one-way system would be "disastrous" for the area.
The one-way proposals were replaced with a 20mph limit and traffic filters.
However, this still caused upset among locals who complained the changes would cause disruption on residential streets.
This led to the plans being dropped altogether from the council’s active travel schemes for which the authority received around £2.5 million for projects across North Yorkshire to get more people walking and cycling.
A common complaint for Harrogate’s Oatlands Drive is that parked cars block cycle lanes near the Stray where there are no double yellow lines.
Residents also say their streets are busy with rat-run drivers looking to avoid town centre traffic.
Allan McVeigh, the council’s head of network strategy for highways and transportation, said as well as the consultation, data gathering including parking surveys will be carried out before the new proposals are brought forward.
He also said new traffic measures would be trialled before being introduced permanently.
He said: “The purpose of this study is to review the existing designs and prepare new ones, based on the data we collect, to give us some options for active travel and traffic calming improvements in the Oatlands area that could be trialled in a pilot to test before implementation.”