IT’S the calm before the storm on York’s Local Plan, as City of York Council prepares to submit its final draft to the Planning Inspectorate and a public inquiry looms later this year.

Much of the debate has focussed on the target for the number of homes to be built each year.

There have been warnings from some opposition councillors and officers that the authority’s figure is not high enough to comply with Government calculations as to how many new homes will be needed over the next 15 years.

Personally, I would go with a higher figure, as York’s young people desperately need new homes to be able to move into.

But legitimate concerns have been raised by people living in outlying areas about the sheer scale of the housing developments that will be needed to meet demand, especially as experts have calculated that the majority of new homes are needed not to meet local demand but inward migration.

One very legitimate worry keeps cropping up time and again about the housing schemes being proposed on all four sides of the city: traffic. Where is it going to go? How will the city’s roads cope?

The concerns are particularly acute in the south-eastern corner of York, and were articulated by Green Fishergate councillor Andy D’Agorne recently when he warned that the A19 Fulford Road faced ‘gridlock’ unless more sustainable transport was to be provided.

Now I don’t always agree with the Greens; for example, their frosty reception to our campaign to get the York Outer Ring Road and A64 dualled. I think dualling is essential if traffic is to get about in the 21st century, particularly if all these new homes are built. The York Outer Ring Car Park is often so congested that it is quicker to travel across town, contributing to damaging levels of pollution.

But I think Cllr D’Agorne is spot on with his concerns about traffic generated by the amount of development being planned and his suggested solution.

The 650-home Germany Beck development is about to get underway in Fulford but that’s just the start. There’s a proposed new ‘garden village’ of 3,339 new homes near Elvington – that’s a town of about the size of Pocklington or Tadcaster.

And then we now also have another 769 houses being proposed at the Imphal Barracks site in Fulford Road, following the barracks’ proposed closure in 2031.

According to Cllr D’Agorne, Local Plan documents said the increase in morning and evening peak inbound traffic delays in Fulford Road was predicted to be the worst in the city. The documents predict a 23 per cent to 31 per cent increase in travel times on 2016 levels within just over a decade - before taking into account additional traffic to the barracks site.

“As it stands, the final draft Local Plan fails to ensure adequate alternatives to the private car and has no serious plan to prevent gridlock,” Cllr D’Agorne said.

He argued that the major new developments in the Plan should provide the opportunity to ‘think’ big and look at options such as a light rail system to link the new developments to the south of York with the University and city centre, potentially continuing as tram train out to the British Sugar site and Poppleton and north east to Haxby and Strensall.

Now that’s an idea that must surely be worth exploring?

The Press reported last year how a York building engineer was already exploring that very option.

Jon Charters-Reid suggested a monorail could carry shoppers and commuters above the traffic, and said many cities around the world already used them, adding: “We can’t solve our problems with the old way of thinking. The solutions already exist – we just need to have the foresight to explore them.”

I couldn’t agree more Jon.