THE feasibility of dualling York’s outer ring road is set to be investigated at a cost of £294,000.

The funding was agreed yesterday at a meeting of the West Yorkshire and York Investment Committee, part of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, of which City of York Council is a member.

York’s transport executive member, Cllr Ian Gillies, spoke out in favour of the work, saying it could pave the way for a later bid by the council for money to dual the road from a new £1 billion Government fund announced last week.

He also told committee members about The Press’ new Dual Them! campaign, which is calling for the Government to fund the dualling of both the ring road and the A64 between York and Malton.

A report to yesterday’s meeting said the project would “undertake pre-feasibility work to complete further modelling and assessment, in order to determine the strategic case for investment into a significant transformational scheme”.

It would enable the council to apply for funding from a variety of sources, to take the scheme through “optioneering, business case development and delivery”.

It said the scheme appeared to have a “good strategic fit”, well within the priority of creating infrastructure for growth, and it was also critical to delivery of the Local Plan for York, increasing capacity and opening up land for further development.

“York Outer Ring Road is a key orbital route ... requiring improvements to deliver economic growth,” it said.

It referred to a proposed scheme to upgrade seven roundabouts on the road but said “real transformational change and impact” was likely to be delivered by dualling.

It was envisaged that an engineering consultant would be procured, with sub-consultants appointed as necessary. The pre-feasibility work would be 91 per cent funded by the committee, with a small amount of match funding from the council, and the work was due to be completed by mid/late 2018.